Is it really just drinking beers and being with other women enough to heal from that pain? Genuinely asking to compare both sides.
How hard is it for a man not to be with a woman he loves?
r/AskMen
Is it really just drinking beers and being with other women enough to heal from that pain? Genuinely asking to compare both sides.
Comments
No. It hurts like a bitch. It’s hard to focus, everything somehow reminds you of her. Even worse when she loved you and there are other circumstances that prevent you from being together.
All you can do is wake up in the morning and cry
I took a job that put me on the road 340-ish days a year to get over a breakup. So it’s bad
I dont subscribe to the “stoicism is the only male quality that matters, you have to be stoic if you are a man or you arent much of a man” philosophy. That being said, I am very stoic and I do find it to be extremely valuable as a personality to trait for me. Its extremely difficult to not be with someone you love and saw a future with. But once you accept how much it hurts and learn to put those feelings in a box, you can say “well I feel like absolute dogshit, anyways its time to go do XYZ(work on my car, workout, run my business, whatever).
Best way to get over a woman is to get over a woman.
Failing that, learn her well enough to find her flaw that would really, really ruin things with her eventually. Mine I still live dearly, but we have different enough parenting styles that I know it’d never last.
I love lots of people, I don’t need to “be with” all of them. Like a fountain that never runs out, that anyone I deem trustworthy can drink from.
Immense pain without ability to enjoy or even want to do anything 🥲
Find your safe space. Cry a little bit.
Don’t drink alone, find a buddy and just go have a beer/cocktail. Join a pick-up sports league, something physical but not dangerous, where you can exert a lot of energy (like soccer or rowing) but you aren’t tempted to take out your frustrations physically (like football or rugby).
Go to therapy. Start building up your male friendships
Make the emotional void that she used to fill irrelevant. And yes, once you’re ready, get yourself out there and have some fun. Mindless sex might be mindless, but it’s also really nice when you’re not ready for a relationship.
It depends on whether he thinks she loves him back.
If it is an unrequited love then it is just a unilateral obsession. That is like asking a junky how it is to not be around their drug of choice.
But if you are kept apart from mutual love that is some pure epic human suffering.
It hurts ofc. But it has to go both ways. If she doesn’t love you back, then one should fine someone that will.
It sucks, but time and distance will usually do the trick. I think it is imperative to not be around the other person or to actually never see that person again. I had a HARD crush in high school. The type where I couldn’t think straight when I was in this girl’s presence. I had never had an infatuation that strong before I met her nor have I had one since. Not even my wife. Granted, there are some pretty serious hormones flowing through you at 14 so I try not to be too hard on myself. I’m actually relieved that she went to college 900 miles away and never came back to our city. It made moving on from her really easy considering how much I liked her. My point being, out of sight, out of mind.
Side note, people need to get help if they are thinking of hurting themselves, or hurting the other party. That is not a normal part of rejection or healing.
It’s easy being unhappy.
No, not even remotely close. I don’t know where you got that idea. You feel like you’ve broken apart into pieces on the inside. I mean, I guess it might be different for everyone but I imagine the majority of fellas would agree with me. If you’ve seen The Hobbit trilogy, Tauriel’s reaction when Kili dies is a pretty good portrayal of how it feels. I don’t imagine it’s a lot different for men than it is for women.
The hunger games has this line that just stucks with me
“I drag myself outta nightmares and there’s no relief in waking”
I don’t drink or smoke; so, I worked out like hell. Then stopped. It’s been 9 years, I’ve tried therapy. I screamed myself hoarse into the night sky. I wrote about her.
The day she got married, I was numb as hell. I feel I’m over her, but her name is in every sigh, like a mantra.
I don’t know, I’m still trying to work things out. More power to you!
Depends on the love. I think back to arguably the only woman I felt I truly ever loved, it hurt for a good long while and the dating/sex/drinking/weed didn’t help. Only time did. Now I rarely think of her aside from being happy for what we had and wishing her the best.
Are you asking genuinely or to stroke your own ego?
I honestly do know why I do what I do in life anymore. I just keep going, but the reason I was doing things is gone. I don’t think she knows that she was the most significant thing to ever happen to me.
Been living this for a few years… I fought the feeling that come with that for a long time and realized it wasn’t going to go away; just kind of find a way to accept it and float above it man.
It fucks me up.
The only way to heal for me is to focus on life (hobbies, gym, video games, movies, work etc.) and slowly forget.
Life is bigger than her. May not feel like it right now. If you’re feeling the deep feels right now, by all means feel them. Ending love comes with grieving. But once your broken heart heals, start to open it up again. You’ll be amazed the other hearts that are out there. Find one that will be with you for the long haul. There’s hope, especially for men. I honestly think we have a much better selection of choices than women do.
Its tough, but time helps.
Also staying distracted.
You just kind of deal with it. It hurts, but the best way to deal with it is to separate yourself from that person and try to move on, revolve your life around something else so that it doesn’t resolve around her.
