Spilling it all in the next installation of my relationship saga
A couple of months ago, I wrote my first article for Her Campus titled “Hot Take: Why I Love My Long-Distance Relationship.” I was madly in love and wanted to share the whole experience of making an LDR work. And now, I’m here to give my loyal readers an update: we broke up.
I’m sure you’re interested in the story, and even if you’re not, I’m going to tell you anyway. After going home to Singapore for Spring Break, my ex and I were going to meet up in California for a vacation before I had to go back to Madison for the start of the Spring semester. After my 18 hour-long flight, it was late in the evening when he and I were in an Uber on the way to our hotel. He squirms in the corner before looking at me and saying, “Yeah, I don’t think this is gonna work out.” My heart shattered. At this point, we’ve been dating for almost a year and a half, and there were no signs of any ill feelings from him. I was totally blindsided, and I felt my entire body go numb.
I wish I had screamed or yelled, or done something to show how upset I was. Instead, I held his hand and asked him to take me back. I know, it was a little sad. After we got to the hotel, I called my parents and arranged a flight back home to Madison. The next day, I left, and that was the last time I ever saw him. I spent the rest of the week moping around and sobbing, barely eating anything and sleeping close to 18 hours a day just to avoid actually having to process my feelings.
I’ve never been dumped before, and although I always thought those teen movie scenes about breakups are always so dramatic, I realized that they were much more realistic than I thought they were. The grief process does include a lot of crying, hiding in bed and ice cream. It also does involve stalking your ex and all his friends on social media, even after you’ve tried to block them but can’t seem to because you’re still deeply and madly in love. That was also when I found out he was trying to cheat on me when we were still dating (on Reddit!), but that’s a whole other story for a different day.
Everyone knows the five stages of grief; denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, but no one really talks about how these stages often don’t go in that order, and it’s common to fluctuate back and forth between different stages. To be honest, I was stuck in denial and bargaining for the longest time, believing that he would come back even after realizing all the crappy stuff about him. It was worse because even though I begged for an explanation of why he wanted to break up with me, he couldn’t give me one, which made me believe that this was all just a phase and he was going to come back. And then, when I finally got to the anger stage, I kept fluctuating between that and depression, not knowing whether I should blame him or myself for the demise of our relationship. And I’m not even sure whether I’m truly at acceptance yet, even if I’m doing much better than I was 2-3 months ago.
So what did I learn from this whole experience? First, if you’re in an LDR, don’t make the person you’re breaking up with travel just to break up with them. Honestly, there’s a lot of rules surrounding having to break up with someone in person, but that rule can definitely be broken when you’re in an LDR. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for you to send a breakup text or ghost them, but a video call is sufficient in this scenario. Also, don’t break up with someone on vacation. That goes for any relationship, because not only was it emotionally exhausting, but also a logistical nightmare.
Second, the healing process is never linear, and I’m certainly guilty of falling back into old habits or letting intrusive, negative thoughts cloud my mind. That’s okay, and there are days when the grief is a lot worse than the previous days. I can assure you that as cliche as it sounds, things do get better, and there’s so much more for you to look forward to. Don’t let your past cloud you from seeing how bright the future is for you. And if you don’t believe that, fake it till you make it. One day, you’re going to realize that these affirmations you tell yourself are bound to come true, and you’ll start to believe them too.
Third, the healing process is different for everyone, and that doesn’t mean you have to do the same things everyone else does to get over being dumped. While I highly recommend blocking your ex, I’m not going to tell you to do that because that would make me a hypocrite, and I’m sure you’re going to stalk him anyways (because when there’s a will, there’s a way). I’m also not going to tell you that you need to immediately move on and get going on with your life, because there are days especially when the breakup was still fresh when I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else but him. Surround yourself with friends, but don’t feel pressured to continuously hang out with people because sometimes you also need the time to breathe and process your feelings. Just do what feels right to you, and what makes you comfortable.
And last, to my fellow Her Campus writers, maybe writing about your long-distance relationship is not the best idea. I don’t have the exact ratio of long-distance articles written to successful relationships, but I’m not willing to experiment to find that out.