Break Up Breakdown: 5 Things I Did Right In My Relationship
In my previous post, I described how my 8 month relationship with a woman I referred to as my “dream girl” recently dissolved.
It’s been two weeks since we’ve seen each other.
I reached out two days ago, with a long text, explaining that I realized how my actions had contributed to our break up, how I knew I had said and done things that hurt her, and how I wanted her to understand that I cared about her.
It was a late night text, sent while I was lying in bed, right before I drifted off to sleep.
When she responded the next morning, I was pleasantly surprised.
Her reply thanked me for being “kind and thoughtful” to apologize. She assured me that she cared for me, and would “cheer for me in all my future endeavors”.
Her tone was professional and cool.
Contrasted with her usual warm, bubbly messaging style, the words pelted me like driving rain.
Comedians have joked, “When a woman is done with you, she sends you text messages that sound like emails from a co-worker you don’t like”.
Her message read exactly like that.
After a few brief pleasantries, “How have you been?”, etc., she seemingly ended the exchange with finality: “Thanks for reaching out. Hope all is well”.
Her detached emotionless tone conveyed the message perfectly.
We’re done. (For now.)
Moving On
If you’ve been following along at home, you know that I have been completely enamored with this woman since we met last year.
Over a year ago, she and I went on two dates, slept together, then she ghosted me.
I sent a few furtive text messages after our second date, which she ignored. Read about this in “Solitary Beast Fumbles His Dream Girl: Parts 1 , and 2”.
Eight months later, she re-appeared, repentant.
I generously forgave her, and invited her over to make dinner together.
She did, and we’d been together ever since.
Now that it’s over (again) I feel numb.
I’ve already experienced the heart wrenching of losing her, last year.
I don’t feel distraught, I’m just sad to lose someone who had become such a big part of my life.
Losing that relationship is also losing the version of myself that I was able to be with that person: the inside jokes we shared, the passionate sex, the nights of closeness.
Now I have to do all the daunting legwork of finding another attractive woman who will sleep with me.
I dread the hours of swiping, dozens of approaches, conversations, text exchanges, and dates I will probably have to endure before I find the next great love of my life.
This is also a perfect opportunity for self-reflection, as I consider what I did right, and what went wrong in that relationship.
Rights vs. Wrongs
The first step was to examine what I did RIGHT in my relationship.
Just a few weeks ago, my now ex was whispering me how much she loved me, practically begging to be my girlfriend, gazing at me with stars in her eyes.
Regardless of how it ended, I did a lot of things well to be able to get a pretty, intelligent, funny, loving, successful woman to fall head over heels in love with me.
Some things I did right
Being physically attractive enough to get her to swipe right on my profile.
Like 40% of modern couples, we met on a dating app.
Which, as everyone knows, dating apps are a sausage fest.
About 70% of active users are horny guys, the other 30% is a mixture of OnlyFans workers, bots, and a seeming minority of adult human women actually interested in going on a date. Statistically, I’m in the top 20% of men just by being able to GET a date from a swipe app. Physical attraction was a big deal for her in our relationship.
My former girlfriend constantly complimented my lean, athletic runner’s body.
My weekly runs, watching what I eat (kinda, and weight training habit paid off massively when I matched with my dream girl on Bumble.
Let her pursue me.
Coach Corey Wayne hammers this point hard in his book, How to Be A 3% Man.
He stresses that women are natural pursuers of masculine energy and male attention. According to him, no other strategy will work.
“It will simply not feel right to a woman if you pursue her”, he writes.
Throughout our relationship, even though I was always thinking and dreaming about my girlfriend, I held back.
I let her initiate texts or video message conversations. I would respond cheerfully, telling her how good it was to hear her voice. We’d chat for a bit, then I’d need to get back to work, or head to the gym, or go out for a run.
By letting her reach out to me, I maintained an air of mystery, and let her wonder about me, which is essential in giving a woman’s feelings the space to grow.
As Chris Canwell writes in his book, Atomic Attraction: “Attraction grows in space”. Read my review of How to Be A 3% Man and Atomic Attraction in the article “3 Books To Massively Improve Your Dating and Sex Life”.
Planned fun dates and stayed unpredictable.
A wise man once taught, “You can do ANYTHING to a woman, but bore her”.
Many men fall into the trap of planning thoughtful, interesting outings with women… for the first few dates.
However, once they start sleeping with a woman, time together dissolves into lounging on the couch with take out, streaming “The Office” re-runs on Netflix.
I never got lazy like this.
Eight months in, I was still taking my former dream girl on adventures all over the state.
We went everywhere: fancy dinners, Mexican restaurants, playing ski-ball and pool at a brewery, lower bowl seats to NBA games, long drives to small towns to sightsee and get ice cream.
First, I love going on dates.
Second, my (former) girlfriend likes to dress up and look hot. I reveled in taking her out to show her off.
She showed her appreciation by showering me with praise, complimenting me to her friends, telling me how much she loved our fun little day trips and side quests.
Sex
I gave (former) dream girl orgasms that had her twitching, swearing, and screaming like I was performing an exorcism.
She loved being with me, and I could tell by the way her body responded to me, every time.
I loved kissing her- everywhere, teasing her with my fingers and tongue before thrusting inside her.
When she was done convulsing, my girlfriend would pull me close to her, lie her head on my chest, and whisper how much she adored me.
She told me all the time how much she loved being with me, and could tell every time I touched her.
Our sexual chemistry was intense and palpable. I took massive pride in making my dream girl feel amazing.
5. Impressing Her Parents and Friends
In June, I joined my now-ex girlfriend on a 5 day vacation to Mexico, to celebrate her friend’s milestone birthday.
It was the longest time we’d ever been together and our first, and only, time traveling together- two stressful events.
I wasn’t worried.
Despite my struggles with social skills, I can often be charming, likeable, and friendly when meeting new people.
On the trip, I met 8 of my ex’s closest friends from her time teaching English abroad.
I hypnotized them all like a snake charmer.
I brought a thoughtful gift for the birthday boy.
I remembered little things that the dream girl had told me about their lives, and asked about their kids, their mom, their new job.
I LISTENED.
By the end of the holiday, one couple confided, “We wish you guys lived closer to us, so we could hang out together at home”.
In our hotel bed at night, my girl gushed that all her friends thought I was awesome, that we were perfect for each other, that they loved seeing her happy with me.
Another awesome accomplishment.
Conclusion
Now that our relationship is done, for now, I have an abundance of time to reflect on my actions and behaviors over that time.
I have been “working on myself” for decades: therapy, meditation, libraries worth of self-help books, forests worth of journals.
When I was able to meet and attract my Dream Girl, I felt triumphant.
I still do.
I’m still the person that had my ideal partner lavishly in love with me.
She called and texted me constantly, wanted attention, wanted to hold hands, cuddle, and touch every time we were together.
But…
While my former partner is an amazing person, there were major issues in the background that I didn’t discuss much on the blog.
Those issues would prevent us from ever really being together in the way I would ideally desire.
I was starting to realize that our relationship would never go any deeper than dating, when I was falling in love, and craving so much more to develop between us.
Ultimately, our connection to together needed to end, or change.
I’m still proud of myself.
I’m still thankful and grateful for that time together.
I’ll share more about what went wrong in my next post.