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Look, I know what you want to hear… I know you want to hear that everything is going to be alright — no, better than alright, that it’s going to be fucking amazeballs.
I know you want to hear that your heart will one day be whole again, that your dreams of re-attracting an ex or attracting someone even better will become reality, that the only thing standing between you and ideal outcome is your attitude. Cue inspirational music.
I know you want to hear that your ex is the villain here, that it’s all their fault, that the pain in your chest is actually good for you — and if it doesn’t feel that way yet, all you have to do is sign up for my 1-2-3 step program and you’ll turn that shit around in 30 days or less. Sign up today!
I know you want to hear that. Every heartbroken person wants to hear these things. But I say fuck what you want to hear. Because let’s be honest, these things are not what you need to hear.
You’d think that after decades of this positive breakup recovery crap we’d start to see some goddamn results around here. Yet, breakup survivors are deep down anxious and depressed as ever, often even hopeless. Instead of actually doing the hard work of self-improvement, they’re concerned with managing their goddamn feelings all the time.
How about you go fuck yourself? Because, really, it’s our obsession with our “self” that probably started this whole mess in the first place.
If I gave enough of a shit, I’d find a big stage somewhere and a fancy microphone and declare this a great day, a new day, a day that, in my great and unmatched wisdom, I declare a new genre of breakup recovery.
It will be a new approach to dealing with breakups, an approach based not on feel-good nonsense, but based on solid science, pragmatic applications, and a bit of old fashioned “go fuck yourself” wisdom.
I’m christening this new approach, “Negative Breakup Recovery,” an approach to recovery based not on what feels good, but rather on what feels bad. Because getting good at feeling bad is what allows us to actually feel good.
- Whereas positive breakup recovery believes that you’re perfect and your ex just couldn’t see it, Negative Breakup Recovery admits that you probably fucked up too and a) should come to terms with that, and b) take some responsibility for it.
- Whereas positive breakup recovery encourages you to make vision boards, think positive, and listen to cringey pep talks from some suit on your favorite podcast app, Negative Breakup Recovery reminds you that this is probably just your ego trying to avoid reality and you should probably just shut the fuck up and work on yourself.
- Whereas positive breakup recovery obsesses over “healing” your “attachment wounds,” Negative Breakup Recovery gently reminds you that like heartbreak, trauma and insecurity are part of this shitstream called life, so you might as well get used to it.
- Whereas positive breakup recovery encourages you to “trust the process” and “everything happens for a reason,” Negative Breakup Recovery reminds you that sometimes shit just happens and there’s no deeper meaning to it — deal with it, bitch.
Yes, kids, you too can actually get past your breakup by pursuing less happiness and accepting that heartbreak is just part of this beautifully fucked-up cosmic joke called life.
So here are the 5 tenets of Negative Breakup Recovery…
1. Humans Suck At Relationships — Try To Suck Less
Whereas positive breakup recovery believes that you’re inherently amazing and your ex just couldn’t see it, Negative Breakup Recovery recognizes that we’re all deeply flawed and fucked up in our romantic relationships.
In fact, science shows that we’re all a little bit delusional about our relationships.
- We all overestimate how good we were as partners and underestimate our role in the breakup.
- We remember fights poorly, imagining what we said or felt in the past, inventing narratives that suit our wounded ego in the present.
- We’re also terrible at predicting what will actually make us happy in future relationships.
In other words, when it comes to romantic relationships, especially their downfalls, none of us are innocent. We’ve all lied to our ex, manipulated situations to get our way, or withheld affection when we didn’t get what we wanted.
Sit with yourself and you’ll realize this is true. You’ve been selfish, petty, and probably cruel. Chances are, when you did this shit, you felt justified. You rationalized your relationship mistakes. And perhaps on the other hand, judged your ex for making the exact same ones.
Our romantic desires are fickle, often self-serving and based in entitlement.
- We overestimate what our ideal partner should give us and vastly undervalue what we actually brought to the table.
- We’re status-obsessed about our relationships, posting highlight reels while the reality was messier.
- And when our ex moves on, we’re more prone to judge their character as bad rather than accept that maybe we just weren’t compatible. Or worse, that maybe we were the problem, the only problem.
What I’m trying to say is that, well… humans suck at love. There’s no “perfect partner” lying dormant inside you. Just a tangled web of attachment issues, selfish impulses, and romantic desperation. Your job isn’t to become perfect — it’s to suck less.
