Shorter or longer relationships. Which break ups are toughest?

[Krankor]

I'll sometimes read threads on this site in which someone is lamenting the loss of a girlfriend/boyfriend who they were with a relatively short time and some of the responses seem to boil down to "You were only with him/her for a few months. Get over it." Maybe not quite so blunt, but basically that seems to be some people's reaction. But does losing someone after only 3 or 4 months actually hurt less than losing someone after 3 or 4 years?

 

Your response may be "Well of course. If someone's been in your life a long time it's going to hurt worse. Duh." But while every situation is different, I actually disagree for the most part. Hear me out:

 

I look back on my own experiences. The couple of times I had a longer term relationship end, I saw it coming. Things had been going sideways for a while so when it ended while I did mourn the loss there was also an element of "Woo hoo, single again!"

 

However, I've been in shorter term things in which those bonding hormones are flooding my brain, I'm thinking I have this great new thing in my life that may not last forever but there's no reason to think is going to end anytime soon, I'm excited about all the things we're going to get to do together, and then bam, the rug got pulled out from under me. I was just left standing there like a little kid who had his ice cream cone taken away. Those times were actually harder on me than me than the longer term ones; although the longer term ones did take longer to completely get over, the pain has always seemed most intense after losing a newer girlfriend.

 

Thoughts?

[Capricorn3]

I don't think this is a "one size fits all" simply because everyone reacts differently to any given situation. For most people I imagine it makes more sense to get over a very short term relationship (2-3 months) than a 10-30 year relationship. Some people, maybe not.

[melancholy123]

I agree, there's no definitive answer to this. When you are young, in your teens or early 20s, and a relationship of a short duration ends, it seems like the whole world has come crashing down on you and you will never, ever find someone to love. Your one shot is gone. But generally we pick ourselves up, and move on. When you are older, say in your 50s and have been married or with someone for maybe 25 yrs and you've got kids, a house, a mortgage, cars, a dog, etc. etc. and you've gone thru hundreds or thousands of experiences together and weathered the storms, then that proverbial rug gets pulled out from under you, sometimes blindsiding you, you are devastated and there can be many more problems to sort out than imagined and then with luck you pick yourself up, and move on. It's a matter of degrees, where you are in your life, how resilient you are, and what you want to do next.

 

For me personally, breaking up with my husband of 30 yrs would be way more difficult at this point in my life than had been a teen or in my 20s. But that's me.

[Capricorn3]

When you are young, in your teens or early 20s, and a relationship of a short duration ends, it seems like the whole world has come crashing down on you and you will never, ever find someone to love. Your one shot is gone.

 

For me personally, breaking up with my husband of 30 yrs would be way more difficult at this point in my life than had been a teen or in my 20s. But that's me.

That's so true. There are so many different factors to take into consideration. For most young teens, it feels like their world has come to an end and they'll never get over it. It's like "omg, I'm dying". For myself, like you, my 30+ years of marriage ending would be far more difficult.

[CBC2000]

I think short term relationships also hurt but not for a long time, I just went through two break ups within a year, one of them I was with the guy for almost 2 years and my recent one I was with the guy for just a little over 2 months. It took me nine months to get over my previous relationship(the 2 year one). My current ex broke up with my a week ago, It hurt me bad, but I am coping with it better than my last relationship.

[lostlove76]

I agree with what you said, krankor. With shorter relationships, the breakup often happens during the honeymoon period when you have the person idealized and are seeing them through rose-colored glasses. When it ends during that stage, you never know where things could have gone. With a longer-term relationship, at least you've seen things that didn't work between the two of you, and you've seen their faults, so you know exactly what you're losing. But I've never had a very long-term relationship, so I'm just guessing when I say it seems easier. The most painful breakup I've ever had, which I'm still not over, was the ending of two years on and off. On and off relationships seem more painful, as well, because you go through the honeymoon stage over and over and never reach the stable phase. It's also difficult to get over because you keep expecting there will be another chance again, so it's hard to truly let go and move on.

[KMO7970]

Yes, I agree with all of the above. I also feel that the reason for the breakup has an impact on how long it takes us to get over it.

[melancholy123]

That's so true. There are so many different factors to take into consideration. For most young teens, it feels like their world has come to an end and they'll never get over it. It's like "omg, I'm dying". For myself, like you, my 30+ years of marriage ending would be far more difficult.

