Getting over a breakup is different when you aren’t twenty-something anymore.
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Breaking up at any age is tough. Ending an exclusive relationship is one of the most painful experiences a man will go through. Breaking up, particularly in your thirties, requires a completely different type of emotional investment. It’s scientifically proven that men feel the effects of a relationship’s end deeper and over a longer period of time. For that reason, our process of bouncing back is different than it was in our twenties.
But in your thirties, you learn to stop chasing. You make the conscious decision to pause, to take a break from giving away parts of your heart.
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In your twenties, a break up can sometimes feel like just another momentary failure. It hurts, but you don’t want to admit that it hurts, so you push yourself to detach. Any number of articles on the web about break ups will tell you to stay busy and don’t let your mind be idle. For men, being busy often leads to “getting busy.” We don’t give ourselves ample time to heal. Instead of accepting the hurt, we chase the high of being in love. We go through the motions mentally numb and leave a trail of hurt behind us. But in your thirties, you learn to stop chasing. You make the conscious decision to pause, to take a break from giving away parts of your heart. When you stop chasing, your eyes are wide open to understanding how you got there.
Which leads me to the next point about what happens in your thirties, you don’t romanticize love anymore. You don’t have the luxury — nor the blissful ignorance — to hold onto the idea of the perfect situation. The threat (whether real or imagined) of time running out is constantly looming. So the fact of the matter is the right time doesn’t exist as you’ve been led to believe. Without holding onto the good times, you can look at your relationship and be honest about why it didn’t work. Once you gather information about why it didn’t work, you can make one of two decisions; change the type of person you pursue or change how you behave in relationships as a whole.
As the person going through a break up, you don’t always see your culpability. You want to blame and project because you believe it’ll make dealing with the break up narrative easier. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t! As long as no infidelity or dishonesty was involved, we all have shared the blame at one point. It’s hard to notice patterns when you’re busy side-stepping being at fault. But be honest: how many times have you been dating people and recognized glaring similarities between them? Certain break ups hurt you on a deeper level emotionally because your heart is being broken by essentially the same person. Just a different name and body. In your youth, you can’t recognize when you’re bound to repeat history. Though, by the time you enter your thirties, you should be aware of a clear pattern. In order to move forward and be optimistic about love again, you have to identify why a person was all wrong for you. When you can identify bad patterns, you create better habits that will make bouncing back easier.
What’s important to remember is that bouncing back doesn’t come with a rule book. There’s no way to do it the “right way.”
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Lastly, you have to understand that bouncing back is as unique as a fingerprint. No two people break up for the same exact reason. Therefore, getting through the break up will be individualized. It’s natural that a relationship in your thirties has the expectation of marriage and babies. When that doesn’t happen, you’re faced with starting over from scratch. You have to go back to the finish line. The major difference is a break up in your thirties gives you a point of reference. If you came thisclose to the outcome you desire, you know what that looks like. You know what that type of love feels like and what it takes to maintain it. Only you know how hard you’re willing to work in order to make a fresh start meaningful.
Starting over is a painstaking process. There will be phases of insecurity, doubt, and fear. You might even find yourself angry at the person you thought was the one for not working harder to stay the one. What’s important to remember is that bouncing back doesn’t come with a rule book. There’s no way to do it the “right way.” During our twenties, I think we tend to rush through heartbreak because we just want the pain to stop. Our family and friends pressure us to get over it. We want to stop thinking and wishing about what should’ve been. But in our thirties, bouncing back from a break up is less about the relationship ending and more about what we learn from it. You have to give respect to the “bad feelings” of a break up. Spending formative years speeding through the process of break ups means that a break up in your thirties will inevitably change you and give way to a cautious, more deliberate, and hopefully a more fruitful journey to love.
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I am floored that my lover is back, everything felt dreamy and unbelievable thanks to dr_mack@yahoo. com for helping me to bring my lover back,
James, thanks for your article. I would like to offer my own perspective, if I may. You write: “You want to blame and project because you believe it’ll make dealing with the break up narrative easier”. I find that, being 39 and recently single after 9 years, life has given me enough lessons NOT to blame and project, as I did in my 20s. I might be unique in this, but I think not. Everyone is different, but enough of my fellow 30-somethings (and up) have learned to have a mature perspective on life and its setbacks, even during a… Read more »
Sander,
Thanks for reading and sharing your perspective. I definitely agree that the older we get, the more honest we’re able to be about the failures in our relationships. Outside opinions don’t hold any weight anymore so we can see errors/missteps clearly and then proceed accordingly in our next relationship.