Everyone has their relationships come and go. It’s completely natural.
Even in my fairly raw state after just getting out of a long-term relationship, I can recognize and accept this. Still though, I find myself surprised by the impact of some of the things that are hitting me to this day.
While I now see that I wasn’t fully prepared for the relationship to end (even though I thought I was), I’m still taken aback by the particular things that have been bothering me and how impactful they are at times.
It’s a very odd feeling and I can’t emphasize enough how strong these feelings can hit. I’ve been amazed lately at my own personal lack of control over my own mood.
One thing can make me look around and say to myself,
“You see, life really is great. Anything you want, you can have.”
Then, some time goes by and the slight euphoria subsides. Something happens that is a regular part of life and I’m very quickly brought to a mindset of,
“I hate everything, I hate everyone, how can I escape from all of this?”
Like I said, it’s very strange to me because I’ve always felt like I had pretty good control over my mental state. Here are some of the things I’m talking about:
Moving Out of Your Habitat
I lived with my ex-girlfriend for about the whole time that I was with her. First in an apartment, then in her house.
Obviously, when things ended, I had to find somewhere else to be.
Lucky for me, my parents were able to take me in. Unlucky for me, that meant moving cities and even across state lines.
I didn’t think this would matter all that much because I’m a flexible person with living situations. However, the problem was that I now just lost my entire social environment.
Not that it was anything impressive, but moving away from the rest of your friends is tough. More to the point, it’s a loss of your whole familiar environment where you’ve set up your life.
This was around the area where I went to college so I knew a bunch of people around the area, my gym was there, I play in a soccer league there with my team, I worked there, and all the other things that come with it.
I realized how deep I had stuck my roots into this place being that I had lived there for several years and made it my own. I was accustomed to the place.
Going back home was tough. What’s tougher is setting up your new life.
Uprooting yourself abruptly and going somewhere else where you can hopefully replant your roots is always going to be a task.
This is an ongoing process for me because the two areas are also incredibly different and I’ve had to change a lot of the ways I live my life.
Loss of Intimacy
This is a rather obvious point but again, the impact can’t really be understated because it runs deep.
Losing the person you’ve built your life around is a lot to handle and the effects will be felt for a long time after it’s all over. I realize now how much I was leaning on the intimacy I previously had because the loss of it has been very noticeable.
For me, it’s so unfamiliar to not feel like I have my one person anymore.
I’m an introverted guy so I tend to build very small friend groups but ones that are very real and committed. This applies to relationships too as I really invest a lot in it emotionally.
The people in my life are there for a reason; I really care for them and they provide a lot to me. So losing one is like having several boxes of your life that were once ticked, get unticked. Now, you feel the voids all the time.
You see other people in relationships and feel slight jealousy. You notice a girl who really likes a guy and you wonder why no one likes you like that.
You feel like it may never come your way again. It will come again, of course, but many of these feelings are impossible to ignore.
That one person who was your rock is no longer there for you to lean on and it shows in almost every area of life.
Realization of Emptiness
Life can be very sad and there can be a lot of suffering involved.
What I don’t think most people realize is that there’s only one thing that changes that: other people.
Everything about life would be entirely meaningless if other people were not involved in it. There’s no accomplishment, no material item, no hobby, no feeling, or anything that would even be worth the effort if you couldn’t share it with other people.
The people close to you in life are the ones that make everything you do worthwhile. This becomes all too apparent when you lose a major loved one.
You realize that little achievement you just had is suddenly not that exciting when you don’t have the one person who would understand it.
You suddenly lose a lot of context in your life, to be honest.
Things that used to be standard talking points without the need for explanation now need to be explained to other people if you want someone to understand it.
This can be a bit shocking because losing that one person almost feels like everything you’re doing afterwards has a lot less meaning too. You have to rebuild this meaning in your new life to recreate the feelings you once had with new people.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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