7 Types of Breakups Ranked by Recovery Time

[lovesickmonkey]

This is an article by Rich Santos from Marie Claire. I don't think it's scientific but it seems accurate anyway. I personally suffered a number 1.

 

Which element of a breakup dictates recovery time more: the type of breakup, or the person you broke up with? My theory is the type of breakup you experience determines how long it takes to get over it more than the actual person.

Here are 7 different types of breakups ranked by shortest recovery time to longest recovery time:

 

7. The Mutual Breakup

 

This is as peaceful a breakup as you can have, like when the entire family agrees it's time to pull the plug on grandpa's respirator: he is freed of his misery, and the family feels a sense of relief. I've never had a mutual breakup. I can't catch that lightning in a bottle. But it can't be that tough to recover from a mutual breakup and get back out in the dating scene again.

 

6. The Circumstantial Breakup

 

A cousin of the mutual breakup, the circumstantial breakup occurs when the environment around you won't permit the relationship to continue: my parents hate you, you're in Cali and I'm in NY (or even, you're one town over), I need to be single for a while, etc. Recovery time is shortened because the other person offers an excuse that takes the focus off your weaknesses or unattractive qualities that could have caused a breakup.

 

5. The Ultimatum Breakup

 

The most common ultimatum leading to a breakup is: "ask me to marry you within the next year of I'm out of here." Other conflicts could cause ultimatums as well: change your religion, get rid of that stupid old car, etc. Ultimatum breakups can be tough to get over because it's annoying that a little compromise could have prevented it. But once it's over, that pressure from the stalemate you reached in the relationship is gone, so it's quite a relief.

 

4. The Something Someone Said Breakup

 

My friend broke up with his girlfriend he was dating for years, and he mentioned a conversation that occurred shortly before they broke up. They were discussing wedding rings, and she asked how much he'd spend. He simply hasn't studied the "market" so he threw a number out there: "I don't know, $5,000." She scoffed and said: "You should spend no less than $20,000."

 

He told me after she said that, he couldn't think of her the same way anymore. In fact, it put a figurative "X" over her image in his eyes. They eventually broke up, and this conversation was the springboard. This type of breakup is painful because you wish you could take something you said or did back.

 

3. The I've Been Cheating

 

Whether you find out from them or some other way, it's the ultimate betrayal when they are cheating on you. You can get over it because you dismiss this person as a cheating jerk, but you still feel stupid and you might spend several months envisioning the cheating or trying to regain faith in the opposite gender.

 

2. The First Love Breakup

 

The First Love breakup is one of the toughest to overcome. Some say you never get over it. This breakup teaches us that the world is a bigger place than we thought. There are more people to meet, there are bills to pay, there are places to go. Things just can't stay the same as they once were.

 

Mine hit me when I got to college and my girlfirend stayed behind in high school. Eventually, we had to move on. The first love breakup is hurts so much because you've never experienced this feeling of loss and disappointment before. And, it's part of growing up and growing up is usually a painful process.

 

1. The Blind Side

 

My friend recently blind sided his ex. After she cried for an hour, he decided he had put in enough time and he left. This is traumatic because it comes out of nowhere. The blind sider may have been thinking about it for months, and they conceal their intentions, then drop the bomb while everything seems to be going well. In fact, the couple may have spent time together the night before, but the blind sider did so out of obligation.

 

Blind Sides chip away at your ability to trust. If someone can break up with you when things seem to be going so well, you'll have a tough time avoiding paranoia and trusting your new partners.

 

What other types of breakups would you add? What type takes the longest for you to get over and why? Do you agree that the type of breakup dictates recovery time more than the actual person you lost in the breakup?

[BrettLost]

Def number 1 for me. Great, the longest bloody healing one.

 

Number 1 it seems is setting up plan b) before u pull the plug on trustworthy & reliable plan a). Number 1 may very well be linked to GIGS.

 

1, 2 and 3 seem very common on threads here.

 

Top thread, and yes quite accurate.

[Diatribes]

Mine was a blend of 1, 3, 4 and 6.

 

1) We were only together 3 months and she had just moved in with me barely 20 days prior to leaving me and moving back with her ex. I did not expect her to leave so soon.

 

3) While I have no actual proof of her cheating, she did stay the night at the apartment complex her ex lived in, and was acting very weird about it. I'm pretty sure she stayed the night with her ex. This in itself is as much of a betrayal as cheating in my opinion.

 

4) The night before she left me, we got into a huge fight and she said she didn't want to live with me anymore. I told her to grab her sh*t and get the f*ck out. This seemed to enrage her and she did leave, even though I spent several hours apologizing. She on the other hand told me she didn't really love me once in our relationship. When I brought up her saying she had, she answered with "was I drunk?". I thought that was very cold and mean. I was in love with her and that statement hurt me very much

 

6) Myself, her and her son were living in a one bedroom apartment. While I was making plans for us to find a bigger place, we constantly were bumping heads and I know for fact she hated living in this place.

