Why I’m Not Mad At My Exes
By: Chris Marchie
Tags: Romance, Relationships, Emotional Intelligence, Dating, Love

I knew as soon as I got out of the shower what he was gonna say.

He just couldn’t do it anymore. He didn’t really want to be in a relationship. He was too young. Then 2 months later he was with someone else.

We all say things to soften the blow, don’t we?

I walked away that day with my head held high. I put on a sad Taylor Swift song on the way to class, breathed in the cold fall air, and, when I had a moment alone, sat on the floor and hugged my legs in close to me.

I used to cry a lot over people not loving me the way I loved them. I would cry and moan and shake like I was going through withdrawals.

But I stopped this behavior. And it’s for a few reasons.

The first is actually quite simple.

You cannot force anything from anyone. Ever.

We’re all control freaks. People steal their partner's phones and go through them. They track their partner's whereabouts on Find My iPhone (don’t get any ideas), and when feelings change they sit around and curse their ex for not being able to fake it any longer.

Let’s be clear: You don’t wanna be with anyone that has to fake it.

We bind ourselves. We commit the entirety of our lives to a single human being and, when it isn’t perfect, we curse it. We call it a failure.

And it’s sort of unrealistic, isn’t it? The longest relationship in my family includes 2 people that never got married. They have a kid and a house, they hardly ever fight and are best friends.

Yet people act like because they’re not forcing commitment something is wrong with them.

It doesn’t matter whether you get married or not, but it’s a waste of time to push people. It’s a waste of time to expect compliance. It’s an extremely inhuman thing to be perfect, yet most of us will not settle for anything less.

The only person you can control, after all, is yourself.

The second reason? Heartbreak is a blessing.

Someone rejecting you hurts. But it’s actually super helpful.

They’re doing the work for you. They’ve decided you’re not the one for them. They made their decision. And, again, you can’t force it. Meaning you have to take the hint, swallow your pride, and know this wasn’t a good fit.

It’s like job hunting. Most people take the first job they find, hate themselves because it’s a bad fit, and then consider themselves a failure.

Um, hello.

There is power in getting the wrong people out of your way so you can find the right one. Instead, we hyper-fixate on making sure at 35 we’re married with kids, kicking ass at our jobs, and living in our dream home in suburbia.

This isn’t the future everyone wants.

Nor should it be. Not enough of us do a good job identifying what we do want. And what we want is not the person who rejected us.

What we want is a partner that cherishes us and grows with us. Someone that believes in us. Someone that brings out the best in us. And in an era of quick fixes, dating apps, and “the next best thing”…it’s nice to find something with quality.

Nowadays, things look quite different.

I recognized that a real relationship is two people that put consistent effort in. That a good connection is not one that is forced. That it’s useless to blame people when it’s not working.

That means no checking to see if they’ve been on Instagram instead of texting me first. No scrolling through my stories to see if they’ve checked them.

Especially no drunk texts at 3 a.m.

Instead, I able to recognize when something isn’t for me and let it go. It allows me the comfort of knowing that whatever the outcome, I’m going to be just fine.

And that makes it hurt a whole lot less.