 

When I was 19 I married the first guy who ever said he loved me. I truly believed I'd never EVER get a second chance to find someone to love and I was a typical naive 19 yr old, I thought I knew everything (!) and believed it'd work. That was my immaturity showing! There were many things I didnt like about him, but he professed his love, and I being naive, fell for it. It lasted just over 3 yrs. and I left him. There was no way it was going to last a lifetime. We both needed to grow up. I see a lot of the same immature thinking on this forum from teens and early 20s who are just not ready for a lifetime commitment to another person. They dont know who they are, never mind who their partner is! I dont say that to slam anyone who has ever written in here, I say it because I believe it's true. The male brain isn't fully mature until age 25, females mature a little earlier. We need to go thru some crappy experiences in our lives to help us mature and grow as people, and losing a person we thought was ideal happens to most of us and helps us learn to survive the ups and downs of being in love.

 

I lived with 2 girlfriends after leaving my first husband and didnt date anyone for months as I needed to get over what I'd been thru. The man I am married to was a friend of a friend and we did not rush our relationship at all. I was being very cautious. So, we've been married 30 yrs and have 2 grown kids and have been to hell and back with many events in our lives. I know it'd be much harder to lose him than the first guy I married.

[Annia]

I don't think there's a rule. I had three serious relationships and I think the pain wasn't proportionally related to the time of the relationship but more to the intensity, reasons for breaking up and breaking up process.

 

Longest relationship - painful but it was a relief that I ended it because it was an abusive relationship

 

2nd longest relationship - it took long to fully move on but we ended up in good terms and there was no dumper or dumpee so while it was hard because we truly and deeply loved each other, it was a "smoother" pain if such thing exists but it was still hard and I missed him for a long long time.

 

Shortest relationship - very intense pain at the time but I think it was mostly because I had lots of expectations about the relationship and because he dumped meby text out of the blue when the day before everything was apparently ok, and never acknowledged to talk to me after that breaking up text. (this seems very childish but we were both adults at the time... he was about 7 years older than me lol )

 

So in my experience I think that longest relationships take the longest to recover and I think it's harder to accept and get used to not being with someone you've spent so many time with and built so many memories with anymore. It also depends a lot on the reasons of the breakup and who took the initiative and so. The shorter ones can cause pain if they were very intense and also because of the expectations and future one built in their mind and it sucks when the chance for that is taken from you before you even had the time. And also because the shortest you are with someone the more you idealize them in your mind. But each case and person is different.

 

It is productive to remind yourself that you were only "x months" with that person. Not that your pain is less valid because of that, but because it puts everything in perspective and helps you moving on faster.

[Krankor]

I agree, there's no definitive answer to this. When you are young, in your teens or early 20s, and a relationship of a short duration ends, it seems like the whole world has come crashing down on you and you will never, ever find someone to love. Your one shot is gone. But generally we pick ourselves up, and move on. When you are older, say in your 50s and have been married or with someone for maybe 25 yrs and you've got kids, a house, a mortgage, cars, a dog, etc. etc. and you've gone thru hundreds or thousands of experiences together and weathered the storms, then that proverbial rug gets pulled out from under you, sometimes blindsiding you, you are devastated and there can be many more problems to sort out than imagined and then with luck you pick yourself up, and move on. It's a matter of degrees, where you are in your life, how resilient you are, and what you want to do next.

 

For me personally, breaking up with my husband of 30 yrs would be way more difficult at this point in my life than had been a teen or in my 20s. But that's me.

 

Well if you're talking about a 30 year marriage that's a whole different ballgame. At that point your lives are so intertwined that I have to imagine you'd just be lost.

 

I've heard of married people who think everything is great getting served with divorce papers out of the blue. It can also happen in long term relationships. But I think more often than not you see the divorce/break up happening and have time to mentally prepare. But when you're floating on a cloud and are suddenly sent through a trap door it's hard to deal with.

 

I'm 40, my last break up happened when I was 39 after only 4 months and it was really hard on me, way harder than the disillusion of my 5 year relationship before that. But my 5 year relationship took longer to get over ultimately.

[Matt3939]

The beginning of a relationship is hectic for me. Yes it can be exciting and all of that but I'm always thinking to much. So if it does end oh well. Any of my shorter relationship's under 6 months. It just didn't work so it wasn't devistating. Was usually a major problem. The longer ones were much worse for me.

[ParisPaulette]

It depends on so many things. I've had both types of breakups, it was more about the person I was losing and where I was in life and what they represented to me at the time, that affected the level of loss than just time spent together.

 

Bottom line breakups suck and they're all bad in my books, regardless. Because it's like a mini-death you have to deal with, the loss, the stages of grief, the healing, the getting back on your feet.

