Your ex moving on and you being genuinely happy for them
How do you measure up?
6
comments:
Lucien
said...
If by 'genuinely happy' you mean without any conflicted feelings, then I would say that in my experience it is impossible until you have moved on yourself. No matter how much you genuinely want them to be happy, you'll always be conflicted with hurt and what ifs, and it will color your perspective on the whole thing. I think you need to move on for yourself before you can be completely happy and quietly content with their happiness.
If by 'genuinely happy' you mean the sort of feeling you can have in wishing someone well, while at the same time being torn to pieces about their having moved on, then I would say that's a very interesting definition of the word :P.
I personally use it as the yardstick for knowing whether or not I've moved on. So the former rather than the latter. But that doesn't mean approving of bad relationships ;)
My first hardcore ex dumped me when we were 18 for a 28 or 29 year old. Needless to say, I wasn't to keen on the whole idea. I was devastated for a while, but I quickly got over it and have obviously moved on since. I actually long to catch up with her, get pissed, talk shit, laugh. It's been years and years. My second hardcore girlfriend, while I left her and moved on first. So there you go. I think I did well with that first breakup. Oh, and I second Lucien.`
I reckon I measure up pretty well. I am 'genuinely happy' for my ex and I haven't technically moved on. In my experience (and I stress that) the two critical things that happened to get me to this place are.... i.) My ex moved on. ii.) I woke up one day and realised I had feelings for someone else. I guess you could say in that sense I have moved on.
To borrow from Julian Foord, breakups are ugly hydras with many heads. I can say, with surety, that the best thing that ever happened to me was to get dumped, build a bridge, and traverse that bridge.
Well, i think we're all agreeing that the first understanding of 'genuinely happy' is the better one of the two. And I suppose this means we all agree that you can't be genuinely happy for them, in a pure and simple sense, until you have moved on. But this sucks as a yardstick:
It is an accurate yardstick because you have to have moved on to be genuinely happy for them, but to work out whether you are genuinely happy for them (in the first sense of the word) you have to figure out whether you have moved on. So my attempted yardstick is both utterly true and also completely uselessly circular.
I am such a philosophy major.
I think a better yardstick is: do you feel torn up that you have been replaced? Do you still dream about them and things you could have done or been? Do you still think about ways that those dreams could happen? answer no to all those and you have moved on. How's that for a yardstick? This one is a bit harder to measure up to I think...
A happy man is he who looks smiling back at what has been and gone; forward towards what might be; and unto himself, here and now.
Lucien & Glenn, I'm assuming you're blogging about these things because they are pertinent. I don't envy what you are going through (if indeed you are going through them) but nor do I pity you.
You can, if you choose to, look forward to a moment when you will look back on this time and say to yourself with surety "I am glad that those events transpired, and I wouldn't change a thing."
Maybe that is the moment when you have well & truly moved on.
6 comments:
If by 'genuinely happy' you mean without any conflicted feelings, then I would say that in my experience it is impossible until you have moved on yourself. No matter how much you genuinely want them to be happy, you'll always be conflicted with hurt and what ifs, and it will color your perspective on the whole thing. I think you need to move on for yourself before you can be completely happy and quietly content with their happiness.
If by 'genuinely happy' you mean the sort of feeling you can have in wishing someone well, while at the same time being torn to pieces about their having moved on, then I would say that's a very interesting definition of the word :P.
I personally use it as the yardstick for knowing whether or not I've moved on. So the former rather than the latter. But that doesn't mean approving of bad relationships ;)
My first hardcore ex dumped me when we were 18 for a 28 or 29 year old. Needless to say, I wasn't to keen on the whole idea. I was devastated for a while, but I quickly got over it and have obviously moved on since. I actually long to catch up with her, get pissed, talk shit, laugh. It's been years and years. My second hardcore girlfriend, while I left her and moved on first. So there you go. I think I did well with that first breakup. Oh, and I second Lucien.`
I reckon I measure up pretty well.
I am 'genuinely happy' for my ex and I haven't technically moved on.
In my experience (and I stress that) the two critical things that happened to get me to this place are....
i.) My ex moved on.
ii.) I woke up one day and realised I had feelings for someone else. I guess you could say in that sense I have moved on.
To borrow from Julian Foord, breakups are ugly hydras with many heads. I can say, with surety, that the best thing that ever happened to me was to get dumped, build a bridge, and traverse that bridge.
Well, i think we're all agreeing that the first understanding of 'genuinely happy' is the better one of the two. And I suppose this means we all agree that you can't be genuinely happy for them, in a pure and simple sense, until you have moved on. But this sucks as a yardstick:
It is an accurate yardstick because you have to have moved on to be genuinely happy for them, but to work out whether you are genuinely happy for them (in the first sense of the word) you have to figure out whether you have moved on. So my attempted yardstick is both utterly true and also completely uselessly circular.
I am such a philosophy major.
I think a better yardstick is: do you feel torn up that you have been replaced? Do you still dream about them and things you could have done or been? Do you still think about ways that those dreams could happen? answer no to all those and you have moved on. How's that for a yardstick? This one is a bit harder to measure up to I think...
A happy man is he who looks smiling back at what has been and gone; forward towards what might be; and unto himself, here and now.
Lucien & Glenn, I'm assuming you're blogging about these things because they are pertinent. I don't envy what you are going through (if indeed you are going through them) but nor do I pity you.
You can, if you choose to, look forward to a moment when you will look back on this time and say to yourself with surety
"I am glad that those events transpired, and I wouldn't change a thing."
Maybe that is the moment when you have well & truly moved on.
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