479 - Grief, Breakups, and Hope for What Comes Next
Five stages of grief and breaking up
The Five Stages of Grief model was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and became widely known after she published her book On Death and Dying in 1969. Although she originally developed it as a framework for terminal illness and dealing with death, it has been adapted for any type of grief.
It’s important to remember that the model is not linear, and you do not move through the five stages; any of them can come at any time, and you may not experience all of them. Breakups in particular may elicit different responses depending on the type of relationship and breakup. Some may have a very long-lasting emotional response and for others, you may not feel any of the stages of grief. For each stage of grief, we’ll leave a nugget of wisdom to help if you’re experiencing it.
Denial
Denial is the stage that can initially help you survive the loss. You might think life makes no sense, has no meaning, and is too overwhelming. You start to deny the news and, in effect, go numb.
Nugget of wisdom: Ester Perel has a card game based on her podcast, “Where Should we Begin?” In it, one of the cards asks, “What is something that your ex wishes they could change about you?” For some people, that’s probably not a good idea, especially if they tend to get very down on themselves. But for others, it might be an interesting thought experiment to do, and a good way to look back at yourself and take some responsibility for parts of the relationship.
Bargaining
In a way, this stage is false hope. You might falsely make yourself believe that you can avoid grief through this type of negotiation.
Nugget of Wisdom: Do a social media purge of your ex and their family or “snooze” for 30 days on Facebook. Gary W. Lewandowski Jr, Professor and former Chair in the Department of Psychology at Monmouth University in New Jersey explains that Facebook research participants who stalked their ex’s profile more ended up having a harder time dealing with the breakup. Reports included “nagging feelings of love, continued sexual desire, more distress and negative feelings, and less personal growth post-breakup," says the expert.
Anger
You find it incomprehensible how something like this could happen to you. Certain psychological responses of a person undergoing this phase would be, "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"; "Why would this happen?" Some may lash out at loved ones.
Nugget of Wisdom: Therapy Jeff had a reel on his Patreon (that is now open to the public) called “15 Things to Ask Yourself After a Breakup.” To help get out of an anger spiral, it might be a good idea to practice a little gratitude. Two of the things he wants you to ask yourself are, “What have I learned from this relationship that I can apply to my future relationships?” and “What is the overall narrative I want to take from the relationship and how do I want to look back on it?”
Depression
Depression is commonly associated with grief. It can be a reaction to the emptiness we feel when we are living in reality and realize the person or situation is gone or over.
Nugget of Wisdom: If you find yourself scrolling constantly on your phone and can’t get yourself to do much else during this time, consider installing a breakup app on your phone!
Break-up boss, Breakup buddy, and Mend, are some examples.
Acceptance
In this stage, your emotions may begin to stabilize. You re-enter reality. You come to terms with the fact that the "new" reality is your partner is never coming back.
Nugget of Wisdom: Listen back to Multiamory 365 on Heartbreak and Recovery where we discussed a lot of different ways to recover after going through a breakup. And for your next relationship, via Poly.land: Think about discussing breakups at the beginning of your relationship and hashing out whether or not there’s a specific way you want a breakup to go. That way, if the time comes, you know what to do.
Some things to remember during this process:
The issues that plagued you during your relationship may also plague you during the breakup.
Even though we all want that wonderful feeling of closure, the opportunity to come to some sort of consensus and have each of you completely own up to your own shit and shortcomings probably isn’t going to happen.
You also may not be friends with that person again, unless you are super intentional about it from the beginning of the breakup and if that’s something the both of you really want.
Find a support network throughout all of this. Your friends, your family, definitely a therapist, all of that will help you work through this.
It really is okay to break up. You have the capacity to get through it. You are lovable and you will love again.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about breakups as told through the lens of the five stages of grief. Breakups are hard for anyone, especially if you're breaking up in a long-term, very entwined relationship. It can be difficult to know what to do or where to turn, and a lot of the feelings that come up can surprise you.
Emily recently went through a very significant breakup and is still in the healing and recovering process, which is what inspired this episode to explore those topics. Maybe you'll recognize yourself in some of these thoughts. Hopefully, together, we can find hope for what comes next.
If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference often on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book, or wherever you get your books. Also, check out the first nine episodes of this podcast, where we cover some of our most widely used and shared communication tools.
Emily: A couple maybe days, weeks ago, we were joking about the fact that about 100 episodes ago, Dedeker went through a significant breakup. Basically, every 100 episodes, one of the Multiamory crew has to go through a significant breakup, I guess.
Jase: Oh goodness. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
Emily: Yes, that's rough. Well, now it's my turn. I think these things just happen. We talk about on the show so much that it's okay to break up, and sometimes even we need to just take our own advice. That's something that I've really realized is okay. We're going to talk about the five stages of grief because I think that that is an imperfect model, but definitely a model that you can feel when you're going through something very significant, like a breakup, like a divorce, like somebody dying, even a pet dying, anything along those lines. Just very challenging moments in a person's life.
I also want to acknowledge Dedeker recently went through a breakup, so both of us have been having moments of grief.
Dedeker: I've been having moments. It's slightly different.
Emily: Yes, it is, if you want to talk a little bit.
Dedeker: Are you okay to share at least a tiny bit of context on your breakup?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Because it wasn't just a cash hookup that you said no to.
Emily: Oh, god, no. No, this was a nine-year-long relationship that has been the longest relationship of my life. We were entering our 10th year together. We moved in together after about a year of seeing each other. I had pets. Jason and I got these pets together, and then they moved with me and with my partner. We lived in a variety of places together, but the last place that we lived together, we had lived for a few years and fully expected to continue living there, I think, for a long period of time.
It had become clear to me that it just wasn't making me happy and going to ultimately make me happy, was something that I really needed to actually examine and look at, and do something about, and I finally did. Additionally, this is the relationship that I moved away from polyamory to become monogamous for.
I know that I've discussed a lot over the last however many years we've been doing this show, that I'm the person who is the monogamous one or in the monogamous relationship. This was the relationship that I was monogamous in. We will see if that continues to be the case for me in terms of my future relationships. I definitely have a feeling I'll be in some sort of non-monogamous capacity in my future. At this point, that was the catalyst and the reason why I was monogamous for as many years as I was.