Ironically the time this happened to me, for a quite a few years, I was friends with a woman who was with this guy that was totally leading her on, as in, they had been together for like 7-8 years and there relationship was going nowhere. Not I was perfect for her, but this guy was just using her.
She ended up moving away with the guy and they broke up a couple years ago (according to her social media), but I’ve more or less moved on. You learn to let things go.
Time heals all wounds. Wounds of the heart can take years to heal and often leave scars. The drinking and such is because it numbs the pain momentarily, but like Tylenol, it does nothing to heal the wound, so once you sober up, the pain comes right back just as strong as ever.
This is true of man or woman.
The typical reason that the person doing the breaking up is not the one crying and drinking is because their wound(s) occurred long ago and have usually mostly healed by the time they finally break up with their partner. The one being broken up with is often taken by surprise and thus the wound is fresh and deep.
Younger men, emotional devastating. Older men, what woman?
Men kill themselves all the time due to break ups. Divorce is one of the leading causes of suicide.
That depends on why we’re not together. If she fucked up and I left as a result, it’s a lot easier to get over her than if she is perfect but there’s some other reason we can’t be together.
There’s only 1 woman out of probably hundreds I’ve gone through that I actually loved. It made me depressed for a few months when the relationship ended and still think about her occasionally. She was the only woman I ever cried about losing. I very rarely cry. I didn’t even cry when my grandparents died and I was close to them.
Time and a lot of other women helps, but, mostly it’s just time. The other women are just a distraction to pass the time.
Excruciating. Next question.
In my life experience, it’s a piece of cake. Hear me out on this before everybody gives me the down vote. Just because I’m in love with someone, if they’re not going to love you back or reciprocate that type of emotion, it’s absolutely pointless. It’s actually creepy to be obsessive Over someone who has no interest in return. I would not resort to alcohol abuse to get over my feelings. Rejection is a part of life. You just move on because eventually you find someone else that will feel the same way and have that relationship. Lust is different from love, but I understand your post is saying that the person is in love with the woman. I guess when it comes down to it, why would we as men become captivated or dwell upon a situation that has no potential to move forward. I think most realistic men see things from my perspective as well. And I think it’s realistic to think that most men do not drown their sorrow away in alcohol. At least I’d hope that’s not the case.
I’m three months post-breakup with a woman I was madly in love with who left me for another dude. 3.5 years together. I truly thought she was my person and we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.
I have a very strong circle of family and long term friends. I have so many things going for me in my life – good career, financially stable, I’m in great shape and take care of myself very well, I’m in therapy, I hike, do jiu jitsu and travel often. My friends all tell me I’m a helluva catch and any woman would be so lucky to have me.
Despite ALL of that, I’m fucking miserable. I’m so lost in life right now and I truly feel like there’s a part of me that’s missing. Crazy thing is, she betrayed me and there’s no going back, but my heart deeply still cares for her. All I do is just tell myself, “I’m not sure when or how, but this will pass and tomorrow is a new day.”
This is an impossible question to answer because not only is every man different, every relationship is too.
I don’t think anyone ever fully “gets over” someone they were fully in love with. It needs to be grieved, like the death of someone close. You move on, and the pain subsides, and room is eventually made for other people, but every now and again, the pain will come back and haunt you with thoughts about what might have been.
I think you will find, OP, that while men and women sometimes have different strategies for tackling the grief, the pain is the same.
In one sense I’ve obviously gotten over not being with people I’ve been interested in, but on another level it’s pretty easy for me to return to fresh-feeling feelings regarding each case and to remember what it felt like in the moment. I think some people are just more given to yearning than others.
(Obviously, this has its own dangers – deifying people, etc.)
In my experience, drinking, hanging out with friends, hitting the gym, and even getting with other women only temporarily takes your mind off of it. Once youre back to laying in bed alone with your thoughts, it’s still there.
The only way to heal is to just play the waiting game. Eventually you wake up one day and realize you haven’t thought about her in a long time, or that, for whatever reason, she isn’t as important to you as she used to be. You stop going back through old texts and looking at her social media, and the strange thing is you just realize that you haven’t done it in a while, like you don’t even consciously try to stop doing those things.
It sucks the meaning out of life
not that hard. give me TV, internetand motorcycles, and im good
If the man is emotionally intelligent enough then yeah, it can be that easy. Love is not a finite feeling, so realizing that you will love again makes the loss far easier. Just like any other loss, you accept it and work through it-life stops for no one and the liver you dwell, the more possible opportunities for love you’re going to miss.
I was with a girl from age 13 to 21 and that sucked when we broke up, especially because I didn’t want to. I was a kid and I thought it was the end of the world lol. Probably took me a year to get the romantic hope back.
You either learn to not love them anymore, or you get used to it day by day.
Men in general are good at putting everything aside to get shit done and “get over it” outwardly. They may appear to move on an be fine but that’s just on the outside.
