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Breakups – Conversation Lesson

Joe: Hey, I just got off the phone with Aaron and he said he’s not coming over for dinner tonight, first off, but, man, he is…he is really down in the dumps, still. I mean I feel terrible for him because, I mean I’ve been there before. I know what it’s like when you’re going through a breakup. But, I don’t know, it’s a little weird because he’s the one who initiated this breakup so you’d think it would be a little easier for him, right? I mean, I would think so.

AJ: Well, that’s a good question. Is it easier to be the one breaking up or the one being broken up with? They’re both tough in their own way, I think, especially if you’re like just, y’know, a decent nice person.

Kristin: Yeah, they are both tough and I feel for him. But it’s…it’s a strange situation and I really feel for her, too, because we’ve gotten to know her and become friends with her. And she’s just devastated by this.

AJ: Yeah, I mean, it was…it’s just…it is on both sides. I think with the person doing the breaking up it’s always this, y’know, horrible struggle beforehand. Feeling like, oh, I think I need to break up with this person. It’s not working. But then, y’know, you’re conflicted because you care about them. And maybe there’s all this guilt. So that can be really hard. And then, of course, the person that gets broken up with, they’re usually shocked and hurt. And that’s horrible, too.

Joe: Yeah, I mean Sally is devastated. I mean they were supposed to get married like in a couple of months. And then suddenly he just said, “I don’t want to go through with it.” And, I don’t know, I mean the fact that he’d already been married before and those…twice…and those marriages ended poorly, I guess that’s…that’s why he has cold feet. But, I don’t know. Like just…just hearing how down he is it just made me really think back to, y’know, the time that that’s happened to me before. And I think it’s one of the worst things to try and get over. I mean some people have, y’know, depression that’s, y’know, long and, y’know, clinically diagnosed and, y’know, I obviously don’t have that. But, of course, I get depressed every now and then but I don’t think I really know depression worse than the depression of like the first breakup I ever had.

Kristin: Well, and then there’s my friend Tom who, actually I thought I was going to see him when I was just in Georgia. I didn’t get to but he’s going…he’s actually married and going through a divorce right now. He’s been with…with his wife for 11 years, married 5 but they were together 6. And, yeah, this whole process that he’s going through, I’ve been talking to him on the phone a lot. It’s…I told him it’s almost like going through a death. Y’know, at first there was the sadness and the disbelief and now he’s in this anger phase.

AJ: Mm, yeah.

Kristin: And, yeah, I don’t know what other phases there are going to be but…

AJ: Well, y’know, in psychology there are those stages of grief.

Kristin: Oh, yeah.

AJ: Y’know, that I think it was Elisabeth Kubler Ross wrote a book about death and dying, but it’s really the stages of loss. And it’s shock is the first one, like you said. And then…and disbelief, and then anger. And then, y’know, sadness, depression. And then I think one’s called bargaining, like, where you’re trying to…in your mind you’re trying to sort of kid yourself like, oh, maybe if I do this it’ll work out actually. Y’know, maybe there’s still a chance. It’s sort of this denial phase, too. And then, finally, y’know, leading to acceptance where you can finally accept that it’s happened and let go and move on.

Kristin: Right.

AJ: I think there’s kind of common stages people go through.

Kristin: Yeah. Y’know, divorce in this country is so very common, too. I think you were saying, AJ, that it’s actually increasing in other countries like Europe.

AJ: I think everywhere in the world it’s increasing, almost everywhere.

Kristin: Because I used to think it was predominantly here that we had such a high divorce rate.

AJ: I think we still do have a very high one, but I just…I do think it’s increasing most places in the world.

Joe: I thought I had read something, or maybe it was something that I had heard from someone who had read it, and what it was about was that arranged marriages end in separation or divorce far less often than what I guess we’d call…what WE call traditional marriages, y’know, in the western world. And it sounds kind of strange in a sense, right? I mean in the western world the traditional marriage occurs when you go through a period of dating, right? You get to know the person really well and then you, the two of you come and decide that you want to spend the rest of your life together. But then there’s traditional marriages in other cultures that are arranged. And it almost seems like that would be the type of marriage that wouldn’t last because in many cases, at least, not some, these people are only meeting each other for the first or second time on the day of their wedding. Y’know, you’d almost think that a marriage of that kind would…wouldn’t be as sustaining. But, in fact, it’s just the opposite.

AJ: I would imagine it’s because those cultures that have the arranged marriages, they’re just more social pressure. It’s, y’know, it’s just that divorce is less acceptable. There’s more pressure from families in society. But I imagine it’s still changing…like say India. I don’t know. I’d have to look it up but I’m guessing that the divorce rate is rising in India, too.

Kristin: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say that maybe in countries where the marriages are arranged that it’s…it’s not as acceptable. It’s so accepted here.

AJ: But it’s not…y’know, we’re not just talking about divorce though. We’re talking about breakups, too.

Kristin: Yes.

AJ: Because, y’know, the most devastating one for me was my very first girlfriend. We weren’t married, y’know, she was like my high school girlfriend. But that was super devastating. So even before marriage, I think any breakup of a relationship…and it really just depends, I think number one is how long you’ve been together. So obviously usually the longer the couple’s together the more devastating it is. And also, too, I think the first one tends to be the most devastating. Because it’s, oh, my first love and I’ll never survive this and aaauughhh, y’know?

Kristin: Right. But you do and people do survive it. And like I’ve been telling my friend Tom, y’know, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. You can’t see it right now but…and I know he’s really trying to figure out what…what he can learn from this so that he doesn’t go into his next relationship with the same baggage.

AJ: Yeah, and I think that, y’know, I have a very strong feeling that it can be actually a very positive experience in the end. Like I’m so happy that that first relationship ended and was painful and bad because it pushed me and forced me to make a lot of changes in myself because I decided, okay, I’m going to look at myself and figure out what did I do wrong and why didn’t it work, instead of blaming her. And that had a very positive outcome so that my next relationships were better and better. And so it can actually end up being a super positive experience even though it seems extremely painful at the time.

Joe: I completely agree with you. I mean, a lot of the times when you’re in a relationship it’s difficult to see what you’re doing wrong at the time you’re in the relationship. But sometimes after the relationship is over, when you step back and you take a look at what was happening and what you were doing in the relationship, sometimes you can really see that, y’know, you were wrong in a lot of different ways. And if you grow from those things, if you improve yourself, if it’s something that improves your next relationship,

then it’s really a positive thing. I mean, y’know, if a relationship ends the most important thing is just to grow from it.