How Not to Become Bitter and Disillusioned

[Silverbirch]

It's so easy to do, especially when you've been hurt badly, especially when that has happened more than once.

 

Just because my relationships haven't worked it, it doesn't go to follow that other people's wont or that all men are B's although we all need to take our time and develop common sense. Not saying I want to be in a relationship again. Just that I've noticed things around me of late where I see others hurt too, and I don't want to give exes the power to do that - to basically take me away from myself. My mum says she is angry because I'm a person who loves a lot - with all my heart - that it isn't or hasn't been difficult for me.

 

Has anyone else given much thought to this?

[mouseno4]

Im not a B. At least i hope not. Im not am i girls?

[Robin2904]

I think about it all the time. It's SO easy to become bitter after someone hurts you. I feel like I'm there now- I hate that in myself- but I have become bitter and jaded and cynical- something I NEVER was. I have ALWAYS been the girl who loves love- I've always been a romantic, believed in true love, soul mates- all of that. I've always been the chick flick girl who loves to watch people fall in love (even on screen) probably a bit of a dreamer, definitely naive and innocent. And now? Now I feel like 'screw these stupid movies they are full of crap!' I've found myself saying 'I hate love' and all this bitter stuff- very UNLIKE me. This was a part of my personality, something that made me Robin- I feel like I've lost in with all the heart ache this relationship has put me through and I hate that.

 

I'm trying to not let it ruin me. I SO still want to believe in romance, believe there are good guys out there and believe I can have that true love over the moon feeling again. It sucks because this relationship was SUCH a worldwin for me- literally right out of one of those movies (At least I played it out that way in my mind...) but it felt like it while it was happening- and I feel like I'm stuck in the middle of the movie waiting for my happy ending but it just isn't going to come lol. Ehh life isn't a movie I guess....anyway sorry I am rambling. But my point is yup I know what you mean SO very well. It's hard to not feel that way.

[Silverbirch]

Hugs Robin,

I've been thinking about you. Yeah, can relate so well to that. I try and think of my sister and what a rotten time she had, and yes, she did eventually meet someobody better than all of the others who adores her and treats her so well. My whole family loves him and they've been together now for around 17 years and have 2 sons. They are so happy.

 

Hey Robin, I don't think your movie has finished yet.

 

Hey Mouse, we know you're not a B!

[Silverbirch]

Hugs Robin,

I've been thinking about you. Yeah, can relate so well to that. I try and think of my sister and what a rotten time she had, and yes, she did eventually meet someobody better than all of the others who adores her and treats her so well. My whole family loves him and they've been together now for around 17 years and have 2 sons. They are so happy.

 

Hey Robin, I don't think your movie has finished yet.

 

Hey Mouse, we know you're not a B!

[Robin2904]

Hugs Robin,

I've been thinking about you. Yeah, can relate so well to that. I try and think of my sister and what a rotten time she had, and yes, she did eventually meet someobody better than all of the others who adores her and treats her so well. My whole family loves him and they've been together now for around 17 years and have 2 sons. They are so happy.

 

Hey Robin, I don't think your movie has finished yet.

 

Aw thank you! I think either of our movies are done yet!

[mouseno4]

I am very happy someone appreciates what i try my best to do. Thanks Silver.

[mad rabbits]

I can relate... but maybe its better to think not in terms of becoming bitter, but just becoming more realistic. Like the world isn't divided into the romantic dream and the dire end of the spectrum, it has shades of grey, that you need to navigate in future. Or something like that...

[Silverbirch]

Can you be a bit more specific MR. I think I know what you mean, but I'm not sure.

[lavenderdove]

You know, life is full of pain and ugliness, but it is also full of joy and beauty too. The hard part about a bad breakup is that you (temporarily) lose the ability to see the joy and beauty because you have been shoved so far down the pain/ugliness scale and are deeply wounded. What you really need is time to crawl your way back to the center again, where you recognize that life can hold some really bad pain and people who do bad things, but there is also joy and beauty and people with good intentions waiting out there if you are willing to spend the effort to crawl out of that hole and pursue it.

 

I've had my share of very painful/ugly things thrust upon me in life, in fact one that most peole don't endure where i had a very long romance with a man who ultimately betrayed me and married a rich woman for money, while trying to keep me in the dark about that marriage because he still wanted me too. It was an absolutely devastating/destroying experience when i discovered what he had done, yet i don't hate men and truly do believe in love and that it is wonderful when it works out.

