On New Year’s Day 2021, My first serious relationship completed. Strange timing, you may be thinking, but what better day to start a new chapter in your life than the first of 365? My partner and I sat down for the long overdue conversation that I knew would end with me being fired, something I still didn’t want but had since accepted was long overdue and necessary.
The next few months were filled with all the usual post-breakup feelings: sadness and sorrow at the loss of someone who was my person for the past three years, frustration at myself for not getting a couple and ending things early, a little anger at how much he had hurt mewhether he wanted it or not, and afraid of what my future looked like now. Beneath it all, however, was a villain’s guilt whose origins were unknown.
As I had been promised, time was indeed a healer. I threw myself into work and spending more time with friends, which took my mind off him, and my self-esteem eventually recovered to the point where I genuinely believed I could do better. But as all of my feelings of sadness and anger dissipated, the guilt lingered.
A few months after we broke up, I saw a photo of him with his new girlfriend on social media and that guilt surfaced again. He looks happy, I thought, happier than when we were together – I’m glad he’s happy. He probably could have been happier sooner if it wasn’t for me. How long have I made him unhappy? My inner monologue and I never got along.
None of us can control how we feel, however I was frustrated with still having recurring guilt When I knew I didn’t have to feel guilty about anything. The end of our relationship wasn’t anyone’s fault, least of all mine – it was just one of those things. More importantly, he had moved on and I was in the butterflies and sweaty palms phase with someone new, so why was I still letting the past get to me?
Speaking to friends, I realized that feeling guilty after being abandoned is something that many people seem to experience, but few seem to talk about it. But why should we feel guilty if we haven’t done anything wrong, and why isn’t guilt talked about in the dumping narrative?
I don’t have specific answers to these questions, but I have some ideas.
It’s long been accepted that women are more emotional than men, although this is still up for debate for many. Although psychological, evolutionary and nature-versus-nourishment Debates continue to rattle onI think, at least in terms of range of emotions, that women tend to feel a wider range of emotions than men: especially guilt.
A Study 2016 found that women are generally more prone to feeling guilty than men and attributed this largely to differences in the upbringing of boys and girls. Most relevant to me was the suggestion that “guilt has an adaptive function” that allows people to self-regulate to prevent future guilt. Suffice it to say that if I have learned anything from my experience, it is not to repeat my experience.
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I also believe that society’s expectations are placed on them Relationships should play a role, because every relationship that does not end in marriage is considered a “failure”. Society’s traditional, heteronormative view that you date, move in together, get married, and then have kids lends a sense of shame to any relationship that doesn’t end that way.
As for why we don’t talk about guilt after a breakup, much of the existing discussion focuses on the guilt of the person ending the relationship. There’s not much for those who feel guilty after being laid off, and that’s probably part of the problem. I suspect people believe that expressing guilt is somehow the same as accepting responsibility for the breakup or admitting we did something wrong. As I started asking around, I realized I wasn’t alone in my guilt and realized I needed to start the conversations I wanted to hear. I would encourage others to do the same.
For me, my guilt came from feeling like I had made my ex unhappy, and with no explanation for what went wrong, I naturally blamed myself. There’s no easy explanation for why some of us feel guilty after getting fired – it could be human nature, it could be a social construct. Who knows?
What I do know is that it’s time to get rid of the guilt that comes with dumping and keep looking forward, not back.
