← Something Positive for Positive People
Something Positive for Positive People
SPFPP 376: I Don't Miss My Ex - The Stigma of Breakups
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Let me just go ahead and read this before I change my mind and talk myself out of it. I don't miss my ex. And then in parentheses I wrote the stigma of breakups because I didn't want this to be another one of them Clickbaity Things Irving Goffman defines stigma as an attribute that makes a person less than whole. My wording for this is really that it's a fragmentation of identity. I believe that that's what stigma does when we get stuck in that less than identity. With herpes, it's sex sexuality. But maybe you're reading this and you're not somebody who has herpes. So how can stigma impact you breakups? If you found this post, I'm going to call that maybe you've navigated a breakup yourself at some point. Maybe in your breakup you felt an over identification with who you were in that relationship in order to get through the breakup. Maybe you over identified with how people told you to be. Even support can feel further fragmenting when you're going through a breakup. The fragmentation comes from what you think you should do, what others tell you to do, and if you have a consistent support system, their guidance may be all fairly similar, but there's still a piece of the self that coexists in the possibility. Through my work in minimizing stigma, I often tell people that identity validation is the cure for stigma, and this typically happens in community. But if your sense of self is fragmented, community may not be as accessible or you may only have parts of yourself that can be validated, which leads to more over identification with a fragmented part of yourself. My family, my friends, community. I'm very fortunate that each of them gets to see the same me in real time. Messy, curious, creative. And I also recognize that when my last relationship ended, so did my presence. So did my positivity. My identity was most invalidated when the relationship ended. I was met with curiosity by my peers around what went wrong. I was asked why we couldn't make it work. I didn't have an answer. So I spoke to all that I could recall from just my ex's experience and what she shared, the things that she shared about her internal world, things I didn't do, things I did do that were wrong, harmful, out of alignment, triggering, etc. I spoke to these things first when talking to people and as I shared these things, people really held space and challenged me for being hard on myself. But the way I felt, learning just how negative of an experience my ex had with me in our relationship from day one of Our year and a half relationship, it really turned my interpretation upside down. And I started to identify with that negative and I became possessed by that energy. And that was the way that I spoke about our relationship from that negative lens. Truth be told, people wanted to be there for me, but the way they were there for me, something never felt right about it. The language I have now at the time of writing this is that that negativity overshadowed my positivity. Generally, people say I'm a positive person in more ways than 1A because I got herpes, who can really find the good in everything. But during this time period, I was just constantly invalidating my own experience, repressing and suppressing it down because there just didn't seem to be room for it. And I felt terrible. I very much over identified with that terribleness. And I punished myself by seeking further punishment from those that I shared the relationship details with. And I noticed that in that I neglected my own experience. There's challenges that present themselves in every relationship, especially at the intersection of various identities. Me being black, me, me being a man, me being straight, me being from the Midwest, age differences, social status, and in our shared community as well. There is so much language to be learned differentiating between who someone is online or presenting to the world versus who they are with the mask off. These intersections of identities and our differences made for so much potential for growth as we could very well learn from one another. I appreciated our differences so eagerly to understand her. And in the process of learning her, I learned to like so many things about myself that did validate my identity as a positive person. While I utilized my support system, the Internet was not helpful at all. The fastest way to get over somebody is to get on top of somebody else. Just get somebody younger and hotter, get abs, make more money. Don't nobody like being used, I mean, unless you into that. And none of that advice ever really sat well with who I am as a person. I wanted to be vulnerable and share. And each time I would go to record a podcast, make a post, or attempt to move through my grief, my emotions, I noticed that things would come out about the relationship and the breakup when I didn't intend for it to happen. Not making the space for what needs expression will cause the space to make itself. Whether that be through illness, whether that be through blurting something out, whether that be through self sabotage. So I have at least 30 separate podcast recordings that the world will never hear because of how I came out. I have nothing negative to say about my relationship and everything positive. I believe this exercise can be useful for anybody navigating the challenges of a breakup, which can cause identity fragmentation throughout the process. Speaking the negative and having it exaggerated felt stigmatizing to me. It felt like my essence was just being torn out of my nervous system to the point where I'd even have dreams that she and I would interact in ways that we never have and never would. Maybe remembering the negative and holding that makes things easier to move through and get them out of our energetic presence, but that. That's easy, but it's not aligned One thing I'll always