Being with other women is hard for 95% of guys. Getting a girl in the first place was incredibly hard, and losing her is devastating. Learning to date again and finding another you can vibe with is a huge hurdle that gets worse and worse the longer you are with one woman.
Even if you are cheating on your girl, and can be with the other one if she breaks up with you, that woman is still a huge part of your life and many many of your friends are actually HER friends.
The only way to protect yourself from this long term pain and recovery, is to make sure you have your own freind group separate from her.
That’s a huge red flag for many women who can’t stand you living outside of them. They are suspicious of anything you do and any time you spend with Your friends, especially if any other women will be around.
So most men end up with no or few social connections outside of ones who come through her. They don’t get to flirt or keep up with dating trends and info. They don’t talk to any male freinds they DO have about dating or women in depth and are unprepared to be alone again.
Single men end up happier overall as long as they have those social connections and family. It isn’t worth losing all of that to be controlled by a girlfriend.
Men! Remember this. Find a woman that respects you having separate friendships and spending time without her. She should be supportive of your time and needs as an individual person outside of the relationship.
ANYWAY men take breakups really hard, even when it’s their fault, even when they have options. Unless they never fully committed to her in the first place and she was just home base to their player lifestyle.
A man in love doesn’t really recover until they fall in love again and even then it still comes into their heads from time to time for years afterward.
But you almost never see us struggle. We never talk about it. Most don’t cry, especially where anyone can see. And that is not all learned behavior.
Men and women are more like two species that are sexually compatible than the same species. We are just different. Physically, emotionally, mentally. Some behaviors are reinforced, but many are innate.
I lost so much weight from the loss taking its toll on me that my friend asked if I was on heroin. So it can be pretty damn bad. Thank god it didn’t last forever. Distance and time. The booze and women were only distractions. I definitely wouldn’t cope that way again. Too messy.
It’s akin to someone you care about passing away. You must grieve the loss of the person you loved of course. You also must grieve the person you were, as such a loss will have changed you. You must also grieve the future you envisioned together.
Depends on the dude, some of us are pretty good at getting over things. Anything really. Death of an immediate family member, killing in the military, car wrecks that would be “life changing” in someone else’s eyes.
You won’t hear a lot from the people who bounce right back, because when you truly do not give a fuck, you realize that the people who can’t get over shit are the ones who need the attention.
Time has only made it worse, not better.
Hard as fuck.
Those beers and other women are to numb the pain and kill the loneliness. Theyre band aids. But they dont fix the problem.
Meet enough people to realize there are plenty of fish in the sea.
It’s easy because I know I don’t have a second life, I’m moving forward and learn my lessons, it’s easy but honestly, if I think of her I mean really think of her and our time or the feelings, I will start crying, so I don’t think of her, so it’s easy.
It’s like feeling something in the back of your head, no matter of how you ignore it and go on, it’s always there
I have never been in love and have actively reconditioned my brain to not feel anything if the situation in OP arrives. I would try to be more logical and make sense of the situation, if she is happy I wouldn’t be down for long. It may sound heartless reading it but thats a defense mechanism I guess.
It’ll fuck up your mental space for some years
So we broke up at the start of February after 5 and a half years. She made the decision.
We bought a house together and we had a dog together. Not long after the split her dad passed away from cancer after a 16 odd month battle. So we were just stuck in limbo after the break up and I sort of just made myself available to support her until she was ready to sell the place and get on with it. So much of my support system said fuck that, just dip. She ended it. And I’m jeopardizing my healing.
But I couldn’t.
I love this woman so fucking much.
She loves me too. But in her words we just don’t work together anymore. We grew apart. We fought. We kept letting each other down with expectations and misalignment.
I know one day I will be okay. But right now I’ve gone from coming home to a loving partner and a loving doggo in a lovely home, to a little shoebox unit full of my boxes and pieces of my life.
A friend gave me some really simple advice.
You will be okay. Eventually. You have to be. Because life will keep moving either way.
So right now I’m just keeping myself busy.
Gym, unpacking, work, bro time. And the quiet time when I’m lying in bed alone I’m so fucking exhausted it doesn’t matter anyway, and if the thoughts do creep in I just practice meditation.
I am completely not okay. I am shattered. But I gotta keep pushing on and be the man I know I can be.
It’s the worst pain I ever felt in my life. I wasn’t able to eat for about 2 months I would take 2 bites off of rice and chicken and that would be it for the DAY). I had extreme anxiety to the point I would get nauseous 24/7, even made a post about it I think. It hurts to see your parents know something is wrong with you but you know they have no way to help you as well. My heart was broken,it builds character immensely though and I’m grateful for having the chance to better myself, even though a year and a half later it still stings a bit.
If you meant just being far away from the woman he loves I don’t think I have the answer to that lol.
Hard. I had feelings for a friend. She wasn’t interested. It was too hard to be around her, the feelings just continued to grow. I had to distance myself. Now we don’t talk. Sucks. I miss her, but not the hurt.