Читать книгу It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Breakup Buddy - Greg Behrendt - Страница 8

So how is it that a Superfox like you finds herself holding the winning ticket in the pain lottery? A seemingly endless jackpot of sorrow that you won’t be splitting with anyone else. That doesn’t mean you’re alone. In fact, as our stories show, everyone goes through it. But here’s the thing that you need to know right now: YOU ARE GOING TO GET THROUGH THIS. And like every lottery winner, you can either take it in one lump sum and figure out what you’re going to do with it, OR you can spread it out in yearly installments and really make it last. We prefer option one. Sure, it’s less pain than if you drag it out for years, but if you take it all now, you get to decide what you’re going to do with it. How to invest it, spend it, roll around in it—or get rid of it.

Breakups are among the most excruciating things that can happen to a person invited to the concert called life. We acknowledge this and in no way want to belittle your heartbreak. But we’ve purposefully made the tone of this book humorous in an effort to distract you from the very real and overwhelming feelings that you’re having. We intend to give you genuine advice and practical suggestions for not only dealing with this insufferable situation but also redecorating your living room. “What?” you ask. Believe it or not, it’s all part of the process.

If you’re reading our book right now, it’s probably because you’ve been dumped, you’re brokenhearted, you’re still stuck on your ex, or even all of the above. Perhaps you were the dumper and are having second thoughts—we’ll deal with you soon enough, but we’re pretty sure you made the right decision. Whether you delivered or received the “It’s Not You, It’s Me” speech, as hard as it is to hear right now, your relationship wasn’t a match. We know you wanted it to be and are hoping that we’re going to tell you that this isn’t real. That he or she will be knocking down your door tomorrow, begging to be taken back, and all your pain and heartache will be erased. That there’s a simple way to fix all the problems, and if you just try a little bit harder you can still have the happily ever after that you envisioned. You want us to tell you that people can change—but the truth of the matter is that it’s called a breakup because it’s broken. Even if you can’t see it right now, if you’ve broken up, at least one person in your relationship knows it deep down. And if he ended it, that means he doesn’t want to try to fix it either.

The hard truth is that breakups are sink-or-swim. Some people spend their whole life in an emotional downward spiral because they can’t get over lost love. Others, most notably you, use it as a turning point to reevaluate, rebuild, and possibly redecorate (we weren’t kidding about the living room). Bottom line: This can be a breakup or a breakover. It’s up to you.

“Who are you to give me advice?” you shout, disrupting the other customers in the bookstore. “Why should I listen to you guys or even read any further, for that matter?” Keep it down, Crazypants, everyone’s looking at you now. Here’s who we are. We’re two people who have both experienced truly self-esteem-crushing, spirit-breaking, gut-wrenchingly painful breakups of which we were on the receiving end. Let’s just say they were stinky and they also sucked and they made us want to lie in bed for the rest of our lives. Thank God we didn’t make that choice. (Just think of the bedsores and long, curling fingernails we’d have by now.) Those breakups led to what we like to think of as our happy marriage. (Don’t worry—you won’t be hearing about our marriage every ten pages. There is nothing worse than self-satisfied married people telling you how it is. We just think it’s significant that our worst experiences led to what we ultimately think of as our best. ’Nuff said?)

This is a different book from He’s Just Not That Into You. That book was designed specifically to help you figure out when your relationship was going nowhere or whether your boyfriend was, well, into you. But we know that even when you realize he’s just not that into you, the hardest part can still be getting up the courage to end the relationship and move on. Breaking up is scary, painful, disruptive, and traumatic—even if you know on some level that it’s the right thing to do—so It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken is designed to help you not only get out of an unsatisfying relationship but also get over it so that you can be ready for the better things in life that are coming your way. At the end of the day, it’s about whether YOU like yourself enough to face the reality that your romance wasn’t working, to recognize that it wasn’t giving you what you needed and deserved, and to pull yourself out of the dumps and seize the opportunity before you. Because as messed up as everything seems right now, this could be the single best thing that’s ever happened to you.

That’s right—even better than when you got your first apartment, found those Gucci stilettos on sale, won the Oscar for best actress, or whatever appears on your own personal highlight reel. Think about it this way:When you and your ex got into this relationship, you were two brand-new sports cars driving side by side. You were sleek, desirable, sexy, and confident, and the ride was exhilarating. After a while you zigged when he zagged, you weren’t driving the same speed anymore, one of you was always trying to catch up, and eventually you crashed and totaled the cars. When the insurance paid out, one of you decided to buy a new car instead of fixing the totaled one. For those of you who don’t own cars, the translation of this metaphor is that you and your ex (or soon-to-be ex) no longer share the belief that the relationship is worth fixing. One of you wants a new car altogether. And besides, who wants a relationship that despite attempted repairs always stalls when you try to shift gears? Not you.

It’s called a breakup because it’s broken, and in the pages ahead you will come to learn that that’s actually a good thing. So read on, breakup warrior! From adversity comes greatness. Life’s biggest rewards come from the biggest challenges, or something like that. Many of us have found the road to a better life and a truer love in the face of some serious heartbreak. Some of us even happened to have pens handy to write down catchy proverbs to help inspire or annoy you in your time of need. So let’s dive in already, because there’s nothing more annoying than a self-help book full of nothing but proverbs! We’ve done our best to make this book so much more.

The format includes a question-and-answer section, work-book exercises, firsthand stories from our own breakups, and a little thing we like to call the Psycho Confessional, which is where you can turn when you need an “At least I’m not doing that bad” boost to your self-esteem. The questions and examples in this book have come not only from our own experiences, but also from those of our friends and our extensive breakup survey, where well over 500 people shared the gory details of their sad but true breakups with us. You’ll be glad they did. And now let’s turn the page and start the process of finding our way back to an even more rocking you.