 

In fact, i know this man loved me deeply, but he was also very deeply conflicted with all kinds of baggage and financial problems and self esteem issues and just tried to resolve them in a way that got him both love and money. He wanted to go on with me forever (and also live his 'other' life that solved his money issues), and it almost killed me to walk away from him because of the strength of the love and history there, but i knew i had to do it because he had chosen a wrong path that i didn't want to walk with him. I could have descended into all kinds of bitterness when i realized he had sold me and our love out, and i did for a while, BUT i realized that how one lives one's life is a CHOICE and that there is both good and bad that happens, and we choose our own path.

 

And if you choose the path of bitterness, the person you hurt the most is yourself because you are living in a dark, painful, and lonely world there. And in retrospect, this guy who sold me out to chase money and financial security is NOT happy and deeply regrets losing me along the way, but it is too late because of the depth of the betrayal and how complicated his situation/life has become with children involved. But i don't blame men or 'love' for being wrong, i blame his own personal history and all the complications that led up to him making a choice that irrevocably meant i could not/would not continue on the path with him. He thought he was making a choice that would allow him to have it all, but he was left with ashes as far as I was concerned. But i refused to let my life be about heaping ashes on my head because a great love turned to ashes, because i see that as selfish in itself, to turn away from all of life's possibilities and joys because something bad happened to me. Bad things happen, but good things too!

 

For every act of selfishness one sees, there are also just as many acts of kindness out there, and you need to consciously try to recognize them rather than painting the world with a dark brush. There are many good men who are honorable and don't cheat or lie or do things that hurt others. But then we ALL do things that hurt others, even unintentionally, or we make bad choices and only recognize them later. So bitterness really is more lack of perspective and balance than anything. It is not seeing the 'true' state of affairs to think all men are bad etc., it is just painting the world with your own dark brush because you are in pain and need to regain a proper perspective.

 

And as mad rabbits says, the trick is also to recognize that perhaps if you were trying to chase an unrealistic ideal, you need to come back to earth and recognize you are only hurting yourself by being unrealistic and not truly watching and knowing how the world works and how to protect yourself from further hurt without destroying your joy and excitement for living. For example, on this board you see women who meet a guy and two weeks later are talking about how he's their soulmate and they were meant to be together etc etc., when it is clear that they just have a fantasy about love and wanting to be in love and coupled up, and don't take the time to think about the fact that just because you are excited doesn't mean it's love, and just because the guy looks good in the beginning doesn't mean he's a good guy etc.

 

Or they keep putting up with all kinds of terrible things from a person in the name of love, as in 'i love him and that means this should all work out and he'll change and be my prince charming,' meanwhile it is clear the guy is a jerk and treating them badly and will never change. People who chase unrealistic ideals of what love is basically create their own self inflicted wounds if they keep trying to hang onto unrealistic ideals then get angry when it doesn't turn out the way they want it to. So in that sense, they are unrealistic love 'gamblers' as in, i KNOW i will win the million dollar lottery if i keep buying tickets, when odds are good that you won't. But if you do your due diligence and careful thought and analysis of the situation, you CAN have successful investments in people, but it has to be based on a realistic foundation and not false fantasies about what love is or what love can do.

 

So where does that leave you? with the recognition that people are capable of great love and kindness and joy, but they are also capable of great selfishness and causing huge amounts of pain to others because of it. So your job is to keep your wits about you and not approach any new man as the answer to your prayers or prince charming, nor is he the devil, but as a person who needs to be evaluated and perceived as having the potential to be really good for you, really bad for you, or just boring, based on who they are and how they are behaving at the moment. And people do change too, which adds further complexity. Sometimes you can have a great and wonderful love that goes sour because one of you take a wrong turn and makes bad choices, or fate intervenes in a way that stops the journey together, whether that is an unexpected death or illness, a person meeting someone else who tempts them into wrong choices etc. You don't 'arrive' at love as an end destination, it mutates and changes over time, sometimes for good, and sometimes not. If you're lucky and work hard, it can be enduring, but not always so.

 

What will get you out of the bitterness conundrum is recognizing that you have the power to choose your own life and joy, or to wallow in pain and bitterness. yes, you have to pay the price for a failed love affair, but just because one affair didn't work out doesn't mean all men are bad. I've seen men who would absolutely drive me crazy or bore me to death, yet for my friends who were with them, the were perfectly fine with the guy and loved him dearly and were happy, or happy enough of the time that they felt it right to stay with the person. What makes people happy is unique to the person, and you can't look from outside and be bitter FOR another person because you think their partner is behaving in a way that doesn't work for YOU.

