Not quite broken up.

I was chatting to the lovely young waitress in my local café the other day (as I am known to do). When I asked her if she had a boyfriend she paused before answering, and I knew that I’d made a slip up.

“Oops,” I thought. “She’s a lesbian and I’ve insulted her by insinuating that heterosexuality is the dominant paradigm.” But that wasn’t the case. She actually didn’t know if she had a boyfriend or not.

“Er… no,” she said, “I mean, sort of no. I mean, yes, but we broke up three months ago, and we’re still… you know… occasionally… um….”

“Seeing each other?” I asked.

She nodded. “Breaking up is so hard. We’re just kind of easing off each other.”

And I rolled my eyes.

There is no such thing as ‘easing off’ a romantic relationship – at least not one that has spanned several years. Of course, there are good reasons for trying to do so. Breaking up can be immensely painful, even when you both agree it’s the right thing to do. And it’s natural for humans to try to avoid pain. But making pain go away in the short term can prolong it in the long term, and no good can come of that.

I remember when my first boyfriend broke up with me. We’d been together for three years and I knew I was going to marry him. And then he told me one day that it was over. He loved me, but he was too young to settle down forever (which seemed ridiculous – after all, he was 22!). And with that, he hugged me, and he was out the door.

From that moment on I grieved desperately. I cried myself to sleep. I called him at all hours. There was even the infamous party at which I flung myself on him dramatically and begged him to take me back (after, ahem, arriving with someone else). But he didn’t. Despite my plaintive offers of ‘just one more time’ nights and outpourings of love and loss, he never ever touched me. And as painful as that was, it allowed me to heal. After six weeks, I stopped crying. After three months, I felt ready to face the world. And after six months, I had another lovely boyfriend.

The waitress, on the other hand, is totally stuck, after four and a half months.

An ex-partner of mine, with more than a couple of breakups under his belt, used to have a motto. ‘If it doesn’t end badly, it doesn’t end’. And, as irritated as it makes me to agree with anything that he says, I have to admit that he’s right.

I get where Tammy is coming from. She can’t bear the anguish of breaking up with her boyfriend, even though they both know it’s not working out. So she’s trying another tactic, trying to wean herself off him. But you can’t wean off a partner. Intimacy is addictive. Every time Tammy sees her ex, every time she touches him or hears his voice, they slip back into that intimacy again. Which means neither of them can deal with the loss, neither of them can move on, and neither of them can be open to meeting other people. The only way that’s going to happen is to make a proper break, and until then, they’re just putting off the inevitable. Putting off the pain.

I told Tammy all this, of course (because I’ve met her twice and it’s totally not my business….). And she knows. But she’s not ready. And she has to make her own way.

As for me and my ex, well, we had absolutely no contact for about six and a half years. Then we met up one day, and were married a year later. But  that, my friends, is another story.

How do you handle break-ups?