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Emotional Involvement is Not Solely a Function of Time
What are you so bummed about? You’ve only been together for a few weeks.
Heard that one before? Probably. I have, and even when I haven’t, I’ve felt guilty about feeling a “disproportionate” amount of emotional angst due to a short relationship ending. Telling myself, you shouldn’t feel this way because you’ve only been together for a month.
When my marriage ended, I found that I was able to recover relatively quickly. After a six year relationship, I felt OK with things after only a couple of months. This surprised me. I was sure I’d need a lot longer to move past losing someone I thought I’d be spending the rest of my life with.
This is what threw me for a loop when I dated someone later. We lasted just about a month, but the pain I felt from that process was more intense than what I went through when my wife and I split. How could this be?
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Time is only part of the equation
As the title of this post suggests, you can’t predict your reaction based solely on the amount of time you spent with someone. This is only a part of it, and sometimes only a very minor part. The important thing is to not judge your emotional response. Don’t feel bad that you feel so low, no matter how short a time you’ve spent together with another.
Of course, the longer you are with someone — the more time you’ve spent with someone — it will probably be harder to get over the relationship. But again, this should not imply that it will be “easier” for short relationships.
What are other factors?
When I was going through the ending of my most recent short-term relationship, what I came to realize (after I’d bashed myself around a bit for being so down) was that my emotional response wasn’t only about her. Rather, it was more about myself. It was about things from the past that were coming up for me, and which she (and the situation) just amplified. So at first my thought process was like, how can this girl who I’ve only known for so long have such an impact on me?
Our relationships are reflections on ourselves and I was staring into a freshly-Windex’d mirror. At points I felt so much emotional turmoil that I thought I might be entering a depression. It scared the shit out of me. I think the biggest factor for my response was that I felt blindsided by it all. Not blindsided by the fact that she ended the relationship (I saw that one coming a mile away), but because I thought that I was at a certain stage of emotional being.
I mistook the recovery from the end of my marriage as this huge personal, emotional, and spiritual growth. I did grow, of course, but not as I’d thought. It was a wake up call. Attachment issues, neediness, fear. They were all still there, and I was facing them again.
Be truthful to yourself and drop the judging
It’s hard enough to go through a break-up, why should we make ourselves feel even worse by compounding it with guilt? If you think you’re over-reacting and beat yourself up over it, what good does that do? Your authentic reaction to the situation is just that: authentic. It’s how you feel. Don’t judge it, and don’t care about anyone else’s judgment about your situation.
Accept it for what it is. It really is OK.