C/O Caleb Shong
Choosing partners through a sole focus on emotion often leaves young folks confused and hurt
As teenagers and young adults, we often fall in love spontaneously and that’s what makes it so exciting in the beginning. At this age, we often don’t have strict standards and boundaries and simply go after what feels right.
Expectedly, our strong sense of passion and emotions seems to take over our barely developed sense of reason and rationality. We choose to overlook certain red flags in our partner and relationship supposedly in the name of love.
But, what is the aftermath of carelessly choosing a partner at a young age?
As I mentioned, in our younger years, we evidently don't choose relationships on the basis of logic — we choose it purely based on raw fervor. Frankly, most of us didn’t know any better and it made sense to choose someone that made us initially feel loved and cared for.
However, choosing a partner purely based on emotions often heavily costs us.
I believe there are three main reasons why young love often doesn’t last and leaves both parties feeling damaged and broken.
Firstly, most teenagers and even young adults are at a malleable stage in life. We are constantly shifting and discovering new aspects of ourselves. The bitter-sweet truth is that we simply don’t remain the same person.
Unfortunately, this has a direct effect on our relationships.
As we and our partners our constantly evolving, we often drift apart in terms of values. Although this is not necessarily a bad thing and both progressions could be positive for both parties, they can still diverge as incompatibilities arise.
The second reason I believe young love doesn’t work out is our poor communication skills. For the majority of us, we have never been taught proper communications skills.
We lack fundamental skills such as managing our anger, communicating clearly, mindfulness and trust-building. Unfortunately, due to the absence of these principal building blocks, we frequently find ourselves confused, angry and anxious after relationship struggles.
Lastly, we often fail to recognize the importance of actively putting effort in our relationship.
Most times, when we enter a relationship at a young age, we feel as if the relationship should work out effortlessly with no bumps on the road. Evidently, this is false as there is significant importance tied to actively aiming to make your relationship a safe space for both.
For all these reasons, when young love ends, we hurt deeply — perhaps because of the feeling of confusion that is attached to it. Often, we cannot pinpoint what exactly went wrong and all we feel is significant pain. Mixed emotions of anxiety, sadness and anger slowly into resentment towards our partners.
Our feelings puzzle us as there is always so much to unwrap and unpack. And because of these extremely perplexing emotions, young love pains us.
Ana Qarri / Silhouette Staff
The world as you know it has come to an end. You feel alone, weak and betrayed. You might be tempted to simply give up, but we think you’re great and we want you to be happy. Here are some suggestions on how to survive your break-up apocalypse, as adapted from the movie “Zombieland”:
Rule 1: Cardio
Get out of bed. Wallowing in self-pity is helpful and healthy for the first few days, but once you hit the one week mark, it’s time to get moving. It’s not going to be easy. Everything you do and see will remind you of things that make you sad. That’s fine. Closure and enclosure might sound the same, but while some enclosure will give you time to think and deal with your feelings, too much of it will be ultimately detrimental to moving on. Physical activity also makes you happier and lowers your stress levels. The author can neither confirm nor deny this, but it sounds about right.
Rule 2: The Double Tap
If you have something to say to your ex, always think twice. It’s very possible that they don’t want to hear what you have to say. It sucks and it’s hard, but you have to remember that your objective is to move on. Trying to convince them that they’ve made a mistake, or apologizing for yours, is probably not going to work. They’ve made a decision and if they’re moderately intelligent, they have already considered all options. You shouldn’t have to convince someone to stay in your life.
Rule 4: Seatbelts
(Not actually. This is just a really bad metaphor for your friends.) Remind yourself that they exist. These are people who care about you. Your ex isn’t the most important person in your life, and keeping or resuming contact with your friends will help you take your mind off that one person. Friends always have a way of making you feel better about yourself, so take full advantage of this support system. You deserve it.
Rule 32: Enjoy the Little Things
Start enjoying other things again. Having someone is nice, but there’s someone pretty awesome that you’ll always have: yourself. Take care of yourself. Take yourself out for a movie. Go on a walk with yourself. Make small memories that are yours. Only once you’ve realized that you are enough to make yourself happy, will you be able to move on. Breaking up with someone feels like you’ve had a part of yourself ripped off. The point isn’t to cover it up and wait for someone else to fill the void. The point is to fill it up yourself.
The most beautiful and enriching experience in life is to be in love and enjoy a romantic relationship with another person. There is always someone there to support you and pick you up when you need it most. Maybe they keep you up at night or maybe they let you rest peacefully knowing they’re around. You are unique individuals that bring out the best in one another and nothing can come between the two of you. The world around you slows down when you are with them and not much else seems to matter. Finding yourself lost in such a labyrinth of intense emotions, one thing is impossible to fathom: the end.
Maybe you are perfect for one another, maybe you are soul mates, but most people entangled in such passion never stop to realize that maybe you are not. As good as things get, there is most often something better - a tough pill to swallow for an addict recovering from their affliction.
How could someone that knows I don’t like the crust on my PB & J sandwiches not be there to enjoy them with me? That person knows my quirks and all of my secrets. They know just what to say and when to say nothing at all. How on earth could I go on without such comfort and security?
The answer is simply that anything is possible. Whether it has been told to you directly or not, there is one saying that holds true despite being one of the most overused clichés in human history: good things come to an end so that better things can come together.
For some, hearing that is like salt in a wound. The magic spell that is love and everything it involves can be illogical. However, as any wise person will tell you, the first love is not the last.
The morning always comes after the night and someone will always be better for you than your high school sweetheart. There are outliers, to whom I applaud.
Of course, some people find the perfect person for them early and never let go. Those people are the most blessed. For the rest of us, though, things are not that easy.
It is impossible to truly love someone until you love yourself. Corny, I know, but there is plenty of validity to those words. Some people, like those I have just mentioned, grow together and it all just works. Others grow apart.
Falling for someone at one point in your life, with one set of circumstances, fails to account for the fact that our world, the people in it, and the way you feel, is constantly changing.
So in the case that you find yourself at the end of a relationship because the two of you have grown apart or simply because it is no longer working, you can do one of two things.
You can let it defeat you, or you can choose to see the brightness and possibility of the future.
No one should ever affect you in a way where you cannot function in his or her absence and no one should ever prevent you from growing as a person, for the sake of growing as a couple. If they do, letting go should be much easier.
It may seem hard at first, but remember that there is something even better and more perfect ready and waiting for you to stumble across.
No one likes goodbyes and no one likes the ending of a good story. But all stories have endings. And nothing is more important than being your own author when it comes to a love story, since you are the main character.
By: Yashoda Valliere
A quick Google search of “how to get over a breakup” will yield thousands of articles written in a well-meaning but slightly condescending tone, by authors who may not have been through a breakup themselves recently and thus have a bit of an “outsider’s” perspective. I do not want to contribute to this collection. Currently spinning off the tail end of a two and a half year relationship, I’ve been giving close attention to my mental gymnastics of the past week, as well as the coping strategies that I have found work well for me. I figure I might as well share some of these insights, in the hopes that they can help at least one Sil reader through a difficult time.
Let go of the pain, but don’t let go of the valuable lessons that can be learned. If you treat this like a growth opportunity, it will be one.