Jase: I think probably a lot of people can relate to a relationship being significant, not just because of amount of time but the amount of entwinement, and then also the amount of how much you changed your life for that relationship.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: I think we all do that to a certain extent. I don't mean to say that, "This specifically means it's a bigger deal than others," but just that they're those things that we may change that are significant about ourselves, or certain compromises or things we might do for the sake of the relationship that can add a lot of weight to that.
Emily: Absolutely. Dedeker, how about you?
Dedeker: This is such a funny exercise because something that's been on my brain as I've been going through a breakup, or I finished a breakup. Completed? I don't know. When does it finish? When does it start? I don't know.
Jase: That's a good question.
Emily: I don't know about that. Does it ever really end?
Dedeker: A breakup officially happened at the beginning of this year, I'll say that, and then it's been the healing and recovering process since then. Something that's really been on my brain a lot has been how breakups and relationships ending can be so different, really. I do think, from a social perspective, we can all agree, "Oh, yes, breakups suck. They're hard." Then when you actually get in the weeds, there's so many different nuances and flavors. It's like different types of pain. For instance, a very easy one is the pain of if you are the one who was dumped versus if you were the one who did the dumping.
Emily: For sure.
Dedeker: Those are both painful situations, but it's slightly different types of pain. Of course, something we've talked about a lot on the show is, I think in your experience, Emily, going through a monogamous breakup is different from someone who's going through a non-monogamous breakup, where they still have other partners going through a breakup, where you live with someone is different than when you don't live with them. I don't know.
I don't want to put all of our breakups under little petri dishes and microscopes to look at them, but I do find that fascinating, because my most recent breakup was very different from yours in the sense that I wasn't living with this person. We were only romantically dating for a year or so, but we'd known each other for a really long time, like 15 years or so. We'd also had a history of dating way back in the day. I don't know. It's so interesting that you and I, Emily, it's like we've both been a little bit on a similar trajectory of recovering, but what's baked into those respective breakup cakes is very different.
Emily: For sure.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: I will say that proximity and being near someone. I lived with my ex for a month, and then through a variety of circumstances, realized that that was an untenable situation and I needed to leave. That was an extremely good decision for me to do because I do not recommend if it's-- I think in some circumstances you can, and Jason and I navigated that as well as we possibly could for a time. I think it was longer than a month.
Jase: Yes, I think it was a few months.
Dedeker: Yes, you guys lived together for a couple months.
Emily: Yes. Exactly. It's not a deal, of course, at all. However, it can be done to greater or lesser degrees in terms of success. My living together with my ex was not successful, and I definitely needed to go. From that standpoint, it amplified the intensity, I think, of the emotions that I had and am currently having.
Dedeker: Totally.
Jase: Yes, like extra level of change there when you're also changing where you're living and lots of other circumstances about your life.
Dedeker: Also, again, under this category of different flavors of pain, there's that particular pain of I'm having to be in very close proximity with somebody. Whether the situation is we're still living together and we need to figure out moving out, or we're co-parenting together, or we run a business together, or we run in the same circles, we go to the same kink parties. It's like we still have this proximity to where we can't really escape from each other. That's hard. Then there's also the pain of when you don't live with somebody, they're just, oh, they're just gone. Like they've just disappeared.
When I talk about these things, it's not necessarily about comparing and saying that one is more painful than the other, but I do find the contrast really fascinating. That was more my breakup is dealing with the pain of, "Oh, this person is just suddenly gone," while also not having to deal with, "This person is still here. Wow, that's really painful."
Emily: This person is in my face every day to a degree.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Absolutely.
Dedeker: For this episode, we're talking about the five stages of grief. With each one, we're going to be talking about really specifically the ways that these different types of grief could show up for you, and just wanting to drop in the reminder that it could be very different for different people because there's so many different moving pieces that go into a relationship and go into a relationship ending.
Emily: Essentially, over the last month and a half, I've had a lot of time to reflect and to write and to process and think about all of the things that have come up for me throughout the course of this time of grief. I think there is definitely a lot that people can hopefully glean from my observations and also realize that when and if this ever happens to you, it may be very different for you as well.
We all process grief differently and go through grief differently, and I think that it's important to realize, yes, I felt something similar to that, but also, I may be going through something that is unique to myself as well. You're not alone. Dedeker and I are both going through this right now, and a lot of us out there probably are because it has been kind of breakup season recently.
Jase: I think the thing that I think is really cool about this episode and also a little different from what we normally do is this is not a-- we've come through something and we've done a lot of research and we have some conclusions about how one can process this. This is raw and in the middle of it to hopefully show that's a lot of different thoughts that come up, a lot of different feelings. I don't want to put myself fully into the five stages of grief with all of this, but I'll say at least with Dedeker's breakup, that was also someone who spent a lot of time with me.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: There's been a smaller scale, but still significant grieving process for me that's also been colored very differently because it's also something entirely out of my control, because it's not my relationship, it wasn't my breakup that I had. There's a whole lot of interesting, complicated dynamics. My hope for this episode is that it gives people a glimpse into some real life thoughts and feelings and things that come up, like Emily said, to hope that you feel less alone or that more people can relate to what you're going through, and then also that yours might be totally different.
Dedeker: I appreciate you bringing that up, Jase, because that is something that doesn't get talked about a lot. Actually, I have a client that I'm thinking about in particular who's not only grieving a breakup, but also going through the really complicated process of grieving the loss of the people attached to their partner, like their family-
Jase: Absolutely.
Dedeker: -in particular. I think the same thing can happen with a metamour as well. Some people, it might be good riddance. I'm glad to get rid of that metamour. Maybe I never liked them anyway, but I know in this case, you and Jase, you had a certain amount of friendship with the person that I was dating.
Jase: Yes, for many years. That's been challenging. Hopefully, we can get into all of this and give people just that real time perspective of some thoughts and some feelings that can come up and just the variety of those.
Emily: All righty. Let's move into the five stages of grief, which Dedeker, in your episode, 100 episodes or so ago, you talked about this briefly. The five stages of grief model was developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and it became famous after she published her book, On Death and Dying, in 1969. This model essentially describes people with terminal illness facing their own death.
Dedeker: Wow. That's a very particular lens. I didn't realize that's what it came from.
