Evan,

Hoping you can give me some advice.  I dated this girl for 2 years and we broke up last year.  We broke up because she realized that she was no longer "in love" with me and that she felt there wasn’t enough of a spark.  Truth be told, there was another guy in the picture who she obviously had a bigger spark with.   This wasn’t my first breakup but it hit me really hard because I was so in love with her.  In my mind she was perfect in every way, (except for the part where she just wasn’t that into me).  I’ve been dating on and off the past year and I have two main problems:

1.  I’ve gone from being a serial monogamist to becoming completely commitment phobic.  The minute a girl starts to get serious with me, I want to run away. 

2.  I compare every girl to her and all I see is flaws in other people.  I keep waiting to have that "feeling" I had with her, because I’m scared that without that feeling, I will not be able to commit.

I’m worried I’m never going to get over this.  Any help is much appreciated.

Ken

I would be much more concerned with your second problem than your first.

Your first issue is that you’re commitment phobic. This is a common problem, one that is usually remedied by falling in love with someone. Once you’re crazy about a girl, you won’t have to think twice as to whether you want to be in a relationship with her. Which brings us back to your second problem:

I compare every girl to her and all I see are flaws in other people.  I keep waiting to have that "feeling" I had with her, because I’m scared that without that feeling, I will not be able to commit.

Let’s take these assertions line by line.

I compare every girl to her and all I see are flaws in other people.

Yeah. This isn’t good. Because it’s not real. It’s a rose-colored view of your ex, one that you’re having a hard time letting go of. Do yourself a favor and think of the things that you didn’t like about your ex. Now, I understand that she broke up with you, so you never really developed a chance to hate her. But that doesn’t mean she’s perfect – not by a long shot. Her main flaw, of course, is that she didn’t want to marry you. And any woman who doesn’t want to marry you isn’t really a very good choice for a wife. There are probably many, many more flaws that you glossed over due to your passion for her.

Being “in love” does this to people. In fact, Helen Fisher theorizes in “Why We Love” that being “in love” may be an evolutionary function that causes irrational thinking. In other words, in order to commit to something as irrational as monogamy, we’d sure has hell BETTER be blinded by love. Of course, that blindness wears off, which is why, when you talk to older couples who have been married for 30+ years, they’ll almost always tell you some version of “It’s hard work/We’re really just best friends/We know how to communicate and argue well/We support each other when it’s tough.” Etc, etc….

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Dear Evan,

I dated a girl for 6 months — she said she loved me, that she felt I was the guy she was going to marry — and other things making believe I found love. Then, some distance came while I was a away. I called her on it and she claimed everything was fine, but when I got back, she broke up with me. "It ‘s not you, it ‘s me, I don ‘t know who I am and need to find myself. I ‘m not emotionally ready to continue making you happy, but if I wanted a relationship with anyone it would be with you. Please don ‘t think I don ‘t have feelings for you, I do. I ‘m giving up the most amazing relationship of my life, everything is there, and I ‘m an imbecile for doing this, but I need to be single. You know I just got out of a 5 year relationship before you, I need to be on my own."

I was heartbroken; I didn ‘t believe she was telling me the truth and told her that, but she was like a broken record. Our social circles intersect; I told her not to contact me for quite some time, that maybe friendship would be possible months down the road, but not now.

She then emailed me two weeks later asking if I were willing to be friends with benefits. I was irate. I crassly told her no, nothing critical, but specifically I said "when you broke up with me, you broke up with my ****. I deserve more than that and you know it." Her response was "I was just joking." Sadly, I was drunk when I got this response (next bad breakup I ‘m not going to drink for 2 months), and went off on her, calling her selfish and cruel, how the reasons for the breakup were BS, how I deserved more respect and honesty, and that I felt she wasn ‘t telling me the truth and I was just a rebound. Repeat that paragraph 6-7 times. I was pissed.

We have some mutual friends and I ‘ve been ostracized. I ‘m 27! They call me names, are hostile to me at events I ‘m invited to (I make sure she is not there), etc. They tell me I acted undignified and lost dignity and I ‘m not welcome anyplace she might show up because I overreacted and went too far.

I feel like I ‘ve lost my best friend, my lover, and now have to find many new friends. The worst I did was call her selfish. And I did apologize to her! I know my real friends will be my real friends, and I should just walk away, but how do I cope with me being the bad guy?

John

Dear John,

Looks like she won the war AND the PR campaign.

Really, my heart goes out to you. I only had that experience once in my life and it was awful. Former friends taking sides without acknowledging that relationships are extremely complex. Emotions run high, heated things are said, and reasonable people act unreasonable. This doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for anything that you may regret saying; it just means that pretty much anybody who’s ever been in love should be able to understand. Relationships may bring out our best, but they also bring out our worst.

As you well know, it’s not unusual for people to choose sides when a couple breaks up. …

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