be grateful for for my ex is that that don't even feel right to call her that. That was my fucking nigga. I wrote homie in here. But I always said that to her like, hey, you my nigga. And I thought I knew my values until she pushed me further into my shadow to learn what is actually important to me. I've lost girlfriends, I've had exes, but this wasn't that. If we weren't meant to be and we weren't meant to work toward a future together, I can accept that. But I'll be damned if I just allow the negative experiences to be what I remember or have to let go of alone. I remember everything. Everything. I remember the first time I saw her. My first words to her were, I follow you on Instagram. I'm Courtney. I remember our conversation and how it felt so nice for me to just have somebody genuinely be curious about me outside of what I do. And while she charged her phone, I remember the video she sent me dancing with the only older lady on the dance floor. I remember how silly I felt for not making time for a meal when I was visiting New York because I didn't know how close New Jersey and New York were. I remember trading memes with one another. I remember how surprised and excited I was to learn that there was also mutual interest in us connecting. I remember the post that she made on her social media about me coming to see her, but only I knew what it was about and just how excited she was. I remember the excitement of getting picked up from the airport when I'd come visit. I remember receiving the good morning text every day and her voice being the last one that I heard before bed, leading into the sweetest and calmest of dreams where I'd wake up feeling like I can take on the fucking world. I remember ordering a sweet and savory menu item whenever we get breakfast together, whenever we'd eat lunch or dinner or go on dates we'd Just order a bunch of food and split it all. I remember leftovers from Saddlebrook Diner. I remember meeting her parents way sooner than either of us would have planned to and being invited in as part of the family, regardless of how early it was. I remember resting my head in her lap while I was trying so hard to just like cry after this grief class about how much I miss my grandmother. I remember being woken up by her having nightmares. She'd shake and I'd just pull her in tight and close to me. I felt her heart rate slow down. She relaxed back into her slumber. I remember our first time finally going to get dumplings together. I remember dancing in Hawaii at the wedding. I remember getting rained on every day. We went to the beach out there. I remember watching Love is Blind together and me waiting on her to watch Solo Leveling. That's an anime for those who don't know. I remember picking her up from work way past my bedtime. I walk into the store and yell, y' all got small condoms in here. I remember our first contact, our concert together and the events of that day. I remember Black Eyed Peas Meet me Halfway. I remember her keeping the sushi order from our restaurant and her phone so we could try new combinations of it, like what we really, really liked and what was okay so we can replace that with something new and better. I remember working out together with our headphones and just how present we were with each other. I remember making her protein shakes in the morning for her and then timing out the day based on when she got up and was ready and when we go to the gym and do whatever the plan was for the day. I remember her birthday and just how surprised she was to see that I got all her friends together. I remember my birthday and that she got me the most important gift I think I'll ever get and I will always hold that close to my heart, assuming it didn't get lost in the tornado. I remember that time. That time wasn't easy for her either. Like while you was losing her grandmother, she gave me something to hold onto and remember mine. I remember that phone conversation her sister had with this phone rep that we could not be quiet for as we were all sitting in the car. I remember presenting together. I remember wanting to see her win, doing everything I could do in my power to make that happen. I remember not only the bad but also the good times. Not with my ex, but with my nigger that was my homie. And now I'm expected to just call this person my ex and just Associate all of the negative connotations and stigma that comes with what it means to be exes with somebody. But more than anything, I remember her smile and how I'd do any fucking thing for her just to see it. That smile became the core purpose of everything I did for the time that we shared. The last time, I remember it was her in the living room singing Wale Love Hate thing. That's the last time I saw her genuinely smile when the relationship was over. Is more important to me that that smile of hers exists in the world to be seen by everyone but me than it is for me to be the only one to see it as selfish and further invalidating to my identity. The movie Hancock really resonates with me because together, all I wanted to do was protect that smile. But, you know, my past kept coming back up and threatening that, so I had to move across the country to save it because I can't fly to the moon like he did. But I felt like I could whenever I saw that smile. Felt like I could do anything. The connection we share goes beyond emotional intensity. It goes beyond positive and negative experiences. Even to this day, I feel her presence. I feel her grief from across the country. I feel it in moments that were likely synced up. And maybe we both share these moments. And all I can do is just send loving thoughts, hopes that she's smiling and that the next person is able to contribute to her joy in the ways that I fell short bringing this back. I cry while writing this. I ain't crying now. About to, though. I'm gonna wait till I close this out. But these weren't tears of sadness. It was tears of presence. As I wrote these moments and reflected on these and others that are more personal, I