Emily: I didn't either until I read this. This was fascinating, and it was soon adapted as a way to think about grief in general, but absolutely, I think if you're facing something terminal within yourself, all of these things may apply, but again, they're going to imply in different ways. This is not a linear model. You can experience any of them at any time, and you also may not go through all five stages.
The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We'll get a little bit into more detail on each of them throughout the episode, and also just some of the things that I felt like I was going through that exemplified each in the moment. When I looked back at my journals and at my processing that I had done on paper, which I highly recommend for anyone going through something like this. It's really nice to be able to have an outlet for it.
That could be your friends, that could be a therapist, definitely highly recommend that too, but even just writing things down can be extremely important. It's cathartic to get to go back and view where you were and how far you've come as you move through these stages of grief and as you move through your healing process.
Jase: As Emily mentioned, this process of going through the five stages of grief is not a linear process like I think it was originally conceptualized. Since then, researchers have said, "No, we actually jump around between these. We may not go through all of them." The way we're going to structure this episode is we're going to take a little section to talk about each of the five, discussing it, discussing some things that come up with it, as well as some nuggets of wisdom that we've been able to find through other resources and things to think about and things you can do for when you identify with some of this stuff in this phase.
The idea is that you could jump around, get pieces that you want either to help yourself, to help others, or to come back to and reference later on. We'll be going through each of the five. The first one is denial. Denial is the stage that initially helps you cope with the shock of realizing there's going to be this big change. You might think that it just doesn't make sense, this can't be happening. It's too overwhelming. There's this kind of denying or going numb or not being able to believe this is real, this must be happening to someone else.
Dedeker: I think the tricky thing about denial when it comes to relationships is I think the denial process can happen when you're still in the relationship.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: That you may have had maybe a half of a realization, or you're starting to approach this sense of realization that this isn't going to work, this isn't sustainable, this relationship should end, but we can quickly sink into this sense of, no, it's okay. No, it's just a rough patch. No, we'll get through it. No, I don't even want to think about that. Sometimes I just can't even go there, and so I'm going to think about something else, or I'm going to distract myself in some way. I think that that's the tricky thing here, is that sometimes there's a part of us that knows, ooh, there's going to be a loss, and that's going to cause grief. Then we can immediately go into that denial even before the losses technically actually happened.
Emily: I think that's a really good point. I know during the very beginning of the breakup, right when it happened, this absolutely came up for me, this denial sense. First of all, I did think that breakups would just be easier because I was the one doing the breaking up, but let me tell you, it's not necessarily easier at all. I know, Dedeker, you said that you've been on either side of this, in your last really big breakup, you were broken up with, and in this one, you were the one doing the breaking up. Are there things that you found that were different?
Dedeker: Just a really different flavor. I do think, again, the big, big breakup I went through a couple years ago, it was a much longer relationship, a much more physically, financially entwined relationship. To be broken up with out of this layer of just being much more crushed then, I think-- because it's rejection. It's like this whole other set of baggage that you got to work through and sort through about your own self-worth and self-esteem and trying to patch those things up and make yourself whole again.
Then I also thought the same thing with the more recent one, where I was like, well, at least I won't have to deal with that because I'm the one doing the breaking up. Again, it's just this different flavor of pain. I think it's so difficult to enact something like a boundary sometimes when you know it's the right thing and you know that this is going to be the thing that's going to protect me, and it still hurts.
Enacting a boundary, whether it's leaving a conversation or whether it's leaving a relationship, it's a victory, but it's not a super rah rah party victory all the time. That's definitely been something that's been on my brain, that there's a particular type of difficulty in making the right choice, but it's still being painful.
Jase: There are many times when ultimately ending a relationship will be the best for both people, or at least for yourself to a very significant degree. Like, wow, finally, this is so freeing, but the getting there is not nearly as easy as you think. I think this is one that was really interesting, seeing this with Emily and talking to you about it, Emily, as we're coming up to it, and I feel like both Dedeker and I would say things about like, "We're here to support you. This is going to be really hard." You would often respond with like, "I don't think it'll be that bad. I think it'll be okay." I think that's a form of that denial.
Dedeker: It's a denial. Yes, for sure.
Jase: I'm not really thinking about how big a change this is, how big a deal this is, even if it feels like I've really thought it through and I do feel good about my decision, but there could be denial about just the reality of what it's going to look like.
Emily: For some context, I was in Hong Kong when I realized that I was going to make this decision and do this when I got home. I think the challenge was the actual leading up to the act of breaking up, as opposed to thinking about what was going to come next. That's what really caught me off guard is I was very anxious about getting home and then actually doing the breakup, and that was very scary to me to know that I was leading up to that. Then once it happened, I didn't even fathom that that part would be as difficult as it was. I think that the two of you had more of an insight or more of an objective understanding that that would be the case.
Jase: Sure, because we weren't the person who was in the state to need to deny and have to do it.
Emily: Exactly. I thought that I would bounce back pretty easily and fairly quickly, and that totally hasn't been the case. That was very much a denial thing. Also, I really, really, truly thought that maybe there was going to be a way to be friends. Maybe in some world, there will be eventually. I think, god, I guess I had these hopes that there were still parts of the relationship that we could continue to keep, like being able to play video games together or being able to watch TV together. Like, that wasn't going to freaking happen right away, even though we were living together.
Dedeker: What's interesting is I think that starts to lead more into the bargaining phase, actually.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Going down that pathway of, "Oh, I think we can still be friends. Maybe we can still be friends. Maybe there's things about the relationship that we don't have to throw in the garbage necessarily." That feels like the denial to bargaining pathway that I do want to dive into next.
Emily: Before that, I did want to throw out a little nugget of wisdom. This comes from Esther Peerel and a card game that she has based on her podcast, Where Should We Begin? In it, one of the cards asks, "What is something that your ex wishes they could change about you?" Now, I just want to put out there, for some people, this is probably not a good thing to think about because I think about that kind of stuff all the time. I think about, "Wow, my ex could have changed this about me, this about me, this about me."
If you get really down on yourself, then maybe don't necessarily go there. It is an interesting thought exercise. I think it's interesting to go there and ask yourself, "Huh, what did I contribute to maybe the ending of this? What's a way in which maybe I could have been different?" Maybe just a thought exercise on this is a reason why the two of us weren't compatible. Maybe think about that. Do a little exercise for yourself, and then take some responsibility or just have a realization that this is one of the many reasons why this relationship wasn't right for you.