 

Where things go wrong is when a person is perpetually unhappy with someone and their behavior, but stays and stays no matter how bad it is or how much they hurt, getting pushed farther and farther down the pain/bitterness scale, until they wake up one day and it is intolerable. That may be what has happened, where you have allowed yourself to be carried too far down that scale without stopping and standing up for yourself earlier on and saying, no, i will not put up with this, or standing up and seeing the guy was not right for you way earlier before you got too involved with him, or that he was losing interest and on his way out while you just kept pouring more and more of yourself into him when you should have instead been paying attention and recognizing it wasn't working out. So by the time you finally emerge from the relationship and it is over, you're way down the pain/ugliness/bitterness scale and have to fight harder to pull yourself back up to where you can recognize and pursue the good/happy things in life. You can choose to stay down there, wallowing in bitterness, but you only punish yourself by doing that.

 

I always recommend that people who are bitter take a time out from thinking about the pain of love, and instead go try to find their joy again in life in general. So that could mean any number of things, from getting a new puppy (and puppies are such happy joyful creatures you can't help but feel joy around them), to taking a trip to somewhere you've always wanted to go that is exciting and beautiful and will jump you out of your bitterness and routine, to doing volunteer work where you exercise your own 'kindness' muscles and re-establish a connection with your own empathy, to taking a yoga class to feel good about your body and relax, to taking walks in nature or in a museum with great art or doing anything that reconnects you with your sense of beauty and wonder and peace. You just have to give yourself time to heal, but you also have to do things that pull you back up that scale towards joy and happiness and beauty rather than dwelling in that dark territory of bitterness.

[Silverbirch]

Hey thanks for the great post Lavender.

[scarlett27]

we've all been hurt my bf dumped me over the weekend via text whilst i was on a girls nite out - lovely , i feel angry and its not healthy to think all men will be a""""" coz they wont , u need time to get back on healing , read self help books and get better then look to start a relationshop x

[twitchyfingers]

I've been giving this some thought as well.

 

What seems to help me are these trains of thought:

 

1. Just to balance the picture, I remind myself of my own mistakes I've made in relationships, and how hurtful those were to my partners. Particularly in how I've handled being the dumper in the past (which was my usual role). This keeps me out of victim-mode.

 

2. I try to look as honestly as possible at what I did (or didn't do) that led to both the breakup, and my reaction to it. What was missing in my life that made me so vulnerable this time around? What do I need to work on in myself?

 

3. I watch out for black-and-white thinking, and fortune-telling thinking. Just because I had a few painful rejections doesn't mean ALL future relationships are doomed.

 

4. I remind myself of what the other person gave to me, and what difficulties I caused them, so I don't put MYSELF on a pedestal, and don't blow their behavior out of proportion into some crime against humanity.

 

These work for me, but it should be noted that I've never been in an abusive relationship, or been cheated on (to my knowledge), so they may not work as well for those of us who were in those more hurtful situations.

[twitchyfingers]

lavender, that was a stunningly wise and beautiful post. Thank you. It healed me a bit.

[RadicalDreamer]

One thing that helps is to avoid thinking of the ex as a bad person. Seriously. Unless there was physical/verbal abuse, or unless you caught them in a threesome with your best friend and worst enemy, they probably weren't that bad.

 

The trap I've fallen into, and still fall into occasionally, is that it's all too easy to assume that because someone caused pain, they must have had evil intent. It's a very human reaction, but most of the time, it's wrong. Humans will hurt and be hurt. It's inevitable, and to cast it into some totemic status of maliciousness is folly.

 

My first relationship was in high school, and I was dumped by a girl I really liked. Things were great for a while, and we were really close, had dated a few times, spent a lot of time talking. Then, she slowly grew distant and just ignored me. No explanation, not even a "it's over." Just the total silent treatment.

 

I got really bitter and angry, and I harbored this deep hatred for her for longer than I would have liked. It took many years for me to forgive her, to realize that relationships are scary things, even without teenage hormones and underdeveloped minds in the mix; when you think of it, it's almost understandable. Almost. I still feel it's cruel to just ignore and stonewall someone, but by forgiving and seeing her as human instead of the devil in disguise, I was able to gain a bit of the self-respect I lost, and some of the self-blame I put myself through. I'm not sure how or why, but that worked.

[rkw]

I was sooo bitter and absolutely furious for the first month of the breakup, which in some ways was helpful because it made me stick my guns. I couldn't understand why someone could do and say the things he said to me, and I really had no faith in relationships at all. It didn't help that a really close friend was burned by a guy a few weeks later, and the guys approaching me had either girlfriends or turned out to be compulsive liars. I think I might have started a similar thread on how to get over the bitterness and resentment, but I'll let you know what's been helping me.

 

Firstly, I tried to learn something from the situation. Now I know that any future relationships I enter, I'll make sure the guy isn't emotionally unavailable. I'll also take responsibility for my own happiness too, and not hope that things will eventually get better.

 

Secondly, I try to have sympathy for my ex. How sad that he can't express himself emotionally or feel empathy. And because he always shifted the blame to me, or his upbringing, it's unlikely to change for a long time.