 

Sorry for the rant. I've said all this before in threads. Felt like restating this after reading this thread though.

[antinko]

I'm almost certainly suffering from a combination of first true love sorrow and being blindsided.

[LelouchIsZero]

Mine is a blend of 1, 2 & to some extent 3.

Lucky me?

[Sugarkane]

Being blindsided is by far the worst. You're left there thinking WTF? Meanwhile the dumper has left and doesn't give a rats ass that you don't get it. Unfortunately this has happened to me twice [one was my first love aswell]. To say it makes it difficult to trust someone again, knowing they can leave you out of the blue is a real understatement.

[Fab001]

Interesting. I am not 100% sure how much the type of break up affects the time for get over an ex against the age, the length of the relationship the presence of children and so on....at least not for me. As someone else today suggests, it would be interesting running a survey about times for getting over exes according to age, gender, length of the relationship etc.

[BrettLost]

I think children and not marital status represents the more difficult path to full recovery.

 

Whether married or not, if theres no kids, 2 mnths, or 20years, there is NOTHING tying u to this individual in any part of ur forseeable future. Its just 2 people parting ways thats it.

 

With kids, each parent (if they give a *****) would give up everything to remain a constant part of their childs/childrens lives. This presents HUGE hurdles when mum and dad are no longer together.

 

2 homes, 2 schedules. Contact between parents will remain forever. This in itself could continually open wounds that are trying to heal. Seeing her with OM and ur kids for example.

 

Whether she/he has 500 new partners in their time, each parent will always have their childrens best intrests at the forefront, and constant discussion surrounding how the kids lives play out should be of primary concern.

 

Children will grow and form their own opinions on the situation. But until then Mum and Dad HAVE TO be in contact, whether its comfortable yet or not. If ur a parent runnin FULL NC, shame on u.

[Wesker]

I got hit with a combo first love blind side...

 

 

That makes 2 of us. Even though I had been with others before her, she was the first where I felt that connection you get with nobody else. That is quite a 1,2 punch.

[layercakegal]

Yup a blind side first love feels like crap. I knew it was wrong for so long, but part of me always though it could work out.....

 

When it finally didn't, then my god is it just the worst.

 

[giuliano-3]

What happened to me seems even worse than being blindsided. Being blindsided assumes that the person dumping actually makes contact to establish the fact that there is a dumping going on. While everything was going "fine" in our relationship and what happened to me qualifies as being blindsided, I think you might want to break it into two categories.

 

1b) would be the type of "classic blindside" you describe.

 

1a) would be when the blindsiding occurs without a phone call, letter, email or anything else to describe what's going on. Call it the "vanishing blindside." Leaving the ex without a trace, putting the onus on the dumpee to figure out if the ex is still alive and what the heck happened. When the last words from the ex are "I love you madly, wish you were here" and the last words spoken were "baby I miss you soooo much, love you, see you soon" it makes it even harder than the classic blindside where there is some contact. Nothingness for months on end. This would be the worst type of breakup and the hardest to get over.

 

Since it happened to me I've encountered a couple girls who had the same thing happen to them. They are both in relationships with same sex now. When prodded they admit this vanishing of an ex was the last straight relationship they were in, and they still hate the ex for what they did. Talking like 4-5 years after it happened, still po'd.

 

If the classic blindside produces mistrust and makes it hard to open yourself up to someone again, the vanishing blindside makes it damn near impossible. 14 months later I still haven't managed to give myself to another, and I have a lot of opportunity in that regard. My mom is dying slowly, nobody is around to help me with her and yet this breakup still causes me as much if not more distress than helping my mom.

 

Its a shame, really. If my ex had one decent bone in her body or cared one iota for what I would be going through as a result of her action she would have had the guts to write/call me and let me know she wanted to end things. Instead of finding out from her mom (a month later) that she was living with a new BF. Truly bush league material, and it nearly cost me my very existence as I know it.

Edited August 13, 2011 by giuliano-3

[lovesickmonkey]

Giuliano,

 

That is wretched indeed. I think it is one step less emotionally mature (if that's possible) than the blindsiders. Actually making the decision to do NOTHING, and simply vanish is appalling. It makes me wonder, though, if I'd have preferred that to mine telling me that she was never in love with me and that she found me so unattractive that she would eventually cheat on me. But something tells me that, in each case, they were doing something "crazy" in order to avoid facing the unpleasantness of letting us go. I'll tell you what they keep telling me ... terrible as it was, they "did you a favor." Because if she treated you like this then she could not have had much love or respect for you and she did not deserve your time. You were in love with someone you thought she was.

[giuliano-3]

Giuliano,

they "did you a favor." Because if she treated you like this then she could not have had much love or respect for you and she did not deserve your time. You were in love with someone you thought she was.

 

The weird thing is that after 3 months of not hearing from her, going through horrible depression, etc...she started writing me and then calling me. I took the bait and got hooked into an unhealthy deal of LD phone convos. The things she said made it very likely that she actually felt loads of remorse, guilt, shame. She also would write things like "I wish we could start our love affair all over again from the start." Made my recovery all the more difficult. But you're right about the silver lining.

 

I've met a girl and we've been talking, taking things very slow. She's also a bit tentative after having a bad experience in the not so distant past. She's not the type of girl I would have gone for before all this happened. Has her @#(* together, works two jobs, getting her masters, not a big partier but still likes to occasionaly throw back a beer or three. Very fun, always makes me smile. I'm sick of using excuses as to why I don't "get back out there." So I asked her out on like a proper date, this next weekend will be my first date night in about 2 years.

 

I don't think I would have found her attractive if I hadn't gone through what I've been through. I usually ended up with girls who needed "fixing." This was some psychological problem of mine I've had to come to grips with. I need/deserve a nice, fun, warm person to share my time with and hopefully I'm on that path.

[Nohbody]

giuliano-3,

that's awesome! good for you.

[giuliano-3]

Thanks, buddy, as my dad would say "wu'll see"

[Finch]

I think length of time the relationship existed has a lot to do with recovery...in some cases more so than the type of breakup. For instance, a three year relationship that ends due to an ultimatum would be much more difficult to get over than a 6 month relationship where you've been blindsided.

As others have mentioned, any relationship where there are children involved is going to be more difficult, no matter what the cause, but there are other circumstances that will affect the recovery period after a breakup. Even without children, living together and sharing expenses or property can make things harder when the relationship ends, no matter what the reason.

I also think self-esteem affects recovery time in a very big way. A breakup is always going to be painful, but the ones I have gotten over the fastest have always coincided with my self-esteem and confidence in other areas of my life being high.

 

And to giuliano: gratz on the burgeoning relationship! And on recognizing that you had a pattern for dating women who needed to be "fixed" and working to change that. Well done you!

[lovesickmonkey]

She's not the type of girl I would have gone for before all this happened. Has her @#(* together, works two jobs, getting her masters, not a big partier but still likes to occasionaly throw back a beer or three. Very fun, always makes me smile.

 

It DOES feel strange to date a healthy person if you've always preferred people who are broken. Same thing happened to me yesterday. A date with a fun, friendly, outgoing, non-partying, person who has her S**t together. She's a pediatrician. Of course I felt something was "wrong" when really, nothing was. No danger, no mess. I need to get used to that.

[shortee143]

Being blindsided is by far the worst. You're left there thinking WTF? Meanwhile the dumper has left and doesn't give a rats ass that you don't get it. Unfortunately this has happened to me twice [one was my first love aswell]. To say it makes it difficult to trust someone again, knowing they can leave you out of the blue is a real understatement.

 

Exactly! I mean, ok in terms of being blindsided, sometimes there are red flags (aka my ex was a bit distant as of late) but I confronted it several times, and he couldnt have assured me more all was fine....then I got the breakup phone call a few days after I last saw him, and got no reason on why I was dumped. Very hard to trust that people wont just bail like this, its really crushing! Def have to agree it is the worst- when they put on a front, act like all is well..then bam drop that bomb (and usually go on there merry way not giving a crap)

[Dblock10]

im on the mutual / circumstance one.

 

she is wanting to be free and single travelling. however i feel like ive been dumped regardless as she didnt want to stick around to make it work or stay together. and ive not heard a peep since i saw her.

 

so that is why this one is hard for me, you think you have someone that cares but then goes and does the opposite of caring.

 

not fun!

[giuliano-3]

im on the mutual / circumstance one.

 

she is wanting to be free and single travelling. however i feel like ive been dumped regardless as she didnt want to stick around to make it work or stay together. and ive not heard a peep since i saw her.

 

so that is why this one is hard for me, you think you have someone that cares but then goes and does the opposite of caring.

 

not fun!

 

Yeah, this is a real tough one. Hard not to wonder what they're up to at the moment, what fun they might be having with some swashbuckling Romeo.

 

One hard part is that you had no choice in the matter. What are you gonna say "I'll break up with you if you go on this trip?" And, sorry to say it bro (but I have to be brutally honest) you were dumped. She might come back and want to start again, but that all depends on her experience. You are totally out of the equation now. And that is indeed very very tough to swallow.

 

This one qualifies as one of the harder recoveries. If she hadn't been telling you about this trip for a while it could qualify as a "blindside." One thing it definitely wasn't is "mutual."