2. Heartbreak Is Inevitable — Suffering Is Optional
Heartbreak is the universal constant in romantic life.
I could be a magic genie and guarantee you’d never get dumped again, but by next Tuesday you’d be devastated because your crush didn’t text back fast enough, or because your date went well but they haven’t asked you out again. You’d find new ways to get your heart broken.
That’s because we’re wired for romantic disappointment. Even if I could shield you from breakups, you’d still find ways to suffer over love. The fantasy that we can eliminate heartbreak entirely is exactly what keeps us stuck.
Negative Breakup Recovery accepts that we will always experience breakups, rejection, disappointment, and romantic frustration… It works with reality, rather than against it.
Now despite the fact that we cannot control the heartbreaks in our lives, we can control the meaning we ascribe to our heartbreaks. And it’s that meaning that determines whether our pain causes us to suffer or not.
For example, if we decide that our breakup means we’re unlovable losers, then we will suffer. But if we decide that our breakup means we weren’t compatible and can now find someone better suited, then we will be better off for our pain. Or if we decide that being single means we’re doomed to die alone, then we will suffer. But if we decide that being single is an opportunity to become the person we actually want to be, then we will be better off for our pain.
In every case, we can choose to avoid our heartbreak or choose to engage our heartbreak. When we avoid our heartbreak, we suffer. When we engage our heartbreak, we grow.
Therefore, the goal of Negative Breakup Recovery is to engage heartbreak honestly and thoughtfully. Why did they leave you? Because you were probably a mediocre partner. Be better. Why do you keep attracting the wrong people? Because you haven’t dealt with your damn daddy issues. Rise above them. Why do you keep checking your ex’s Instagram? Because you’re obsessed with them. Deal with your codependency shit.
Whether we realize it or not, we are making this choice — avoid heartbreak or engage heartbreak — all day, every day when undergoing a breakup. The aggregation of our choices will determine the quality of our recovery, and by extension, our entire love life. So choose wisely.
This cheat sheet lays out 40+ solutions to overcoming a breakup so you can create a new opportunity for love — be that with your ex or someone completely different.
Get The Free Cheat Sheet3. Everything You Believe About Love Will One Day Fail You — This Is How You Grow
When we experience heartbreak, we devise meaning to interpret our pain.
As I discussed in our last tenet, we can choose to avoid our heartbreak (“It wasn’t my fault,” “I didn’t deserve this,” “They were just scared of commitment.”). Or we can choose to engage our heartbreak (“What could I have done better?” “What can I learn from this?” “How can I use this pain to become a better partner?”).
Depending on what meaning we choose, we will generate stories that help inform and determine our future actions and with them, the rate and trajectory of our recovery.
Now some of our stories are more useful than others — they lead us to better problems. And other stories are destructive because they lead to worse problems, and thus, greater heartbreak.
For instance, if I decide that my relationships fail because I’m too caring and giving, then I’ll likely become more selfish and withholding. Or if I decide it’s because “all men are trash” or “all women are crazy,” then… well, I’ll be too busy hating half the population to actually give myself a good shot at love. And soon I’ll be bitter and alone (but still really, really righteous).
Here’s another example… Let’s say after a breakup, you decided the story was “I need to be more independent and never rely on anyone again.” So you spent years building walls, keeping people at arm’s length, priding yourself on never needing anyone. And it worked for a while — you felt strong, protected, in control.
But then you realized you were lonely as fuck. Your emotional walls that protected you from heartbreak also kept you away from love. The story that saved you from your previous pain had now introduced a higher-level, more desirable form of pain. The narrative that had been a solution was now the problem. And now you needed to re-evaluate your story and update it.
Ultimately, every story of meaning we create about this stuff will fail us. What I mean is that whatever we choose to believe based on our past relationships will eventually fail at protecting us from heartbreak in future relationships.
Now if we don’t allow our stories to fail, if we latch onto them and insist they are the one infallible truth about relationships, then we don’t learn and we don’t grow and we don’t improve our romantic lives. In fact, if we refuse to change our beliefs about love, then we will likely experience the same type of heartbreak again and again and again.
Whereas positive breakup recovery often implores you to “have faith in love” and to “stay true to your heart,” Negative Breakup Recovery encourages you to embrace not knowing what the fuck you’re doing romantically and update your beliefs when they stop serving you.
