By Christina Holder
When Serious Ex-Boyfriend #2 broke up with me a few years ago, I had a hard time accepting it.
I really loved him.
We dated long distance for more than a year before he moved to my city of Washington, D.C. Several months later, he broke up with me -- but not before we had started planning our lives together, talked about marriage, and said, "I love you."
The Big Breakup happened one night, on perhaps the stormiest of the summer, in a quiet coffee shop. As lightening tore across the sky, I begged him not to give up on us. He said he was so sorry. His heart had changed. Strangers around us pretended not to listen. It was a terrible goodbye.
I couldn't believe we broke up. I believed God had a future for us. I didn't believe that any of our struggles were too great that we couldn't overcome them together.
I didn't understand how after so many months of longing and deferred hope, God would allow him to finally move near me only for us to breakup. He was supposed to be my husband, not my ex-boyfriend. It felt cruel. Especially as I neared 28, an age that I thought would have already found me in wedded bliss with some God-loving man.
Our breakup was so puzzling and painful that for months part of me expected God to make things right -- to bring about the day when we would go on with our happy lives as we'd always planned.
But that didn't happen. The Big Breakup stuck.
I understand your breakup is difficult to accept. I realize that you may love him will all your heart. But it is time that will tell whether your serious ex has made a mistake -- and not you. God is big enough to bring you back together if that is His will. But right now you need to focus on you -- on grieving, on crying, on resting, and on God. I know that doesn't seem good enough at this moment, but I promise it will be better than good enough as you work through this difficult season.
Prepare to make the right post-breakup decisions for yourself with this breakup checklist.
#1. Accept Serious Ex's Decision
When he tells you it is over, it probably is over. That's hard to hear, but it's true. Yes, everyone changes their minds sometimes. But for the time being, I encourage you to treat his decision like the final decision. Holding onto hope that Serious Ex will change his mind, as I did, is only going to hurt you and may even lead to bitterness.
I'd like to write that when Serious Ex #2 broke up with me, that I gracefully accepted his decision and closed the chapter of this messy romance while still keeping my poise and dignity. But I can't write that. Accepting The Big Breakup was extremely difficult for me to do. I couldn't imagine my life without Serious Ex #2. I didn't want anyone else. My emotional pleas turned into the greatest recast you've ever seen of Scarlett O'Hara throwing herself at Ashley Wilkes.
Over the next few days and weeks, I cried. And then I called him crying. And then I called him crying some more. I bombarded him with phone calls. I pleaded with him over email. I called him in the middle of the night crying. I even showed up on his doorstep sobbing. I wasn't acting. I really was that girl who can't let go. I felt out of control of my emotions and out of touch with reality. I felt pathetic and rejected over and over and over again, not because Serious Ex #2 wasn't gracious to talk to me or to see me, but because I saw how he really had made his decision: He didn't want to be with me.
I still wouldn't let go -- and Serious Ex #2? Well, eventually he just ran away harder.
I'm writing all of this, as humiliating as it is, so you don't make the same mistakes. Think of this column as your Christian Magic 8 Ball®. No matter how much you shake it up, the answer to the question, "Will he come back?" is always, "Don't count on it." The answer to the question, "Should I beg him to stay with me?" is always, "My sources say no." The answer to the question, "Will I regret the way I am responding?" is always, "As I see it, yes."
If you are cringing now -- as you rightly should be -- then take this as a warning. You could be me -- and you don't want to be.
I didn't change Serious Ex #2's mind. I just embarrassed myself.
#2. Take Out the Trash
Soon after I realized that Serious Ex #2 was, indeed, serious about our breakup, I took a trash bag into my bedroom and I started bagging up the memories. I chunked the dried roses (I saved one from every bouquet Serious Ex #2 gave me) and the empty wine bottle we had opened to celebrate his move to D.C. (we had saved the bottle -- from a Napa Valley winery we had visited -- for more than a year). I sold a black pearl necklace he had given me to a guy who found it through a Craigslist ad I quickly penned and posted. Although the pearls were beautiful, they were too sentimental. I gave away other sets of jewelry and random gifts, as my girlfriends can attest happily.
But when I tried to throw away the cards in which he wrote how I was the love of his life or the DVD with a photo slideshow about our relationship or the bound book of photos of the two of us dancing in a Virginia forest during autumn -- well, I just couldn't do it.
