About a month ago, I was dumped. To be honest, I despise saying that. It sounds like I did something that made me deserve a breakup, something potentially malicious. But this isn’t the case — not even close. In fact, I was completely blindsided by the breakup; there weren’t any signs of an impending breakup, and up until it happened I’d imagined spending the rest of my life with my ex.
The day I was dumped, my ex was hardly communicative with me, different than usual. He didn’t send me a cheesy Snapchat to say good morning, which he’d always done. He didn’t text much throughout the day. I wanted to give him space in case something was up. Then it hit 10:00 at night, and I began freaking out. I called my parents to ask about what I should do, because this hadn’t happened before. They suggested that I call him, so I did. He picked up and told me he needed to talk to me about something, so I invited him to my apartment. I started to really get anxious at this point, and my friends began assuring me that nothing bad would happen, because we’d been dating several years, that he loved me a lot, that something was just going on with him.
When he got to my apartment, he simply looked at me with an expressionless, cold face, and I took him to my room. We both sat on my bed, and I finally asked what was going on. There it was: the cold look again. He simply said, “I’m not happy,” and continued to state things about this vaguely until I had to ask him what he wasn’t happy about. Then he hit me with it: “I haven’t been happy in this relationship, and I think that we should break up.” I immediately felt like I got the wind knocked out of my body and began to UGLY sob. He just looked at me. It took only about 30 minutes before he left, like we’d just had a basic chat, no big deal (even though he was a little emotional).
I don’t think I’ve felt completely numb in my life until this moment. I was in shock. This was someone who I’d just gifted expensive tickets to less than a week ago — tickets which he’d happily acted excited about. This was someone who I’d planned a couple’s Halloween costume with less than a week ago, someone who talked about the future with me up until leaving me abruptly. I immediately got my mom (the MVP of all that went down) on FaceTime. She got emotional too. Everyone I told went, “WHAT?” I was just as confused as them.
I spent the next couple of days bawling my eyes out in bed, unable to eat. “I don’t think I’ve been this sad, EVER,” I said to my mom. I didn’t know what would happen next with my life. I didn’t know how I could love someone else again. Would I even believe someone who said they loved me? I felt so helpless and in pain.
I then found out that he left me to date someone he made me seem insane about accusing him of liking while dumping me.
Choosing to blindside is not an effective way to leave someone (I think that this Reddit post explains it well). Not only is it devastating, but it can actually cause significant damage to one’s emotional well-being and positive sense of self. When I met my ex again to explain this, he defended himself with the classic, “There’s not going to be a good time to leave someone, so I just had to do it…” He couldn’t acknowledge that it wasn’t justifiable to blindside, to not have even told me his shaky feelings about us — but it was just infatuation with someone else.
I could go on with additional details about being dumped, because it hasn’t been pleasant, but I want to focus on my path to being healed. Being blindsided and, essentially, emotionally cheated on, has given me a lot of time to think about, well, me. I want to talk about some of the new things I’ve come to acknowledge about myself, because they’ve been valuable to keep in my healing mindset. They include the following:
I Can Nurture Myself
One of the things that my ex told me he loved about me was that I’m nurturing and gentle. I find this to be a fact, too, because my love language is doing things for others. I’ve always felt like the word “nurture” has a connotation of doing things for others, and giving them deep compassion and attention — but I’ve learned that I can also nurture myself.
When I laid in bed all day some days, feeling like I simply couldn’t move, I felt like I was at my lowest. I knew that the only way I could turn that mindset around was by focusing on healing myself. I also knew that I would need a lot of this, and I still do.
To nurture yourself is not to be selfish, and it can look like a lot of things. For me, it became eating healthy, a “glow up” and taking some time to binge Sex and the City (I’m also looking into kickboxing classes… so if you have any advice on them…). Sometimes you have to fix yourself when the option to do so is available. And if that means making yourself a whole pan of brownies, going to Chipotle, and taking study breaks to paint nails, do it. There’s nothing wrong with giving yourself some added love while allowing others to do the same.
It is a Gift to Fall in Love Again
When one door closes, another one opens. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently when it comes to relationships; when we lose someone, we’re given the chance to find someone else (within a timeline that makes sense).
It’s admittedly been a while since I’ve had the giddy, wow-I-have-butterflies emotion of falling for someone, and I’ve been looking at my breakup as, in some ways, a gift to be able to feel this again. I’m grateful for this opportunity, and believe that the universe will give me something magical in time. And anyone can have this happen. Just look at Gerry Turner, the Golden Bachelor!
I Can Make the Most of Being Dumped
There’s something to be said about how fun it is to listen to Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift once being dumped badly. And, I mean, can we talk about the timing of songs like “Now That We Don’t Talk” and “Can’t Catch Me Now” coming out when this all happened? Music has been one of the things that’s helped me in my healing (especially the album GUTS), and sometimes yelling along to emotional songs just hits.
I’ve also been able to form EVEN CLOSER bonds with my close friends in late night wine-filled chats and the genuine love they continue to show me every single day. Who doesn’t love some bestie bonding? I’ve also had the chance to meet all kinds of new people — which I likely wouldn’t have gotten to had I still been with my ex, because he was less outgoing than I am.
Being blindsided has also helped me to acknowledge what I want and definitely don’t want when it comes to being able to commit to someone. Regaining a genuine faith in people I date is definitely a new challenge I wasn’t expecting to deal with in life, but I know I can and I WILL. I cannot let someone else’s painful choices dictate my ability to be happy and to love. Life goes on.
If you’ve also been blindsided, then I get it. I get the absolute pain, and the times when you think you just can’t stop thinking about what might have happened to cause the pain. I get the attempts to justify it. But know this: YOU have so much to give someone. YOU got abandoned, because someone couldn’t be honest. And, what I want to emphasize the most, is that being blindsided is not justifiable.
The healing takes a while. But eventually, we’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel.