Do breakups get harder over the years?

[Gottabestrong]

Do you feel that the older you get the harder it is to get over a relationship breakup?

 

When I look back, I know that no other breakup hit me this hard, even though I had longer lasting relationships.

 

When I was 23 and left my then fiancee I barely felt any pain, because I knew he was wrong for me and I believed in someone better being out there for me.

 

A year later when a very intense relationship ended with a guy who I thought was my soulmate, it hit me really hard, so hard that I developed a tumor from it, but I remember that 6 months later I was doing okay and even managed to be in friendly email contact with him, without hoping for or wanting more than friendship.

 

Whereas my last breakup happened last year, at the age of 28, and I am still not over it.

 

Maybe when you are young you are optimistic and believe that you will surely find somebody else, but when you are older and wiser, you realize that it is not that easy to find the person you can spend your life with.

 

If it gets harder every year, I am scared of my next breakup. Maybe that one is going to drive me crazy.

 

Has anyone had similar experiences?

[Pyro]

For me, the older I get, the easier it is to get over a break-up. I use each of my relationships as a learning experience. I gain a little more knowledge from each realtionship. It helps me control my emotions, and like you said, it also helps me realize that there was a reason that the relationship did not work out and that someone even better is out there waiting for me.

 

Hope that my words helped you out gottabestrong.

[NewLee40]

Perhaps what is bothering you most is the sense that time is running out and you don't have that many more chances. At least that seems to be what bothers me. Recovery from a serious heart break is time consuming and starting over again seems to be a more daunting prospect for me the older I get. Plus, it takes time to develop a relationship into love, so again, the limits of time seems to be a factor.

 

Plus, when you are young, life seems full of endless possibilities. There seems to be tons of fish in the sea, and throwing them back is a lot easier. The older you get, the scarcer the fish, and you might be inclined to hang on to what you reel in for fear that soon not only will there be less fish, but your bait won't be quite as attractive.

 

As Riddler says, if you can learn from your experiences, you will get better at getting over it. But, that doesn't resolve the above problem.

 

I'm learning....slowly....that it is our attitude about love and relationships that gets us into this kind of trouble. The feeling that life is all about love and having someone to love us, and we feel incomplete without it. I get annoyed when people tell me that, but there is truth in it. One of the things I'm working on in my recovery this time is cultivating a full life for myself so that if love comes, its a bonus....not the be all and end all. I'm well on my way already.

[moon]

Perhaps what is bothering you most is the sense that time is running out and you don't have that many more chances

 

Seriously in this day and age where half of marriages end in divorce, is it really so necessary anymore to so naively think you will get married once and live happily ever after. I've already had two friends get divorced and you know what it makes you realize that many things don't last forever. I hear the same things from my divorced friends that they are sad they never had kids or have regrets. The point of the story is that your marriage or relationship will never last if you aren't really with a person who you love and are literally meant to be with. So if you haven't found the right person yet then hold on it'll happen some day.

 

In the mean time stop worrying about time running out. Yes we will all die one day.........that's really the only time you have to worry about. You might be worrying about having kids. That could be a real worry, but seriously even if you just marry somebody to have kids it might result in divorce and custody battles, etc. No fun there.

 

I have a few friends who seriously seem like they married their soul mates and I envy them. I have a few friends who just got married because they thought they loved the person, but have this and that to say about them negatively. I think you need to get your own life together if you are not attracting who you want in it.

 

Lastly, I think break ups do get easier as you get older because you're not about to waste as much time mourning the wrong person. You move on quicker usually. That's just my opinion. But overall, I think we all have to realize that if somebody broke up with you and said you were wrong for them................then hey!!!! You gotta hear that and move on. There's very little sense in taking too much time to mourn that loss. Spend your time more wisely going to therapy trying to figure out why you would want somebody in your life who doesn't want you. I know a lot of relationships end right out of the blue, but a lot of us stay with people who we sort of know aren't right for us and they know we aren't right for them. Where's that going to lead us anyway? So worry less about running out of time. Worry more about finding a good, decent, respectful and "right" person to have in your life.

[NewLee40]

I don't believe I ever said I expected all marriages to end happily ever after. Clearly, they don't and being married is no guarantee of happiness or fulfillment in love.

 

It is not naive to hope for happily ever after, though. Otherwise, why bother? I mean, who says...Oh, I think I'll enter into a relationship that sucks so I can spend the next 10 years of my life in misery and the 10 after that recovering from it. As you said, if we concentrate on finding the right person, then we have every right to expect happily ever after.

 

But, once you get to a certain point in life, you realize the odds get longer and longer that you'll find it. This can make the breakup - even if it was for the best - an affirmation of those fears that may be right under the surface. Repeated disappointments can lead to greater feelings of hopelessness.

 

I don't mean to be pessimistic or make anyone panic that time is running out. You can meet your so-called soul mate at any point in life. We absolutely have to dispute the type of thinking that says "time is running out," or "I'm not getting younger, so I guess I'll have to settle." That was my point. By recognizing those hidden fears, we can actively dispute them and come to a more productive way of thinking about it.