Instead, I packed them in a black box for a while. But as the months passed, sometimes I got out that box and read the cards. Sometimes Serious Ex #2's words would make me cry. I wanted him to still believe them. Sometimes the words made me angry. I thought about what a fool he had been to write them and then to retract them. What did he know about love? He had walked away. I became bitter.
I heard from friends about how I had to let go of the past in order to move forward into the life that God had for me. Serious Ex #2 had made a decision, and now I had to as well. Hanging onto hope, whether I was doing so consciously, wasn't helping me. It was holding me back. No matter how harmless the little black box appeared, I realized the potential it had to keep me from moving forward into the new life God had for me. It threatened to keep me stuck in the past, to miss opportunities to use the affliction of my healing years to comfort those who also were being afflicted (2 Corinthians 1:5-7), and to even move forward in a relationship with someone who could be my future husband. I eventually got rid of it.
#3. R-E-S-P-E-C-T Yourself
Find out what that means to you. Remember that you want to be with someone who loves you for who you are, who is willing to fight through the hard times with you, and who really wants to be with you. You are unique, beautiful, and significant. Just because Serious Ex has ended the relationship doesn't mean you are any less unique, beautiful, or significant. It's just that, as difficult as it is to see right now, Serious Ex may not be the one for you.
A healthy self-love begins and ends in the Bible. That's because God's truth and what you ultimately believe about yourself can never be separated.
So often, however, we are quick to separate the two. I find it easy to affirm others in God's truth. I'm eager to lift up a friend who's discouraged and to remind her of all the good things God says about her. But when I'm feeling low, I sometimes find it difficult to even open my Bible and to seek out God's truth. For some reason I'm more content with filtering lies through my heart and mind. I become similar to the suffering Job, who questioned whether His Creator even knew what He was doing when He formed Job in the womb (Job 3:1-26).
If you've had the official breakup conversation, then don't call him. Don't email him. Don't sob at his feet. When in question, just don't.
Instead, remember who you are. You are God's beautiful creation. You are treasured, adored, the apple of His eye, and His work of art (all found in the Good Book, by the way). Fight to believe that right now because it's true.
#4. Don't Look at the Calendar
Your healing is one event you cannot put on a timeline. You just have to give yourself time to process, to grieve, to forgive, and one day, to move on. And one day, you will move on.
The medical news site WebMD reports that it "can 2 or more years to go through a grieving process." Losing a relationship can feel like grieving an actual death. "The length of time spent grieving depends on your relationship with the lost person, object, or way of life. Even after 2 years, you may re-experience feelings of grief, especially over the loss of your loved one," the site relates.
It's true that post-breakup life is difficult. Sometimes I thought my pain would never diminish. I hated being so sad. I just wanted to be over it all. After a year, I thought I should be. But I wasn't. It took more than two years to get over Serious Ex #2.
Somewhere along the way, I remember someone telling me that it's called a breakup because something gets broken. I was broken. You are broken. But healing cannot begin until we accept our brokenness. We have to accept where we are and be willing to work through it -- and that's something that a calendar can't fix.
I know this is difficult. I long have prayed that God would never allow me to lose touch with what it feels to be broken. I do know this kind of pain because I've lived many years working through it. But I also know that healing begins with acceptance. We are on a beautifully broken journey together, and we begin with this checklist.
And then hold onto God. He is here with you right now. You may be angry with Him, but He longs to draw you into His arms anyway. Your world may feel like a Magic 8 shaken and unclear, but God holds your world.
And the answer to the question, "Somehow is God going to turn this into good, to comfort me, to give me peace, to change my life?" is always, "It is certain."
Read Part 2.
To discuss this article, visit our blog, Fresh Brew.
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Christina Holder is a freelance writer based in Liberia, West Africa, where she is recording post-war stories five years after Liberia's brutal 14-year civil war. She is a former reporter for the Naples (Fla.) Daily News and a former reporter/researcher for syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in Washington, D.C. She writes for the blog Beautifully Broken, which encourages women with God's promise to take their brokenness and to make it beautiful. Read more of Christina's Ungrind articles here.
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Copyright © 2010 Christina Holder. All rights reserved. This article was published on Ungrind.org on February 8, 2010. Portions of this article were taken from "I Want to Hold Your Hand: Part 1," Love Thyself," and "The Little Black Box."