4. You Don’t Deserve To Be Happy Post-Breakup — You Don’t Deserve Anything At All
Of all the narratives we tell ourselves about breakups, perhaps the most common and most problematic is the narrative of “deserving.”
You treat someone well; they should love you back. You’re loyal and faithful; your relationship should last. You put in effort, communicate well, and compromise; you should get your happily ever after.
However, what about when someone you love leaves you for no apparent reason? Or when you discover your partner has been cheating with the mailman for months behind your back? Did your actions cause that betrayal? Maybe, maybe not.
The human mind cannot help but think in terms of cause and effect. Our default setting is to automatically assume that we deserve whatever romantic outcomes we get. That’s why the most common phrases you hear after any breakup are variations of, “What did I do to deserve this?” or “After everything I did for them!”
Positive breakup recovery enters the equation here, by telling people who have internalized their heartbreak the opposite — that they not only don’t deserve to suffer, but that they deserve to be happy!
This upgrades the person’s problem from despair (“I deserve to be miserable”) to entitlement (“I deserve to be happy”). Now, I will admit, that entitlement is absolutely a better problem than despair, but it still fucks everything up.
But allow me to propose a less obvious solution to this conundrum: the belief that anyone “deserves” happiness after a breakup is wrong. Dead wrong.
Here’s what Negative Breakup Recovery has to say… After a breakup, you do things. Sometimes they help you feel better. Othertimes they keep you stuck in misery. The point is to simply do the things that you believe will more often help you heal and grow. That’s all there is to it.
If you get broken up, that’s life. Engage the heartbreak, learn from it, and be better next time. Being happy should not be part of the mental equation here. Deserving definitely shouldn’t be. Only improvement: sleep better, stay healthy, keep socializing, have something you care more about than your dead relationship and dive into it (see: finding purpose).
5. Everyone You Love Will One Day Be Gone — This Is What Makes Love Meaningful
If you could guarantee that a relationship would last forever, would it actually mean anything?
Imagine you had one that was guaranteed to never end. Your partner could never leave, never die, never change their mind about you. You would experience every possible relationship dynamic with this person — every argument, every phase of love and boredom and passion. You would go through the same relationship patterns millions of times over. You would have the same fights so many times that you would lose the ability to distinguish which was which.
Guaranteed forever love would necessitate taking it for granted. With infinite relationship security, it becomes impossible to value what you have. Everything becomes routine and meaningless. Everything that would otherwise feel precious becomes just another day in an endless grey miasma.
The reason you value a partner is because you can lose them. You don’t get unlimited chances with the same person. You can’t take back the words that end things. You can’t just undo the betrayals or the distance that grows between you.
Breakups are one of the few things that make relationships valuable — that make them mean something (another one is death, of course). And every day you’re together, you’re one day closer to potentially losing each other.
And with that knowledge, you must choose. You must prioritize. You must value a partner over your ego, this relationship over being right, working through problems over giving up immediately. Without relationships being fragile, all romantic choices would break down and love would mean nothing.
Now we all experience romantic loss. Loss of partners. Loss of our coupled identity. Loss of the future we planned together. This loss will inevitably be devastating. But there’s a beauty in that loss. Because the pain that comes from losing someone reminds us of the meaning and importance of having loved them.
Positive breakup recovery will often tell you that you can protect yourself from heartbreak. You can find your soulmate and make sure you never lose them, that you will always be loved, that you will never be alone! But this is the desire for guaranteed love, the desire for an unchanging, risk-free romantic future. This attitude is anti-love because it’s anti-loss.
Negative Breakup Recovery says don’t run away from the possibility of heartbreak. Do not try to desperately prevent it by loving less on purpose or by loving forcefully and too much.
The intensity of your heartbreak is matched only by the intensity of your love. And every breakup is a reminder that every moment with someone — every kiss, every fight, every ordinary Taco Tuesday — is precious and should not be taken for granted. Because it’s precisely these things that give love meaning.
Note: this is an adaptation of an article by the author and blogger, Mark Manson. I loved it so much that I gave it a remix. Hope you enjoyed the read.
This cheat sheet lays out 40+ solutions to overcoming a breakup so you can create a new opportunity for love — be that with your ex or someone completely different.
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