In CraveOnline‘s ‘What to Do’ series, we highlight a number of common (and controversial) relationship issues and tell you What to Do with brutal, unflinching honesty. This week: What to Do if Your Girlfriend Has Broken Up With You.
So your girlfriend has broken up with you. Perhaps it’s your fault, perhaps it’s hers, but either way you’re now alone in this cruel world and you need all the advice you can get in regards to dealing with the aftermath of having your heart broken in two and then spat on. Don’t worry. CraveOnline is here for you.
STEP 1: Evaluate the likelihood of you going crazy and then act accordingly.
Every relationship ends differently, so in order to begin getting over her you’re going to need to evaluate your current mental state and then take the appropriate steps to ensure you don’t go “over the edge” and become that embarrassing ex-boyfriend who still sends his ex-girlfriend “goodnight” texts and spends roughly 60% of his day checking up on her on Facebook. We’ve broken down the various emotional responses men typically have when going through a break-up, so you can judge which category you fall under.
- DEFCON 5: You couldn’t wait to be out of the relationship, and you can’t wait to be a single man again. If this is the case, it’s questionable why you’re reading this article in the first place.
- DEFCON 4: Your relationship ended amicably and you are confident that you can enter the single life once again with an optimistic attitude. You may even remain friends with your ex, at least until after that weird “you’ve seen each other naked” period of time ends.
- DEFCON 3: You’re not exactly happy about breaking up, but you could definitely see it coming and understand her reasons for calling it off. While you won’t be meeting for coffee with her at any time soon, you won’t be setting fire to her cat out of spite, either.
- DEFCON 2: How… how could she do this to you? After all that you’d planned to do together, and then she suddenly pulls the rug from right underneath your feet. You doubt you’ll EVER love again (you will, but no one could blame you for being melodramatic).
- DEFCON 1: THAT ******* ***** WHY THE ******* **** DID SHE ******* BREAK UP WITH ME I ******* LOVED HER THE ***** ****.
Depending upon which DEFCON you are, these are the appropriate actions you must take:
- REACTION TO DEFCON 5: If DEFCON 5 was the reaction you had when your girlfriend split up with you, then you do not need any help whatsoever. You just keep doing your thing, you emotionally vacant son-of-a-gun.
- REACTION TO DEFCON 4: While you’re not left in emotional turmoil over the breakup, you’re still a little bit saddened by it and therefore it’d be best to maintain a reasonable distance from her for a few months. Then, if you still wish to maintain a friendship, drop her a text and ask her how she’s doing. Unless she responds with “I’m doing great and having rampant sexual intercourse with all of your close friends and acquaintances”, you’ll likely continue to lead a happy, newly single life.
- REACTION TO DEFCON 3: Make a mental pact with yourself to not follow her on social networking sites. Delete her number from your phone (and if you’ve memorized it, delete it from your brain, too).
- REACTION TO DEFCON 2: Refrain from drinking alcoholm as it sounds like you’re in the “crying drunk” stages of the breakup, where even the scent of booze will send you into a tearful fit. If you absolutely HAVE to drink alcohol, then don’t take your phone out with you because no man has ever felt good after a night of slurring “DON’T LEAVE ME I AM NOTHING WITH YOU” down the phone to their ex.
- REACTION TO DEFCON 1: You’ve gone to the “Dark Side” of the breakup. Remove her from your Facebook friends list, unfollow her on Twitter, throw your phone in the nearest lake, bolt up your windows and doors, spend the next four months hidden underneath your bed and hopefully you’ll get over her soon. Hopefully.
STEP 2: Don’t take advice from your male friends.
By-and-large, men don’t have a f***ing clue what to do when it comes to a breakup. The amount of advice you’ll receive from your male friends will likely veer from “just forget about her” (which is not humanly possible, considering you’re more than aware of her existence given that you were not so long ago having frequent sex with her) to “have a beer” (beer’s good, but it’s not the solution to your problems, as any alcoholic will tell you) and “strap on a pair” (the default standpoint of a man who is so emotionally vacant that, if tests were to be taken, you’re pretty sure he could be declared as dead).
Unless your social circle is strictly limited to psychiatrists, then it’s unlikely that anything your friends will tell you will actually help you get over your ex-girlfriend.
STEP 3: Calm down.
How incredibly patronizing of us, right? Telling you to calm down, while you’re over there trying to learn how to play guitar, just so you can post a cover version of that Jason Mraz song she likes onto YouTube in order to win her back. But the thing with breakups is that once you get through them, you immediately begin to regret everything you did during them.. This is because when we’re at our most vulnerable, we’re also at our most mind-numbingly stupid, leading us to do and say things that, with the benefit of hindsight, our future selves will live to regret.
As difficult as it may be whilst going through a breakup, try to enter into a “third-person” view of yourself and consider whether that thing you’re planning to do to win her back/spite her is something that, when you remember it later on in life, will make you cringe so much you’ll want to stick a fork in your frontal lobe just to prevent it from ever making a reappearance in your brain-box ever again. Remember: you’re going to get out of this breakup alive, so don’t do anything during it that’ll make you want to curl up and die later on.