Jase: I think when it comes to denial about the reality of the situation, something for people to consider as well is, like in Emily's case, to say, "I actually think it's going to be okay. I think we're going to be able to talk about it. It's going to be fine, or I don't think I'll be that broken up about it." Whatever the things are that come up with that denial, especially If someone else says, "Oh, gosh, I think this is going to be a big deal," to maybe try to find this middle ground of, you could still go in with that hope and that confidence that it's going to go well, but just also prepare a little bit for it to not go as well as you think so that then if it does go well, you get to feel like, "Oh, wow. Awesome. That went better than I expected," rather than setting yourself up with the best expectation that it can only be worse than that.
Emily: That is so you, Jase. You always want to underplay it just in case. Just in case.
Jase: For sure. Here's why I bring this up, is because I think for you, Emily, the way you expressed it is you thought it was going to be much easier and simpler than it was, and you were disappointed and frustrated by that. From my perspective, I think your breakup went a million times better than I expected it to, based on knowing that relationship.
Dedeker: Jase brought in his very, very low expectations, even to a breakup that wasn't even his.
Jase: Right. I think from that point of view, I'm like, "Wow, Emily, you actually came out of that pretty well. That actually went quite well for both of you, more than I expected you to, at least."
Emily: For sure. No, the actual breakup act, I think, did go very well. It was very understanding. Yes, there was a lot of pain and hurt and maybe a couple of unkind words thrown around. All in all, that actual night went okay. It was what came after that maybe wasn't as good. I think that that was surprising for me, too, because I didn't really know what to expect. Unfortunately, I hadn't really prepared myself at all for what came next.
Jase: Maybe that's the dream, right? Is to have the hopes for the best, but have some preparations in place for if it's not that.
Emily: For sure.
Jase: Maybe there's another nugget to try out if you're finding yourself in this situation. All right, we're going to move on to bargaining now next, which is not normally next in the order, but Dedeker brings up a good point that some of these things can be a gateway into bargaining-type thinking. We're going to go into that next to compare that. Real quick, we want to take a moment to say, if you appreciate this content and you want to support this show, there are two ways to do that.
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Dedeker: It's interesting. We initially laid out this episode to talk about anger next, but as we said at the top, these things were not necessarily linear. It doesn't go in this perfect, neat little order. You do tend to jump around. I know when I think about some of my most recent breakup experiences, denial for sure led into bargaining, not necessarily into anger. Bargaining is this, sometimes it can be a sense of false hope, or maybe this sense that you do have the ability to control the situation. You do have the ability to change things that might not be changeable.
It's essentially this idea that maybe I can avoid some intense pain and intense grief by negotiating, by trying to do something differently. With my really big breakup a few years ago, it was very much about, "Okay, what if I maybe I just need to find the right way to apologize, and then he won't break up with me? I just need to write out a really, really thorough apology, and that'll be it, or, no, no, no. Maybe if we just do one more session with a couples counselor, that's going to be it."
It's easy to get caught in this. Honestly, even if you're the one who's doing the breaking up with, if you're the one dumping somebody else, that, of course, at the end of the day, we'd rather things were feeling good rather than feeling bad. We can have that temptation to throw spaghetti at the wall, right? Like, let's just try absolutely everything we can and see if there's a way to salvage this. Sometimes that does work for people, and a lot of times it doesn't.
Emily: Yes, I felt like we were really good roommates. We were really good at living together. That's why it was so shocking for me to have a situation where I felt like we really didn't live together well after the breakup happened. I hoped, again, that we could take all of the great parts of the relationship and who we were together in that relationship and then transition it over into a friendship.
I even talked about this breakup a little bit in the Patreon Facebook group. One of the things that really struck me, somebody who talked about a breakup that they had and how intentional they were with their partner about transitioning into a friendship. That never really happened at all in this breakup. It made me feel really sad because I had hoped, in some way, that we could start to parse out ways to make that transition. That felt like a bargaining thing to me.
What if I just say the right thing to him, talk about something that's easy for him to talk about, and then maybe he'll want to stay friends or be in my life in some way, all of these things? It just didn't happen. It just really didn't go there. I didn't know why he was so angry, like I was trying to control the situation or just wondering in my head, how can I control the situation to make his emotions feel better and how sorry I felt?
Dedeker: Yes. The way that I've seen this play out for some people is sometimes something that frustrates me about the de-escalation rhetoric that's really common in non-monogamous spaces is that sometimes de-escalation and changing the format and function of a relationship can be great. If two people come to the table and realize, "Oh, we're going to function better as just kink play partners, and maybe we shouldn't be talking about building a future together. Maybe that's the better shape for us." If both people can get on board with that, that can be great. I've also seen that that sort of de-escalation negotiation can actually be bargaining.
Emily: Oh, interesting.
Dedeker: I've seen people where someone's breaking up with them and they're like, "What if we're just friends with benefits? That's totally fine. I'm totally fine if that's all you want, right? Can we have a relationship then if we're just friends with benefits?" That it's not two people realizing, "Hey, let's experiment with our relationship looking this way. Maybe it's going to be better." It's often one person just trying to bargain, to cling on, trying to avoid the pain in any way possible by tossing out. Basically, what if I just shrink myself and shrink my needs and shrink what I want from the relationship? Will you not reject me then or will you not hurt me then?
Jase: On the other side of having these requests of like, "Well, what if you just did these things differently and if I stopped giving you these, maybe we could still stay together and we could still be friends or something." The other person might be more in the like, "Fuck that, that doesn't sound like a good deal to me." Yes. Various forms of bargaining to not have to go through the upheaval and the change and the feeling of failure that I think is so embedded in our cultural narratives about breakups that they are a failure.
Like Dedeker was saying, even in communities, like a lot of the non-monogamy community where it's like, "Oh, but breakups aren't a failure. It's just a transition to a different type of relationship." Then sometimes you can set yourself up with this expectation that I'm failing if I don't do what I think is a successful transition into this different type of relationship. It's hard, we talk about it on this show where the three of us have had these very successful transitions at different times in our relationships with each other, but that's the minority of all of the relationships all of us have had in our lives that have turned out that way.
