In the last installment of his four-part relationship series, therapist Matthew Dempsey covers the uncomfortable, painful, often visceral ending to so many of our sincere adventures in love — the breakup.
Why do we break up? What does it mean? Will I be alone forever or what?!
As Matthew puts it, “It’s really easy for us to mistake comfort with compatibility, and any time that there’s any kind of conflict, it’s like ‘Whoa, maybe this is a red flag, maybe we’re not actually meant to be together.'” But those are opportunities to work — work on ourselves, on our communication, and on keeping sight of what’s important.
It’s those other times, when our essential needs aren’t being met, that a breakup might be on the horizon.
How about we take this to the next level?
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But fear not! You aren’t a failure at love, you’re just an evolving creature with ever-changing needs. And as Matthew aptly puts it, relationships involve putting egos aside and staying attune to each other. Sometimes, that means calling it quits and reviving that Tinder account.
Here’s Matthew explaining it much better that we can:
enlightenone
“…But fear not! You aren’t a failure at love, you’re just an evolving creature with ever-changing needs.”
Then just drop the archiac marriage/commitment thing because “you’re just an evolving creature with ever-changing needs.”
Got it!
enlightenone
Taking TIME to get to KNOW someone “Can/is the Greatest of All Acts!
enlightenone
Correction: Taking TIME to get to KNOW someone “Can be/is the Greatest Act of Love!
polarisfashion
My favorite way to get dumped is via text message at 2:30 in the morning!
Gruffling
So ending a relationships doesn’t make you a failure in love, fantastic. How about not even being able to start one?
DarkZephyr
Dear Lord, we just keep getting more and more hedonistic and selfish and unwilling to put in the goddam work to make a relationship a *permanent* success.
vive
@Gruffling: “So ending a relationships doesn’t make you a failure in love, fantastic. How about not even being able to start one?”
Yes, well, I doubt that guy knows anything about what real people deal with. Maybe pretty attention whore people should stop trying to give advice to the rest of us on things they cannot possibly understand.
MacAdvisor
Again, lots of platitudes without any scientific support. His ideas are interesting, but he’s not done the work to give this ideas scientific merit. He might as well be a witchdoctor proscribing bleeding with leeches for all the support he demonstrates.
Paco
@DarkZephyr: Why put any work into a relationship when something better and easy is just a finger swipe away?
enlightenone
@DarkZephyr: “Dear Lord, we just keep getting more and more hedonistic and selfish and unwilling to put in the goddam work to make a relationship a *permanent* success.”
To our detriment this message IS being promoted by a successful marketer for a less than competent therapist serving the gay community, a community that has few models of relationship success in a world of narcissistic, disposable marriages/relationships.
What is the ongoing fight about that we have yet to win – MARRIAGE. Ironic!
vive
@enlightenone, @DarkZephyr,
While I agree that treating people as disposable is evil, I don’t agree that permanent monogamy or marriage should be everyone’s purpose in life. Society has been moving away from the traditional marriage model since the sexual revolution half a century ago, and I think it is a good thing that we all have options besides marriage, which frankly is not considered that important by most gays and many straights anymore.
enlightenone
@vive: Please re-read my comment separately and then post your comment. No cut/paste pls. Then I will respond back!