Something stuns you. The last breath you took is held prisoner in your chest. Concerns you’ve grown accustomed to fade like shadows at dusk, and you stare down the barrel of truths you’ve never seen before. You are suspended in this moment like a dust particle in a beam of light: void of opinion, untethered from knowledge.
I call these moments of suspension. I can count on my fingers the times I’ve experienced this feeling: pivotal life events, tragic or wonderful, beginnings and endings.
One of my most potent ones lasted for ten minutes, directly after I ended a long-term relationship.
Anyone who’s ended a relationship has had the talk. Maybe it was planned, maybe not. You could’ve had an inkling you’d end up here, or perhaps it comes entirely out of the blue. Be it amicable or hostile, this moment is undeniably fragile. Things are about to change, and this is your last chance to agree on what went wrong. How do you settle a relationship, potentially a years-long one, in the span of a single conversation? The story you tell one another here is the launchpad for the story you’ll tell yourself the rest of your life.
Geez, talk about pressure.
Personally, my breakup was carefully executed. I thought it over thoroughly beforehand. I rationalized and fleshed out the reasons why we were both better off without the relationship. During the conversation, I hit every point I wanted to make. I stayed grounded, positive, and honest. I kept my head above water because I’d taken the time to build a boat.
It didn’t matter. The tsunami was on its way.
As I drove away, everything felt normal. Too normal. My hands habitually maneuvered the steering wheel. The world slid by, unchanged, as my playlist resumed mid-song, right from where it paused when I’d parked. Slowly, my stomach began to churn. Dizziness. Floating.
Untethered. A moment of suspension. What now?
I was in the eye of the storm. Anxiety set in as I realized if I ventured too far in thought or behavior, I could slip away and lose my mind.
All I wanted was to avoid the spiral: anxiety, depression, self-doubt. I wanted to move on and keep my wits about me while doing so. Was it possible to avoid the worst of the pain? A popular saying drifted through my mind: the only way out is through. I conveniently decided to ignore that. Until I couldn’t.
For weeks after the breakup, I was unsettled, even when surrounded by close friends and loved ones. It felt as if nothing I did was enough. Socially, at school, at work. It all felt arbitrary. My life had lost its validity. Without this other person there to perceive me doing these things, did they even exist?
We independently attempt to define our “true” selves, but it is impossible to do this alone. The self is largely defined with and through others. A major part of identity construction is conceptualizing and realizing our existence through the eyes of those around us. We rely on others for reinforcement, and we need external opinions to determine our value and define who we are (defining traits and tendencies, etc).
A key tenet of identity theory is that people are motivated to achieve a positive self-concept. And since we are defined and informed by our social identities, we strive to maintain a positive social identity as well.
What we commonly think of as “personality” is, at root, a matter of identity – more specifically, the behaviors we engage in to shape and control our perceived identities.
If someone asked you to list your top five traits, how would you come up with an answer? Maybe you’d think back to things others said about you. Of course, if several loved ones and strangers have called you “creative,” it must be true. If there’s a consensus from multiple third parties that you have a specific trait, then the claim has objective merit. Or, you could think back to your behavior in social situations. How have you behaved in group settings? How do you relate to others and develop meaningful connections? How do you make others feel? Without other people present, without any association to or interaction with others, your qualities would not develop or have a chance to emerge.
In romantic relationships, this effect is even more potent. The beauty and peril of intimacy is that we learn to see ourselves through our partner’s eyes. When their gaze is removed, it is both liberating and terrifying. When we fall in love, we are developing a union with another person that results in forging a mutual identity with them.
What does this mean for breakups?
No amount of breakup prep can prepare you for the reality of the daunting journey ahead of you, a lonely quest of reconstruction. You will have to adjust your habits and routine, and eventually put yourself out there again. But here’s the real kicker: to grieve a relationship, you have to redefine yourself.
Life is telling a story about ourselves. When we are in a relationship, the narrative is shared. At the moment of separation, the narrative splits. What it said at the fallout of the relationship matters, because it is the final opportunity to co-write your story and reach a conclusion.
But the hard truth is that regardless of what you say, from that moment forward, you will lose control over your partner’s half of the narrative. This is one of the scariest parts.
Whether you already know this or discover it along the way, you will ultimately be tasked with the mental gymnastics of reaching your own conclusion. Five, then, or twenty years down the road, you will need a nice, tidy answer to the question: “Why did it end?” Over time, your story will become more polished. What once was an hours-long, winding tale told to a friend is now a few sentences uttered at a party or on a date with someone new. X, Y, and Z happened, and that is why we are no longer together.
Which version is real? The long, nuanced one, or the SparkNotes version? Is bold honesty the best policy when evaluating what happened? Or is it okay to let some details fall away if it helps you move on? After all, if you’re not honest about the fact that you emotionally abused your partner for years before they cheated, it’ll be all too easy to let them take all the blame for the fallout of the relationship. And ultimately, you’ll be condemned to repeat that behavior. On the other hand, trying to examine every dark corner in the haunted house of your past will keep you trapped in a spiral of anxiety.