 

Ugh, none of it is fun. Even when I was glad to get rid of the person (one abuser, one suspected narcissist) it still hurt and was just not my favorite thing ever. Personally I'll take a root canal with no Novocaine any time over a breakup.

[Ms Darcy]

However, I've been in shorter term things in which those bonding hormones are flooding my brain, I'm thinking I have this great new thing in my life that may not last forever but there's no reason to think is going to end anytime soon, I'm excited about all the things we're going to get to do together, and then bam, the rug got pulled out from under me. I was just left standing there like a little kid who had his ice cream cone taken away. Those times were actually harder on me than me than the longer term ones; although the longer term ones did take longer to completely get over, the pain has always seemed most intense after losing a newer girlfriend.

 

Thoughts?

 

Sometimes getting dumped from those short relationships can hurt a ton. In part, because you are still in the honeymoon phase emotionally and you don't have 2-4 years of hurts and anger to deal with.

 

I tend to find that the pain from the short relationships often (not always) have a lot to do with "what might have been" versus really knowing the other person very well.

[ParisPaulette]

Yes, this. ^^^ That song, "Almost Lover" says it all.

[Waraqqa]

For me personally, the length of a relationship is a secondary factor. What affects my ability to accept the break-up and move on comfortably is *how* things went on and *how* they ended. Particularly, whether I have a lot of regrets or not. If I feel like I did my best and that relationship ended for factors that were out of my control, then I am much better. However, if I feel like I made a lot of mistakes that led there, that's when the regrets augment the pain very substantially. Because if there are no regrets, even if I still love the person, the pain shifts to sad-n-sweet kind of longing, with gratitude that I had that at least for some time. But if I either wronged the other person, or behaved in ways I'm not proud of, or went too far against my own better judgement, or was mistreated by them and have that anger to deal with - then it all just goes into a convoluted ball of unpleasant feelings that take much longer to disentangle and dissipate.

[SooSad33]

Can depend...

 

On.. who's 'leaving'

On... what impact it has left.

 

I've lost someone I deeply invested in, over 5 yrs... that stung a lot!

But, I left a relation of abt 7 yrs.. totally over it!

 

Then I've been in 2, short term relations ( year or less) and ended up hurting a lot, while trying to 'let go'.

 

So- each measure's up differently.

[sofielm]

For me, the longer ones were easier to get over because you gave it a good try. You know the person and you guys, feel the same way, especially when it had nothing to do with cheating or crazy lies. You just grew apart, not a right match etc. I am cool with my exes in my long term relationships.

 

The shorter ones have this particular sting to it, I've had 3 short term relationships and the first 2 hurt but I kind of knew it wasn't right for me. Actually, the 2nd one was rebound of the first one in this scenario. It hurted but I moved past it. The last 3 month relationship I had stung very deeply. The gist is, we moved too fast then crashed and burned. We never became friends and we both carried our baggage into the relationship. I mean keys to the apartment, diamond jewelry, spending time with each others family but when it came to conflict resolution, it was the worst. I am resilient and moved past things quickly, he held on to things and I could not deal with that. He gave the silent treatment, extremely passive aggressive, very moody and the more I asked what was up, the more withdrawn he'd get. He assumed a lot and never communicated. Made me feel like crap, so the moment I said I wanted to go home and spend time away, he broke things off. Now he won't even speak to me.

 

I never experienced that before and it hurts tremendously, the hurt lasted longer than our relationship and I still obsess and have no closure. I still in my stupid head feels like we have something unresolved when to him its like, we didn't work, move on. I wish I could be so happy to act like 3 months wasn't significant and just move on like he did. Now I am just the crazy ex. *sighs*

[Wiseman2]

I think intensity plays a huge role.

[Waraqqa]

I think intensity plays a huge role.

 

Spot on, Wiseman! I've read somewhere that intensity is easy to mistake for love, whereas in reality it could be a mixture of all sorts of things or something else entirely. Also, the true and deep love tends to be calmer. Passion and love are not the same thing. And yet intensity has a much more attaching quality to it than love in itself.

 

This doesn't go to say that if it was intense that there wasn't love - it's totally possible to have both at the same time. But intensity can make it harder to calm down and detach and move on faster. I think I now prefer calmer love, like a gentle steady warmth. It can still hurt if falls apart, but tends to have a different aftermath to it.

[JaggerJim]

I think it's more about the person than the length of time. It's how you felt about that person.