*Her Campus FSU does not promote illegal behavior and encourages all students to make smart, healthy decisions. This article does not represent the views of Her Campus FSU.
Welcome to the latest in relationships, sex, love and dating. Introducing, “The Scoop with Szmuc” (Smook) and no, that’s not pronounced schmuck. Every week we’re giving our readers an opportunity to send in their questions to Her Campus FSU staff writer and relationship guru Sharon Szmuc relating to the theme of the week.
Photo By: Hana Bilicki
This week we will be discussing breakups. There are too many forms of breakups and reasons why couples split up. Some people move to a different country and realize there is terrible Wi-Fi connection that doesn’t help keep a long distance relationship going. Other times you realize that he doesn’t like Justin Bieber, so how could you possibly stay with someone who doesn’t have Bieber Fever? Whatever your reason is for the change in your Facebook relationship status, we can all agree that breakups suck. But trust me, they are the best lessons of all.
I have personally gotten my heart broken many times, like that time my seventh grade boyfriend told me he loved me and then broke up with me a week later. I was heartbroken and would stay up all night writing poems about him in my diary. One day when I was going through a tougher breakup in high school I discovered some of the things my 12-year-old self wrote. My younger self knew the first way to cope with a breakup all along, writing all my thoughts down on paper or finding a way to express my heartbreak. So step #1 to coping with a breakup—you must, must, must just release feelings (of anger, sadness, frustration and even love). Whether it’s punching the stuffed animal he got you various times, running five miles a day (and landing a hot bod as a newly single gal) or writing in your diary until your pen runs out of ink and your heart runs out of feelings, you must find your personal coping method.
Another big mistake I’ve made during breakups is rebounding. I thought that making out with a guy from the bar or even hooking up with my older brother’s friend was the way to move on from my three-year relationship. This decision just made me have to move on from two people: someone who no longer loved me and someone who didn’t love me to begin with. Thou shall swear to thou that she or he will not rebound. Does it really do you or the other person who may be catching feelings for you justice to know they are a rebound? You can make out with as many guys as possible, but this won’t ever cure a broken heart because you never learned to be alone or how to solve your heartache independently. So step #2, you have to learn how to be single. I mean truly single, not being in complicationships, or “we are a thing” or having a FWB. You need to be 100 percent single.
How do you do this? You start to go out to ladies night again. The purest love in the world is the one with your best friends, but also with yourself. At first you’ll love ladies night out and realize how nice your freedom is and on some days you’ll probably drunk cry wanting to text your ex-boyfriend and actually end up texting him. After moving on from that drunken mistake and a good month of going out with your friends, you might realize one of two things: 1. You LOVE being single and have officially moved on from this breakup or 2. You really just miss someone to cuddle with, someone who would share the entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream with you or someone who used to order your second favorite entree on the menu because he knew you were indecisive and could steal some food from his plate.
So if you reached the first of those two options, congratulations! You are well on your way to a speedy breakup recovery. If you chose the second it means you aren’t quite there yet, but have at least established after a few months that the single life isn’t for you and your friends were the only ones to honestly tell you that you, my friend, are a “relationship person.” But stop right there! Don’t you dare download Tinder just yet because if you’re like me you might end up with a relationship (an amazing relationship) that you thought you would never have again, but you shouldn’t jump to “another one” as DJ Khaled likes to say without going through step #3.
Step #3: Love Yourself. In the wise words of Bieber, “So you should go and love yourself.” This one is hard. No one can say that they fully have achieved self-love since we are our worst critics and it’s easiest to love ourselves when someone else reminds us each day how beautiful and unique we are. During a relationship we rely a lot on that other person to make us feel better, when we gained a little weight they still tell us we look amazing just the way we are. This reliance is unhealthy because we should never have a guy’s opinion tell us how to feel about ourselves. During a breakup, we no longer have someone to tell us how amazing we are (Grandma doesn’t count) and suddenly we forget how amazing we are. I have no perfect answer on how to achieve self-love because I don’t think I’ll ever fully find it, but I can suggest ways to improve your thought process. You must travel (travel to your favorite place, a place you never been before or a place that is out of your comfort zone). Find a passion, whether its writing, painting, taking photos or community service (don’t place all your energy on Netflix or on school). You might realize just how talented you are at something you didn’t know about because you were so busy in a relationship. Treat yourself to your favorite dessert once a week. Keep busy, you can’t under any circumstance stay home. Make study dates, coffee dates, plan birthdays, road trips and go visit your best friend two hours away. Eventually, you will have recreated your life without a significant other, you will find happiness in things that don’t involve him, and mostly you will learn that like Fitzgerald said, “There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.” That second love, my friend, is self-love.
*In case you were wondering, it took me almost two years to move on from my first love. How did I do it? With all of the three steps above, lots of ice cream, patient friends and landing an internship in Jerusalem for a summer where I got to interview people and hear their stories, I found my passion and learned to love myself again. But no boy or pair of Steve Madden shoes can repair a broken heart – always remember that.