I think sometimes we can even contribute to this myth that like, "Oh, yes, if you just communicate well, you can do this." It does happen, and it's very cool when it does. It's still hard the whole time you get there though. It's not like this magical wand that makes breakups easy. It was still a lot of pain in that transition for us, even though it did work out for that. A lot of times, I think people can cause themselves a lot more pain by trying to stay in this bargaining too long, of trying to find some way to make something work when that's not really what's serving either of the people in the relationship really.
Emily: Yes. Our nugget of wisdom for bargaining is something that I found on a lot of different Reddit posts and when I look up how to get over a breakup or how to deal with a breakup, and it's a social media purge of your ex and of their family specifically, especially if you were fairly close with their family, or even just if you have been with this person for a while, their family is going to be close to you in some way.
Do a purge or even just do a snooze of them. That's something that you can do on Facebook, for example, for 30 days at the very least. I'm lucky because my ex is not on Facebook or any social media at all, but his family definitely is. I think that even not putting the opportunity to engage with them in any way is a really good thing to do, to just let myself heal, let myself not even think about that for at least 30 days, if not longer.
Jase: Yes. There's a study that was done by Facebook research actually, and Dr. Levandowski, the junior professor and former chair in the Department of Psychology at Monmouth University in New Jersey. In this study, they found that participants, who did they say stalked their ex's profile, but people who would look at their ex's profile after their breakup were found to have a harder time dealing with that breakup.
They reported things like nagging feelings of love, continued sexual desire, more distress and negative feelings, and less personal growth. There even has been some research here to show like, this really isn't helpful for us, it's not healthy for us. I remember the first time really getting this was actually seeing a partner of mine dealing with this with her ex on MySpace.
Dedeker: Wow. Really taking it back.
Emily: You're really aging yourself to his--
Dedeker: No one alive knows what MySpace is anymore. At least no one who's cool and young and hip.
Jase: No one cool, no one cool-
Emily: That's true.
Jase: -knows what MySpace is. Yes.
Dedeker: I don't know if I ever stalked an ex on MySpace. I stalked crushes for sure.
Jase: It was specifically seeing how negatively that was affecting her actually was the first light bulb moment for me back then of like, "Oh gosh, yes, this just sucks that we actually have access to this, this actually makes it much harder." I could say the real-life proxy of that is if you have a really close friend group, that's going to be really hard to not have that in your face all of the time. I think at least with the social media, it's something we can control a little more easily.
Emily: Let's talk about anger. Anger is the one that we skipped and went straight to bargaining, but anger is absolutely something that can come up in a variety of ways throughout this grief process. I am not a person that tends to get very angry, and so it surprised me how angry I felt at times. I definitely remember one particular block of time where I was fricking angry, and anger, it's that feeling of how could something like this happen? How could this go so wrong when I really thought that I had, again, the tools to make this go better than it is going right now. It's also that question of like, is there somebody to blame? Should we be blaming people? I feel like I'm at blame at times. I wish that he would take responsibility for things as well, and that's pissing me off. So many different reasons to be angry. Have you felt anger, Dedeker, yet?
Dedeker: Ever?
Jase: Have you ever been angry?
Dedeker: No. I floated my way on a cloud out of that relationship.
Emily: Got it.
Dedeker: Oh, no. Fucking pissed, man. Again, I think I also thought that I was done with the anger. I thought that I had gone through the anger as the relationship was ending, and then now that I was resolute and ready to end the relationship, that that would be it. I would feel a lot more peace. I did feel a lot more peace, but the anger wasn't done for sure. I don't know why, I've been doing this podcast for 10 years, why I thought that that would be the case, that I wouldn't be angry after a breakup.
It's making me think of a couple of different things. I read, I know there was some evolutionary, some evo psych person who talked about, they theorized that anger evolve to help us not settle for a bad deal again, that if we were wronged in some way, or if we were cheated in some way, that we would recognize that, and that would help protect us the next time around.
Emily: Interesting.
Dedeker: Yes, and this is very much related to how anger comes up when we perceive that somebody has crossed a line or that someone has pushed a boundary or ignored a boundary or violated a boundary. Sometimes anger is how we even realize that, "Oh, I should have had a boundary around this."
I do think anger can be very healthy and, yes, that when you're in the postmortem phase of a relationship, you are trying to figure out, how do I prevent myself from going through this pain again? Then maybe retroactively taking inventory of all the ways that you were wronged by this person, in ways that you didn't let yourself actually feel that pain and anger in the moment.
Emily: Sure. Yes.
Jase: I think that anger can also be a kind of defense against the existential crisis that can come up with guilt or shame-
Dedeker: Oh, yes, you're right.
Jase: -about hurts that you may have caused or something you may have done wrong. Whether those are real or imagined that there is this kind of, "Oh, but if I did those bad things, I might be bad." This anger can come up actually, in an interesting way, protect your own self-image and your own self-esteem that's there. That can also cause us to go through all sorts of hoops there.
One thing that's worth acknowledging here is that in the examples that you two have been talking about, this is feeling anger at that ex-partner or at that situation. In the initial writing about this again, which is about people being diagnosed with some sort of fatal condition, that they have a limited amount of time left, that the anger is also anger at their loved ones, at the medical staff, at their family members. This just lashing out that comes out of nowhere. Not blaming them necessarily, but that anger directed at them.
I think that one's worth acknowledging briefly because we probably have other people in our lives who are here to support us or maybe just in parts of our lives where we're not even talking about this relationship. You might find yourself just being a little quicker to get frustrated, to get angry, to snap at even people completely unrelated to the situation, but especially as they come closer to it, there can be a little bit of that. I've definitely noticed an increased level of frustration, I would call it, rather than anger, from Emily over the last couple months of this--
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: Which I this is again helpful as the person not going through the breakup to also be a little bit aware of this. It doesn't mean--
Emily: Fascinating.
Jase: It doesn't mean you should excuse bad behavior. I don't think Emily's done any of that, but I've noticed that you're just little quicker to be upset or frustrated by something. That's very understandable because that's all part of this. Like, "How do I cope with all these feelings that just feel like too much?"
Emily: Yes. I think anger sometimes happens at self as well being like, "Why did I let myself get so diminished by this relationship? Why do I continue to let this affect me so much? Why am I still in this cycle of being affected?" I think that's a difficult place to be in and deal with and to move on from because we're so used to it, used to continuing that pattern. Even if you recognize it and get angry about it, it's difficult to break out of.