When grieving a relationship, there is no way to completely avoid pain. But it is possible to focus your efforts and streamline the process.
Before you can make any progress, you have to consciously decide that your story is enough. If you can’t convince yourself of that and learn to trust yourself again, you will spiral as you wonder how your partner’s thoughts and perceptions are evolving. What do they think of you? Of what happened? Do they blame you for anything? How will they compare you to their future partners?
Believing in your own story isn’t ignorant. It merely requires trust in yourself. Even in healthy relationships, we tend to lean on our partner’s opinions and perceptions for validation. This is no longer an option. See that as an opportunity. Untie the knots. What you say goes.
I have good news: this has been the case all along. You were the one that decided to give your partner’s opinion weight in the first place. You validated them by caring what they think, and they likely did the same for you. You willingly gave them that credibility, so you have the power to take it away.
After you’ve decided to take ownership of your story moving forward, you still have to grapple with making sense of the past. After all, what happens from here on out is inevitably influenced by your past relationship. Life is a continuous plot.
How are you going to build the narrative?
Vivian Vignoles’s Handbook of Identity Theory and Research identifies six identity motives, which guide the process of defining our identities, and therefore drive behavior in response to those identities. The identity motive of continuity suggests that people are motivated to believe that despite significant life changes, their identities are continuous over time.
In the case of a breakup, the motive of continuity creates a significant amount of tension. When a relationship is taken away, you are unmoored from the identity you had with them. As long as you stay with that person, you can stick with the narrative you built together. Once the relationship fails, you have to write a new one. You’ll have to rethink everything, including yourself.
Before you can move on, you have to accept that there was, in fact, a change. At first, the relationship was good. Then it fell apart. Why?
You must decide “What changed and what does this mean about who I am?” Who was I in the relationship, how much of that was really me, and how am I different now? How will I be different in the future, and which one is the real me? The stakes are high here. You might hesitate to self-reflect at the risk of discovering something unsavory.
Towards the fallout of my own relationship, I’d decided on a simple narrative that went something like this: my partner’s harmful behavior early in the relationship caused me to pull away, which caused them to pull away in retaliation, which caused me immense pain. By not taking steps to alleviate my pain, they attempted to hurt me further. And I could not forgive them for that.
But here’s the key: in this story, my partner messed up first. Everything just snowballed from there. And at the end of the day, they chose not to help me out of the dark place they’d put me in.
It’s easier to move on if you can point the finger to something your partner did to put the relationship in peril, or something they did that caused you to do something regrettable. So it wasn’t really your fault. Your inherent qualities as a partner did not catalyze the demise of the relationship. At best, we’ll decide that it just wasn’t a good match,” and avoid blaming either person.
Because if it really was your fault, how can you trust yourself to move forward?
The narrative I initially told alleviated me of responsibility. That made the breakup easy, at least at first.
At first, I was afraid to accept my part in sabotaging the relationship. Sure, I dropped comments here and there to appear self-aware. “We both messed up, I’m not saying it is all your fault.” But internally, that wasn’t the story I told myself. I focused more on the ways my partner hurt me, what they took from me, and how they didn’t act in my best interests.
The hardest part was accepting that even when I’d hit rock bottom, I was not a victim. I willingly surrendered power to my partner. I did not step away to regain my self esteem. I blamed them for my pain instead of focusing on my own growth. I wallowed, so reliant on the relationship that I could no longer fulfill my obligation to myself.
I had become weak, insecure, and dependent. And that’s not how I want to see myself. So I decided not to. Only now, months later, I am ready to see where I went wrong. All along, I was responsible for how I reacted to my partner. I was responsible for staying when I didn’t want to.
In order to tell myself the true story about what happened, I had to let go of the illusion of identity continuity. At the start of the relationship, I was strong and confident. I was not a jealous or insecure partner. When that changed, I couldn’t reckon with the fact that this less desirable person was still me. To maintain continuity, I had to blame my partner. They brought out the worst in me. I’m not inherently like this.
Our desire for continuity can feed intense fears around change and become a major reason that our goals become blocked. To move on, you may genuinely have to change. It took me a long time to accept that. But I am so glad I did.
It can be unsettling to admit that your identity was so deeply altered by your relationship to another person. It certainly was for me. If your sense of self is so easily shattered when the construct of a relationship falls apart, what does that say about you?
Here is my answer: it means that you are malleable. If you adapted to be with that partner, you can easily adapt to be without them. Remember that in your relationship, you always had agency over your thoughts, behavior, and identity. Your partner only had influence because you allowed them to.
Now, you have the opportunity to redefine yourself without distractions. How much of your identity was performed in favor of the person who is now gone? What do you want to hold onto, and what do you want to let go of? What do you want to take away from the relationship, and what do you want to leave behind?
Finding answers to these questions, and implementing them, is a long journey. But it can be as fun and exciting as you allow it to be.
Ending a relationship that didn’t serve who you want to become is a win-win for both partners. You may have lost your partner, but you have gained the freedom of telling a new story.