[Dblock10]

yeah well i just dont know. she works a lot, but its odd not hearing from her at all. so whats that about? :s

 

yeah i had no choice! when pressing her about whats going to happen she always said ive not thought about it... so it felt like i was waiting for the bomb anyway.

 

so i jumped in saying i dont think it will work. and she never objected or rebutted what i was saying. so deep down its what she wanted. she just didnt have the balls to tell me.

 

then when i told her i only said that because of insecurities i have, and that i was scared she wouldn't want to commit to me for the duration of the travels, it was too late. she was adamant that she wants to be single and not worry about nothing.

 

so clearly she wants to be open to hooking up whilst she goes.

 

she did always tell me about this trip, she openly told me. but she never had any regards for my feelings.

 

like when i talked to her about it before we split, she would say in an attacking manor, "i always told you i was going travelling"

 

 

basically i think she is immature, selfish, and had no real feelings for me.

 

the very fact i went to go see her and have not heard from her since says a lot. and she knew perfectly well the situation with my nan and how ill she is.

 

 

good luck to her. if she comes back. i highly doubt i will go back out with her. i will more likely get to really know her and see how shes changed if at all.

[Renard99]

Exactly! I mean, ok in terms of being blindsided, sometimes there are red flags (aka my ex was a bit distant as of late) but I confronted it several times, and he couldnt have assured me more all was fine....then I got the breakup phone call a few days after I last saw him, and got no reason on why I was dumped. Very hard to trust that people wont just bail like this, its really crushing! Def have to agree it is the worst- when they put on a front, act like all is well..then bam drop that bomb (and usually go on there merry way not giving a crap)

 

I agree totally, trusting someone with not just your heart but anything delicate becomes hard.

 

I had that small red flag appear of her being distant but when I tried to address the cause I was constantly told 'there's absolutely nothing wrong' and always got 'I love you's'....until one day I asked if everything was ok, really just meaning that moment, not over all, and got the reply 'I don't love you anymore, I don't see the relationship going any further, I've started to make plans to move out and i'll be gone in a couple of weeks'. WTF! Total blindside for me.

 

 

I also agree that duration of the relationship can make recovery harder than the type of break up would normally produce. I know someone who was with their wife for 15 years and they broke up mutually. Whilst the last year had been a downward spiral, it still meant that he had 14 years of happy times to look back on and, of course, that meant he had more to 'forget' (for want of a better word) during recovering so it took him quite a while longer than expected.

I was with my ex for just short of 8 years, so that, added to a blindside, hurt like hell!

[ConfusedT]

Combo of

1. decided to not respond to my calls/texts at 2:30am when he was supposed to be HOME with me! =) then played with me for two weeks saying he wanted to be single. didnt realize he was already BACK WITH HIS EX GIRLFRIEND!

 

3. He cheated on me with his ex (who had him arrested) & then he decided to leave me for her.

 

I think if i would have found out in a different manner, i wouldnt have lost my MIND. i did lose my mind and my dignity from begging and pleading! yay!!

just kidding!

 

day 6 NC and its terrible

[giuliano-3]

Combo of

1. decided to not respond to my calls/texts at 2:30am when he was supposed to be HOME with me! =) then played with me for two weeks saying he wanted to be single. didnt realize he was already BACK WITH HIS EX GIRLFRIEND!

 

3. He cheated on me with his ex (who had him arrested) & then he decided to leave me for her.

 

I think if i would have found out in a different manner, i wouldnt have lost my MIND. i did lose my mind and my dignity from begging and pleading! yay!!

just kidding!

 

day 6 NC and its terrible

 

Exactly, I've had my heart broken before but not like this. I've had recovery times of a few months, but always there was an actual break up with some teary-eyed heartfelt explanation as to why she needed to move on. I respect those exes of mine because I know it ain't easy to put your feelings out there.

 

But the begging, pleading with my last ex who vanished without a trace...wow oh how do I regret that. The only thing I regret as much if not more is not throwing away all her belongings she left behind instead of mailing them up to her mom's house. Push over!!!

[sally4sara]

I would add to the list:

 

The Short Term Relationship break up and the Long Term Relationship break up because it is often easier to get over than someone who was in your life for less than a year than someone who you were in a relationship with for many years. Plus ending a short term relationship is usually less drawn out than with someone you lived with and have to divide property with.

 

Then the We Procreated break up. It sucks because when you break up with someone you had a kid with - you don't usually get to actually have them out of your life no matter how badly you'd like them to be gone.

And if you do get them out of your life it isn't always how you'd choose to have it go down for the kids.

 

I think the worst is probably the You Died break up. Unless you were simply suffering through the relationship up to that point it has to be the worst way for a relationship to end.