didn't want to put that out here. I do feel a release. It's a release of myself from the stigma of what breakups are supposed to be. A release from the expectations of the realness of a breakup and how healing is in the grief. It's in the passion, it's in the sadness, it's in the anger, it's in the resentment. But it's also in the joy and it's in the love. To be whole is to embrace the totality, the totality, the totality of the human experience with presence. Y' all, my life been chaotic, but everything that's good, that's happening. I just find myself so badly wanting to reach out to her, wanting to call her, wanting to text her, just to share. Because again, that's been my. And that is so much more true, so much more real, so much more validating than being a ex. The only reason I won't reach out is because the last conversation I had with our dad, who I respect so much, the advice he gave me was, don't. And I honor that out of respect for the man who contributed to bringing that beautiful smile into this earth. Even if I only got two years of a lifetime with it. The quality of those experiences means more than any quantity of time ever will for me. And I hope that sharing my experience helps us to not just destigmatize the breakup process for some people, because it's in this moment where I have the most healing, just reflecting on it in a way that does validate who I am. This process has been challenging, yet liberating, and I'm grateful for being witnessed in my grieving, not of my ex, but of my fucking nigga. When we embrace the wholeness of who we are, we can see who others are and validate our identities and appropriately liberate ourselves, allowing the purest of the grief beyond any single named emotion and with presence. So maybe you do miss your ex, but I don't. I miss my motherfucking nigga. All right, for all the white people who said nigga in your head, you racist. No, I'm just playing. I feel aligned in posting this because I wrote it, I guess. But other times, like, I swear I'll just be having a podcast episode, and there will be a thing that comes up where I just say something that I'm like, no, that's. That's not true. That's not. That's not mine. That's not real. This isn't the place for that. And I think that what aligns so much here is that this is. These are the memories I have. There's a lot more. There's a lot more positive. Then there is the negative. There's a lot of challenge. There's a lot of liberation. There's a lot of curiosity, There's a lot of learning, There's a lot of growth. There's a lot of. There's a lot of. A lot of things that happen in relationships. And, you know, I share this because I don't think that we need to demonize or harbor on the negative of things in another person or ourselves even in order to be able to get through it, because we only get through some of it when we do that. And they say, no, like, you gotta harbor on the positive and think that that means you're gonna go back to something but it's very helpful to be able to look at the whole of things. And when you look at the whole of it, sometimes we see that we lock into things that aren't ours, that aren't even the other person's. It feels like I allow my story to be this version of the relationship that only had negative to it. And as I was talking about it, like, I'd hear myself sometimes and be like, wait, that's like, yeah, that's a bad thing. But that's not. Like, that's not the relationship. And I can't tell, you know, people how to be in a relationship. I don't know what people's tolerance levels are for things. But I will say, like, me sitting with these. This positive, this shit was so much harder than me listing out the negatives. What went wrong, what was bad, where we were incompatible, things I said, things that she needed and wanted and things that I needed and wanted and what those differences were and what the similarities were. But I realized, like, where things went wrong, where the thing that I couldn't give her was the truth of all of my actions, were to see her smile. That's all I wanted. I didn't need anything from her. I just wanted to see her smile. And what I've been able to learn is that, yeah, like, know what you want and be able to set the expectations for that. I get how important that is now. But when you are living for something and you know what you're living for, you don't have to ask those questions. It don't make sense to think yourself out of doing and being what you already know you're getting. That was it. Just wanted to see her smile. I think a lot of us who go through breakups, you know, yeah, we learn about relationships. We learn more of the technical. But I loved getting to feel the entire spectrum of a relationship, of this relationship, of our relationship. Like, the whole spectrum of the negative and the positive, the unintentional, the intentional, because it's supportive in who we're becoming. And I think that I always say, man, you know, people be so scared of getting rejected, get rejected all the fucking time to the extent where they won't go out and pursue that, which is on the other side of rejection. You know, people talk to me all the time about, I got herpes. It's the worst day of my life. Nothing's good's ever gonna happen to me. No, fuck that. Like, you ever had your heart broken? You ever been part of a heartbreak? You ever been turned down for A job. You ever been late on rent? Like, herpes is so fucking insignificant. Yes, at the time of my diagnosis, that shit was trash. How fragmented I was, how not me I was, how negative I was, how avoidant I was. But it's been through that that I still managed to find love, to find meaning, to find community, to find creative outlets, to find connection, to reconnect with my curiosity, to learn what's important to me. We gotta. We gotta be willing to get hurt for what we believe in. I was willing to. I was willing to get hurt to see her smile. You know, I tell people, they'd be like, well, what'd she do for you? It's like she was there and that was enough, you know? And the further invalidation is just like, friends being like, well, she did this. She did this. I'm like, well, yeah, you know, I did these things, but nobody asked me. Nobody asked me about the good. Nobody asked me why we lasted for as long as we did. People just assume the sex. Well, yeah, maybe, but I didn't have sex before. That's. That's not. That's not. Wasn't hope, wasn't hoping somebody changed. Like, I was as present as can be for just wanting to see her smile, doing the things, getting the things, and just taking away the pain or the frustrations or the. The anything that just took away from her joy. And in the process, I became somebody else. I think I can. I can honestly own it. I listen to the book. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I did all the. He said, you ain't supposed to do. I up. I own it. I up. And, yeah, I wasn't living my life. I was as best I could, integrating myself into hers and trying to make for a better life for her, the one that she said that she wants. And we two separate human beings. I needed to be on my bullshit and trust that she'd be on her bullshit. And I just. I came in doing all the shit. Dr. Donald, not Donald. Robert Glover says not to do players. I fucked up, and I recognize that it's okay. It's a learning experience. She's doing well now, it seems. I fucking had a tornado come through my place. College roommate died, got broken up with. So, I mean, among the chaos, like, I think that this is home for me for a while. I really believe that I needed to just be home and around family. And that's not home. That's not home. You know, I tried to make her home. And then after trying to make her home, I went to my hometown and tried to make my home home. And then I learned that you can't do that. I learned that that's not what home is. And I learned that that's damn sure not where my home is. But it took for me to learn what my values are, my intention, what my purpose is. And it's not really action driven. It's more being driven. You know, who am I? Who do I want to be? Who am I supposed to be? Because I, in doing what I want, I done fucked up. I can't do what Courtney wants. It's about alignment. So I've been very much focused on aligning myself in environments around people, places, things, opportunities, challenges that. That validate me as someone who values being challenged, who values me, who values liberation. Challenge and liberation are my two values. And I know that now. And if I, maybe if I would have been able to approach her with that and be able to set the expectations, who knows what would have happened? But I'd be damned if I just remember the bad and the negative and, like, act like that was the relationship, because it wasn't. It was part of it. And I've been hesitant to talk about the relationship, like, publicly because of how small I felt talking to people about the relationship around me because I'm just regurgitating shit. And I think that the time that we spent apart allowed for me to see, like, yeah, it was great going out and seeing her dad, going to eat with her mom, hanging out with her sister, chilling with the cats. Like, all of this. All of this was so. There were so many pleasantries. There was so much love. There was so much joy, There was so much pleasure. There was so much intensity. There was negative intensity. There was positive intensity. But for what I remember, like, I choose to remember the good, too. So this. This became, you know, all about me, actually. And I think this is the last. This is it. This is the last I'll, you know, consciously speak on this. I'm releasing this. I'm letting go, Releasing energetically, like, that last bit of what I was holding on to. Like, it's easy to let go of the bad. Like, oh, you fucked me over this way. You did this to me. You used me. You. This, that. That. You lied to me. Like, yeah, all right. Fuck you. Let that go. But, like, there's so much more. So much more than our actions. There's so much more than our past. So much more than the words we say with so much more than a confusion. I think that the presence that I've developed in the last shit month, two Months has allowed for me to really be able to speak about this from a real place. Anything that I would have said before now wouldn't have been real. Anything I would have said before now would have been combination of what I've heard her say, how badly I know she's felt in the moments of bad and none of the good, none of the shared joys, none of the shared pleasures, none of that. Like, I was very fucking present to just wanting to see her smile. And like I said, my friends tell me, like, that ain't enough. Like, you. You need somebody that's adding to your life. I felt invincible. And you know, when you feel invincible, Superman, bullets bounce off Superman, but everybody around Superman ain't Superman, so they get hurt. And, you know, you look around like, wait, wait, I'm not hurt. Yeah, none of these bullets hurt me. And meanwhile, you look over and you got somebody fucking holding their elbow, knee, stomach. And that was how I felt. That's really how I felt. I felt invincible in my relationship with my ex. Because even now, right, Like, I don't look at her like an ex. Like, I see her, and I still see my motherfucking nigga. And it pains me that that ain't it. Seems like there was. Yeah, there was such a different experience, so I. I needed to just get this out and make it into something that's hopefully useful to people. I'm okay. I've very much just. Yeah, this. This needed to come out. This really did need to come out. And if you don't make space for it, it'll make space. Like, space will be made. And. Yeah. Yeah, if you're interested in. I ain't gonna do all of that here. Like, yeah. Subscribe to the newsletter. This don't feel appropriate to be like, oh, you know, donate and all that. No, this is one of them episodes where I'm just. This is. Yeah, this is what it is. Like, but like I said, I don't miss my ex. I miss my. I said what I said.