Dedeker: Well, I was real angry at myself because this was not the first time that I dated this person, and not the first time that I ran into these issues and so I was like, "Why did you do that again?"
Emily: Oh gosh.
Dedeker: Why are you so stupid?
Emily: No. It's okay. We do things like that too.
Dedeker: Why? Gosh, that was silly.
Emily: It's all right. We all make mistakes, and we all do things that-- We hope that they'll be better, and we hope that we can fix the problems of our last relationship with the new relationship. I think, unfortunately, that's not always going to happen.
Our nugget of wisdom for this particular section of the five stages of grief is from TherapyJeff. He had a reel in his Patreon that's now totally open to the public. You can go back and check out all of the reels. It was called 15 Things to Ask Yourself After a Breakup.
Sometimes, it's great to get yourself out of an anger spiral to just try to practice a little bit of gratitude. Two of the things that he wanted you to ask yourself are, what have I learned from this relationship that I can apply to my future relationships? What is the overall narrative I want to take from the relationship? How do I want to look back on it?
That might be really difficult when you're angry, but if you can take some time to maybe regulate and get a little bit of distance from the relationship, it's nice to be able to think, how do I want to look back on this time in my life? Especially if that time in your life was very significant and long like it was for me.
Dedeker: I want to add in a suggestion, though, that's very different from TherapyJeff's suggestion.
Emily: Fine.
Dedeker: I think this is a good exercise and I think it is important work. I think that if you are in the middle of the most white, hot, intense feelings of anger, it's really hard to sidestep into this other part of your brain that can take distance from the relationship.
I think about a suggestion that my therapist gave me about anger, where she said that you can think about like it when you're building a campfire, that you build the fire, but you build a ring of stones around it. Like you build a way to contain it.
What that meant in real life is she was like, you've got to work it out somehow. Maybe it is going out somewhere to scream or to punch dance it out or something. Or to write a really angry letter in red marker that's full of f-bombs and things like that that you don't send.
I do think there's something about, if you're really in the epicenter of anger, that you've got to let yourself feel that. I think it's okay to indulge that if you can do it in a way that's safe that's not taking it out on somebody else, that contained within that fire circle, as it were.
Jase: Yes, I love that idea of building the ring around it. Thinking what is a way I can do that. To also not hurt yourself. I mean that both physically as well as too much beating up on yourself emotionally, mentally as well, but finding some way to let the feelings go through, but inside that little ring of stones.
I think that can be an incredibly helpful thing because if we just bottle it up, that's when we'll lash out at other people or continue to hurt ourselves. All right. We have two phases left, but we're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors that help us keep this show going.
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Dedeker: Let's talk about depression.
Emily: Yay.
Jase: Yay.
Dedeker: Yay.
Emily: Gosh.
Dedeker: This is a rough one. Depression is what's most commonly associated with the grieving process. It's when we're actually feeling into that sense of emptiness and loss. We're not trying to avoid it, we're not denying it, we're not just feeling into that white hot anger.
It's the sadness. It's realizing that there isn't hope of changing this. There isn't hope of reversing it. It's gone. It's over. It's done. With my most recent breakup, something that caused a lot of frustration for me was holding onto this sense of I don't want to be sad about this.
I made up my mind, I was resolute, I know it's the right decision, I know that I'm doing the correct thing. I really don't want to have to be sad about this also. Maybe that was some of my own weird bargaining where I thought that because I was so complete on this and so resolute on this, that that meant I could bypass the sadness.
Emily: It didn't work?
Dedeker: Of course, it didn't work. Of course, it didn't work. I think it backfired. Fortunately, I have a lot of tools and I have a lot of loving people around me who could remind me, "Hey, yes, you have to be sad. It's okay to be sad, even though you don't want to be sad." That helps me to actually feel it. I think once I actually let myself start to feel it, then I could release it a little bit more.
I went through this weird thing where I was almost on principle I didn't want to be sad. I wanted to look at it like, oh, I was a responsible adult who kicked a bad habit, and that's good for me, as opposed to feeling like the sad little kid that lost something really precious. Maybe that's a big window into what my coping mechanisms tend to be around hard things.
Emily: Thank you for sharing.
Jase: I think it's just worth quickly pointing out that when we talk about depression in the context of the five stages of grief and also just depression generally, that it's not just being sad. Being sad is part of it, but there's also this feeling of giving up.
Or not being able to motivate yourself. This sense of, well, this didn't work out, so what's even the point? What's even the point of continuing to eat well or to exercise because no one's going to love me? I'm being a little extreme right now, but--
Dedeker: No. My big, big breakup, the first week, I could barely eat.
Emily: I definitely had diminished appetite.
Dedeker: I could only get myself to eat fruit for a second. I felt like a sad monkey, just eating blueberries and then crawling back into bed.
Jase: The thing I want to point out here is that this isn't just, oh, I'm thinking these thoughts and so what's the point, I'm not going to do something. Both of you bringing up the suppressed appetite.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Jase: There are these chemical things going on in our brains as well during this. I think this stage can catch people off guard. Honestly, all of them can, but this one can catch you off guard because you might even think, but I'm not sad, why am I crying all the time?
Or like, I'm not sad, why am I having trouble getting out of bed? I think it can be helpful to figure out some ways to just acknowledge that and give yourself a little separation from it and let it happen. Otherwise, it can lead us back into anger about the fact that I'm feeling this way or bargaining about ways that I can not feel this.
Or like, oh, my feelings aren't valid because there must be some other way to do this. Depression is a topic near and dear to my heart personally. I just wanted to throw that out there that this one can really catch you by surprise.
Emily: I want to say that habits can both be really great and really challenging during this phase because I felt like I had pretty good coping mechanisms in terms of, I would get up every morning, I would go for a walk, I would do a workout.
I knew that I had a set schedule of, okay, these are the things that I'm going to get done today. I've got editing to do, things like that. I was able to get into my routine, which was similar to what it was before the breakup as well, but then the habit of now my workday is done and I'm going to go downstairs and watch some TV and play a video game with my partner was gone. That was the hardest.
Dedeker: That's the thing. Clearly, it's still present. It's still a loss. It's such a difficult thing to catalyze where you know and we all know that this was such a good choice for you and it's still a loss. Dealing with that mix of feelings is so difficult.
