Breakups are painful by nature, but not all breakups are alike. Some are virtually painless, while others are worse than any physical pain you could ever experience. If you have a regular, run-of-the-mill, “it’s not working” style breakup, then consider yourself lucky — you could have experienced one of these terrible things:
- Having your ex’s baby, or having to raise your ex’s child after he dumped you. It happens to a LOT of women, and there are very few things that are quite as painful as having to deal with this. Not only do you have a constant reminder of the guy that left you around you for the rest of your life, but you also have to deal with the single mom stigma in the dating scene.
- Losing your best friend during a breakup. This usually only happens if your ex cheated on you with the person who you used to consider your best friend. This leaves you without a support system, and without a partner. Ouch.
- Losing your place to stay. Moving in with your ex is now looking like a serious mistake, isn’t it? Depending on what’s happened, this can mean that you may need emergency shelter, have to head to court, or have to rely on family to get by. It can turn your whole life upside-down, but it does usually work out in the end.
- Finding out that your ex has a new girlfriend just a few weeks after the breakup. This is a strong indicator that he may have been cheating the entire time. It’s really not your loss in this case.
- Your ex destroys your stuff. If you have this happen to you, you can at least drag him to court and get him to pay for damages. You can also thank your lucky stars that this lunatic isn’t going to be in your life anymore.
- Losing your entire social circle during a breakup. This can happen if you were the one who “messed up,” or if your ex was particularly popular and/or manipulative. Sadly, the only thing you can really do when this happens is start over again.
- Having your ex pursue a family member. Is there anything that’s more vile than the ex who puts the moves on a person’s sister? If so, I haven’t seen it yet.
- Dealing with a sudden breakup. If the writing is on the wall for a couple of weeks, you may be able to emotionally brace yourself. If it just happens out of the blue, it’s ten times as devastating.
- Dealing with the wrong end of the law. True story, one of my friends’ exes got her arrested as part of his “breakup package.” Words cannot describe how messed up this move is, and what that says about the guy who broke up with her. The good news is that she turned the tables on him, and things are much better for her.
- Having a stalker ex. Stalking is extremely scary to deal with, primarily because you don’t know how much danger you are in when dealing with a guy who’s mental enough to do this to you.
- Being broken up with at a major event. It’s really hard to top the cold-heartedness that comes with breaking up with a significant other on their birthday, on Christmas, or on Valentine’s Day. It’s just a douche move.
- Finding out that your ex gave you a disease. This may be grounds for arrest in some cases, just so you know.
- Having your self-esteem wrecked by others only a week after you broke up. It’s happened to me. It’s not fun. Guys who do this are complete crap.
- Needing to call up people and explain why the wedding is off. Calling off a wedding is extremely brutal, primarily because of the fact that you will have to address everyone who was invited concerning why the wedding is no longer happening. At least you didn’t end up marrying Mr. Wrong, right?
- Having family members side with your ex instead of you. If this happens to you and you didn’t deserve it, you have full right to cut off your family members and tell them to adopt your ex instead. Clearly, they don’t value you as much as they should if this occurred.
