‘My boyfriend keeps dumping me – and I keep taking him back’
Dear A&E,
My boyfriend of a year and a half keeps dumping me and then coming back and telling me it was a mistake. The first time he dumped me because he said it wasn’t fun anymore. The second time he said that he loved me but the spark had gone and the third time he told me he thought he’d met someone else. But each time he comes back devastated and tells me he’s only ever loved me and that he hates himself and I’m the only one who understands. I take him back because I am madly in love with him but I just feel so sad and worthless. What is going on? We are both 23.
– Distraught
Dear Distraught,
Oh, Darling – we have been there. And it’s awful. People pressing their noses to the window of your relationship will see melodrama, foolishness, bad decisions. They will sympathise but they will gossip. They will roll their eyes. What they will not see is your pain. And this is what we must alert you to. Respect your pain, Distraught. It is giving you information. The intensity of pain - and, in particular, familiar pain, which becomes more corrosive with each iteration – will tend to disguise itself as love. It must be love because it hurts so much, right? Wrong. He may tell you he loves you but this is not love; this is not loving behaviour; this is emotional violence. He is hurting you. Madly in love? Mad being the operative. And some part of you already knows this. You are becoming complicit in your own destruction and that will be harder to recover from than some silly, priapic, faithless boy. You can blame him, up to a point, but you may end up turning on yourself: how could I allow that to happen and keep happening?
Do not (and this is an order, Distraught) feel ashamed. The shame will keep you from accepting this is not what you hoped and dreamed it would be. It will keep you from grasping that however much you plot and intrigue, you will not ‘win’. And it will prevent you from understanding that this should not be about winning. They turn into tussles – these kinds of relationships.
There is bruising; there are PR battles and there is never a winner. Each time he turns back towards you it may feel like victory. But you have won a skirmish, not a war. And, all the time, your heart keeps breaking, your self-esteem keeps shrivelling and you move further away from who you are and what you need to flourish. It’s okay to think something is big love and then it turns out to be a big disaster. It’s hard and it hurts but it’s okay – and sometimes even good – that it happens.
If you do not deal with this situation, it has the power to plant a seed in you that you are not to be valued or honoured. It can become a faulty blueprint. He may end up being a brilliant partner to someone, one day, but that person is not you. He might mean what he says at the time he tells you he loves you but love is action. We have to look at what they do and how they treat us. He doesn’t appear to be having a relationship with you so much as rolling around in his own, personal psychodrama. You’re not the only one who understands. You are the only one who is always there and who delivers no consequences. We are all seduced by the idea of being ‘the only one’. But you do not want to be the only one who puts up with unkind and disrespectful behaviour. We do not believe this relationship will work out. Maybe it’s just that he is behaving cruelly. Maybe it’s just the emotional chemistry is wrong.
This is when you step away, quietly. Do not flounce (wow, did we flounce!). Don’t try to prove a point. Don’t try to make him jealous. Say no. Delete numbers and block on social media. Exercise. Perhaps, if you can afford it, get some therapy. Try not to drown your sorrows too much because you’ll do stupid things. See your friends. Don’t talk about this endlessly because it will keep the drama alive.
Each time he comes back to you – beyond the sheer relief that the pain has stopped – you lose a bit of what made the relationship happy at the start. You lose a chunk of self-respect and a fragment of perspective. Sometimes perspective is the most dangerous thing to lose because it sets us spinning. We can no longer find our place in the world, we become isolated and obsessed.
The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself and that is what deserves protection because it is precious. You deserve protection because you are precious. This we promise you – and we would say it to our 23 year-old selves, if only we could: you will not feel this way forever. You are not the problem. His behaviour is not information about you; it is information about him. You know what you know, Distraught. Onwards.