Jase: I think that something worth acknowledging here too is that it's going to probably last longer than you think. Just the whole process of this. It's not going to be, "Oh, I'm done." As we get onto the fifth stage, acceptance, just having gotten there doesn't mean you're done. You're going to go back through some of these too.
I know we were just talking about this the other day about trying to set some realistic expectations about how long this process of recovery might take. I know Emily, you were like-- We were talking about yes, it's realistically going to be probably a year of recovering and you were like, "The fuck? I don't want to do this for a year." It was--
Emily: I'm sure it'll go through revs and flows, but that sounds like a while. After nine years, some people are already divorced after nine years, go through a courtship, a marriage, and a divorce after nine years or earlier.
I do think that giving a relationship the time that it deserves in terms of the healing process and in terms of the grief process is totally valid.
Jase: For our nuggets of wisdom for this one, we're actually going to talk about technology. I know a lot of times on this show, it actually might seem like we talk about how bad technology is for us. We talk about how social media can cause a lot of problems, has been shown to have overall negative mental health effects.
There's a lot of things that we may complain about, but there's also a lot of great stuff that technology brings us. I think the first one to start with here is something Dedeker actually talks about somewhat often on this show, which are apps that stop her from using other apps.
Dedeker: Yes. The best find.
Jase: This goes back to the whole social media thing, that there's one thing of if you're looking at your ex or their family or friends, and that's causing things to come up and is making it harder for you to grow personally and move on, but it could also be just that you are finding yourself addicted to that. Well, the best I can do is scroll through Instagram on my phone, or go through TikTok or whatever.
As I mentioned, the research is pretty darn clear that's not good for you. In the long run, and by long run, I mean a day, it doesn't even take a long time for this to build up, overall, it's going to make you feel worse over time.
If you're finding yourself resorting to that, one technology option for us to offer you, are some of these apps that can help you block those. I'd say a second one is, there are some breakup apps that Emily, you did some research on a few different apps for breakups.
Emily: I did find on Reddit that a bunch of people were talking about these breakup apps. Some of them just essentially are some words of affirmation, kind of working through kind of a workbook via an app, for instance. Then some of them are AI, which is kind of fun. Dedeker, you actually turned to some AI in order to help you through a breakup.
Dedeker: I'm embarrassed to say that I did, yes.
Jase: I'm not embarrassed. I'll talk about it.
Emily: I'm sure you're not. Are you delighted?
Dedeker: You love it.
Jase: No, this is a topic I've always-- I've wanted to do an episode all about AI, actually.
Emily: Of course, you have.
Jase: I just haven't quite figured out a way to shoehorn that into Multiamory. I just think it's a fascinating topic that a lot of people, it seems so hard to understand and hard to understand the good and the bad of it. I'd love to do that at some point. Dedeker, how did you use that? I want to share a little bit of how I've done that. Well,
Dedeker: Let me first set the scene to explain that-
Emily: Oh boy.
Dedeker: -as I was leading up to making this decision about ending a relationship, I had five real human VIPs as in like my counsel, people that I turned to.
Emily: The two of us were-
Dedeker: Yes, include two of you.
Emily: -in that exclusive club.
Dedeker: One of them was my therapist. This is a concept actually that I got from the Help Me Be Me podcast, this idea of having your five VIPs to turn to, and I really recommend it for people. Five people that I respected that I knew cared about my success. That also I knew would have very different opinions and also who I knew would be honest with me. Not just tell me what I want to hear.
I had my five VIPs. At one point, after I talked to all my five VIPs, I was like, "I wonder what a computer would think about this whole situation." I had already written out the whole narrative of the situation from my perspective. Then I fed that specific into Claude AI to see. I was actually really surprised because Claude was quite validating of what was going on.
Emily: Oh, good. How lovely.
Dedeker: Now, I would say advice was pretty generic. Of course, an AI can't necessarily speak to your personal experience, but I guess it helped in the sense that instead of me putting a lot of this into Google of, "How do I deal with it when a partner's doing this? Or am I the one who's in the wrong, if it's this situation?"
Trying to parse through a bunch of different people's blog posts, it was nice that, okay, here's a tool that's at least cleaning a lot of maybe collective wisdom from the internet. Then, I guess it can take my job of working with clients eventually.
Jase: Well, no. That's actually what I wanted to get to, is that I think that using AI-- Like Claude is the one that Dedeker likes. It's also one that I-- I use them all. I'll just say that, I use them all. If you want to have conversations with me about that, go to Discord-
Dedeker: Of course. You're very polyamorous when it comes to AI tools.
Jase: I am. In our Discord, we have a technology channel actually where people can have conversations about this kind of stuff, so hit me up there. We can talk about it more. I think the thing that's really important about it to realize is that it doesn't replace humans. It doesn't do the same stuff. Dedeker, I wouldn't worry so much about your job getting replaced. However-
Dedeker: For at least another five years, fingers crossed.
Jase: Sure. You got five more years. Save for your retirement.
Dedeker: Oh, boy, no.
Jase: That it can be this great supplement. The thing that I've found to make it work the best is to, one, just understand that it's not really thinking about your situation or making a judgment about your situation.
It's just going through all of the knowledge that it has about the way us humans talk about things. Then it's taking in what you're describing, and then it's also programmed to try to be nice to you. I think there's just something about the fact that it is going to be validating and it probably won't challenge you unless you ask it to, which honestly a lot of humans are going to do too.
At least your friends, they're more likely to start from a place of supporting you. Then, if you want to ask, like, "Hey, am I in the wrong about some of these things?" My advice when using, whether it's ChatGPT or Google Gemini or Claude or Bing Chat or whatever, or even the Facebook chatbots, be a little careful with their AI chatbots.
I've heard their relationship one specifically has given some really bad advice. Maybe sticking to a more general one. The advice is to try to use good communication interestingly and tell it what you want. If it is, "Hey, I want you to affirm me. Here's the situation, here's what I'm looking for."
Then when it gives you an answer to say, "Actually, I'd like this," or "Yes, that's helpful. Can you tell me more of that?" "Can you tell me that again, but in the form of a poem or whatever?" Tell it what you want. An example of this for me is, there was a time a few months ago where I was just feeling really overwhelmed and really stressed by everything.