 

Thirdly, I to look at success stories to give me hope. My parents were childhood sweethearts and very much still in love over 25 years later. My nana lost her first husband at 20 to cancer, then remarried about 15 years later which lasted until she passed away. So there's still chances at lasting love for me, and this helps me when I feel myself slipping to a "all men are Bs" fit of rage. A close mutual friend of me and my ex said the other day that I must be consumed with bitterness and anger about the situation. I replied that I still have times where I'd like to attack my ex with a rusty knife, but I'm slowly letting it go. And he said that if I'm able to cope with something like that without becoming resentful, then my ex really has no idea what he's lost. Even though the bitter and disillusioned road is easier to go down, there's the opportunity here for me to emerge even stronger and more resilient than before, and be an even better person, and others will pick up on this. Which I figure is bound to be helpful in any future relationship.

 

Let yourself feel furious and bitter sometimes, it's only natural. Just don't let it fill your heart with resentment by countering it with some positive thinking. I think you'll find if you let yourself ride this wave, in a few weeks you'll start coming out of it naturally too.

[NightLily]

I become bitter because I keep ending up with manipulative scumbag men who represent themselves as the opposite. I guess I shouldn't call my most recent ex a scumbag but he was physically violent.

 

Some of the others were scumbags and should honestly be rotting in jail. Why should I keep putting myself through this..

[mad rabbits]

I always recommend that people who are bitter take a time out from thinking about the pain of love, and instead go try to find their joy again in life in general. So that could mean any number of things, from getting a new puppy (and puppies are such happy joyful creatures you can't help but feel joy around them), to taking a trip to somewhere you've always wanted to go that is exciting and beautiful and will jump you out of your bitterness and routine, to doing volunteer work where you exercise your own 'kindness' muscles and re-establish a connection with your own empathy, to taking a yoga class to feel good about your body and relax, to taking walks in nature or in a museum with great art or doing anything that reconnects you with your sense of beauty and wonder and peace. You just have to give yourself time to heal, but you also have to do things that pull you back up that scale towards joy and happiness and beauty rather than dwelling in that dark territory of bitterness.

 

This is good advice. I'm currently on "hiatus" for this very reason, and to work on myself.

 

Another thing I find helpful is to spend time with men in a low pressure environment, by cultivating your friendships with men and spending time with male relatives etc... it helps to remind you that there are decent guys out there, and its possible to have fun with them, not everything just be a headache and a drama all the time..

[Robin2904]

This thread is very positive and motivating- thank you for all who have posted here! It has lifted me up some!

[ferna3069]

i feel kind of bitter at this moment. i just have the fear to get hurt like this last break up. im going to set more boundries i just hope it doesnt happen agian

[dodgedabullet]

Why be bitter and give just 1 person that power. So one person didn't work out for yya? Big deal! Tons of other people to meet. Besides, relationships don't last long

for anyone these days. Mobile society etc...

[penelope13]

I think one can prevent bitterness, by making sure to stay unbiased as much as possible when reevaluating what happened and to acknowledge your own part in why it didn't work out the way you were dreaming/hoping. This is NOT about blaming yourself etc, but about letting go of the romantic notions and preconceived ideas that you may have had about the other person, yourself and the relationship.

 

These thoughts could include:

- not every relationship has and will end in a 'happy ever after'. If you two were not a good fit (for whatever reason) it would never worked out no matter how much you tried to put a square peg into a round hole.

- you didn't want to see the other person for who they are, but you kept your image of them alive in your own mind for too long. Maybe there were red flags along the way, but you ignored them because you were more focus on 'forcing' the relationship to work out than truly seeing who you were dating. Try to think about what those red flags were and make sure that in the future you don't ignore them anymore, thus don't allow yourself to get too deeply involved if the other person is not doing their equal efforts.

- try to figure out what your screening process is even before you declare an official relationship, is there anything you could improve there?

- you will become less bitter if you focus less on the other people, but more on yourself and what you can do to ensure that your next relationship will become more successful

- don't allow yourself to become a victim, take charge of your life and relationship choices; if there is something you don't like - speak up; i.e. improve your communication skills when in a relationship. Don't allow things to manifest or built up resentment

[annieperson]

Hey Silver,

 

It is so easy to fall into the negative hole isnt it? Having the ability to give all of yourself to a new love once you have experienced heartbreak is a gift my friend. Don't ever change that about yourself. Yes it may mean that you open yourself up to some pain, but you can also open yourself up to finding and experiencing true love.

 

and Mouse - you are not a B! big hugs

[Silverbirch]

Hugs Annie,

And thank you everyone.

[Silverbirch]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to bump this and hopefully see how you are all going. I've been sad, but I don't think I'm bitter right now.