Work, this podcast, all my other projects, like lots of things I was doing. I was just feeling like I was waking up every morning just with my stomach all twisted up of how anxious I was about how much there was to do.
What I did is I came up with a little instruction prompt for ChatGPT that said, "Basically, I want you to be my mindfulness coach. Each day I'm going to tell you about what's going on in my day, like, what are the things I'm stressing about, worrying about. I would like you to answer me with some kind of a Buddhist koan, maybe some metaphors, and then a mindfulness exercise for me to do."
I was very clear, this is what I want from you. Then each day, I would just copy and paste that from my notes into the prompt. Then I would write My Stuff. I found that doing that, it did a very nice job. It started repeating koans after a while, and a lot of them were ones that I knew.
Even then, it was just nice to get all that collected together and then for me to do that. I think that it's this really great tool if you can come in with a sense of, "Here's what would be helpful for me," and to almost think of it more like a journaling exercise rather than going to a therapist.
It's not really qualified for that sort of work, but as a reflection partner and a journaling partner, it's great. All that said, don't put a lot of personally identifiable information into any of the public chatbots, just for security reasons. There, I said my caveat.
Dedeker: Wow. Okay.
Emily: Love it. Such technology.
Dedeker: This is mini AI in your relationship episode within a larger Multiamory episode.
Emily: Exactly, yes.
Jase: I finally found a way.
Emily: You did it. Well done. All right. We have finally reached acceptance. Again as both of you said, this may happen sometimes and you may feel like, "Wow, I got there. I have accepted." Then you may fall back into anger or grief or sadness or depression or whatever, and that's okay.
Your mood tends to stabilize once you reach acceptance. Your emotions may begin to stabilize. You're kind of coming back to a potentially more objective reality. Just coming to terms with the fact that this is my new reality now and we have reached a point where this person is not in my life in the way that they once were.
I heard somebody say, the person is still the same person as they were when you were with them. However, they're a different person now to you. They're never going to be exactly the same as they were to you anymore.
I think that's absolutely true. That's a hard reality to face because they were such a specific thing in your life and to you, and now they are not that anymore. Some of the things that I realized during this time of feeling more moments of acceptance were realizing I'm not responsible for my ex's emotions. I'm only responsible for mine.
Seems pretty basic and self-explanatory, but absolutely, that was a thing that was important for me to go back to. That I couldn't control the situation, and I certainly couldn't control how he was feeling about the situation.
Jase: To bring this back to some of the original writing about this dealing with death, it's that sense of, one, it's going to be okay, which can be a hard place to get to. Then also this sense of realizing I can't fight it. I can't actually change the realities of the situation, and so I can prepare for it, and so I can work on doing what I can.
I do think part of getting to acceptance is also realizing what are the things you can affect and can change, and what are the things that you can't really even if earlier in the process you tried to and thought maybe you could. Kind of like what Emily was talking about.
Emily: Definitely. Also, time apart is so, so important. I think if you are living with a person because you have to live with them-- For instance, my lease wasn't up until the end of April, I still decided I need to go earlier than that lease is up. I've got to find a way to do that because for my own mental health, that absolutely was necessary. It really needed to happen sooner rather than later.
Dedeker: It's interesting that, again, to compare our respective breakups, I think that I've maybe had an easier pathway to landing in acceptance sooner for various reasons. In your case, Emily, a lot of life upheaval came with this breakup as well, right?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: A lot of life transitions, like living in a different place and moving to a new city, and your routine completely changing and your time zone completely changing. So many things. Where you're not just working towards acceptance of the end of the relationship.
You're also having to work towards acceptance of leaving the city that you were living in and leaving the routine that you were in and closing one chapter of your life and entering a new chapter. With the breakup that I went through, I didn't have a lot of those things.
I'm not changing my living situation. I'm not changing my jobs, right? That there's a little bit more of this, I guess, nest around me that helps me to focus there. Whereas I feel like you've just had, there's just a lot more on your plate to have to work through and accept, like a lot more change.
Emily: Oh, yes. My life blew up and is very different now than it was last month and the month before. That is my own doing. I think it was necessary for me also to move on from that big, huge chapter in my life. I think a lot of times people have this sunk cost fallacy in their mind that, wow, I put so much time and effort into this relationship and now it's over.
What the hell? Why did I spend all of that time? Why did I spend such a huge part of my life, almost a third of my life, putting energy into this when ultimately it ended? It's bullshit. You learn something. I absolutely learned an incredible amount from what I just went through and from the relationship for the last almost decade.
I think that just realize and give yourself the gift of knowing, hey, I went through something and I also am stronger and a better person for having gone through it."
Jase: I think that's a great perspective to have and a great place to get to is moving away from this sense of, I wasted this time, or I can't believe I did that, that was such a mistake to looking at, "Yes, but I couldn't have learned any of those things if I hadn't had that experience."
Like you're saying, "I've learned a lot. I've grown a lot during that time." I sometimes like to think, "Well, sure, but if I hadn't done that, I'd probably be doing it now because I need us to learn that lesson somehow."
Even if I said, "Oh, I wish I hadn't spent those nine years in that relationship," it's like, well, then I'd probably be spending the nine years in that relationship now if I hadn't done it before. That's a weird way to think about it, but just realize, yes, you had to learn things in your life, and you can't just shortcut that all the time.
Emily: Absolutely.
Dedeker: If you haven't already, we recommend that you go back and listen to our episode 365 about heartbreak and recovery, where we discussed a lot of different tools for recovering and healing after going through a breakup.
Emily: I want to say we thought that we were going to do this episode much earlier than we actually were able to do it, and that was because of the continued emotional journey that I am going on. I really decided to put this episode down into the universe not that long after the breakup happened and Dedeker's breakup happened as well.
It is still just a journey. We are going on it. I am going on it. You out there maybe who are going through something similar, you're not alone, and we are here for you and we feel you. Just as we say on this show so often, it really is okay to break up.
If that is the best thing for you. If you realize ultimately, hey, I am not in a situation that is making me happy. If you've got one life to live, then freaking get yourself out of a situation that doesn't make you happy and hopefully put yourself in a situation that will make you happier. That is exactly what I decided it was time to do.
You do have the capacity to get through this, and you are lovable and you will love again. Our question for the week, which is going to be on our Instagram stories, is what is the number one thing that you've learned from a recent breakup?