PATREON EXCLUSIVE - How To Get Over A Breakup

I have just been through 1.5 year friendzone situation, and it hurts worse than a breakup. Even given that, this video is pretty much on point. I know I am higher quality person than her, in a majority of areas (better looking, better career, more wise), but her new boyfriend I think is better than me. And that hurts. It is hard to keep self improving, because I am exhausted by constant hope and hopelessness cycles. I hope I can move past it.

Thank you for this video, it's gonna help a lot of people I'm guessing. I would agree that it has a lot to do (almost everything to do actually), with your self esteem. To take myself as a case study, I have mainly experienced terrible breakups, not in the sense of dramatic breakups with anger and broken furniture, but they asbolutely detroyed me to the point of clinical depression, suicidal thoughts, hopelesness, loss of friendships and interests, for sometimes up to two years. With that kind of an extreme reaction in mind and some digging I realized the breakup and its aftermath was the symptom but the not cause. With that lack of self worth and self esteem, you're pretty much doomed from the start. One thing I never hear about is the choice of the partner (that will eventually dump you and make you feel miserable). Your self view will inevitably have a huge importance in your picking of the next girl and without the mental clarity and healthy self esteem one needs to be realistic about his prospects, it's very likely that you'll end up with someone with a lot of flaws (or red flags), that you put on a pedestal and admire too much, and who "brings" that kind of confidence or autonomy (or sometimes just the image of it), making for an unbalanced and ultimately unhealthy relationship. The end result is predictable: you end up revealing your true nature of an insecure, codependant man, and the moment she notices, it's the beginning of the end. You then feel her distancing herself and try to "keep her close" thus making her feel even more disgusted by your weakness and neediness. In the end, you're obviously getting dumped, after investing even more of your emotions to try and retain her and it just ... hurts. A lot. For me, it took time, therapy, and some serious, soul crushing self reflection to build a better self esteem and have a different outlook on life, and women. As a very practical advice, regardless of how you view yourself, I would encourage guys to keep their own hobbies, keep seeing their friends, keep going to concerts if that's what you do, etc... what hurts the most is that feeling of being empry after she leaves because you invested your entire identity into hers. Being with her, adopting her hobbies, going to her place, doing what she likes, etc.... remain independant on that front, retain a sense of self and your identity. It's very different to lose a person you have an attachment for, and losing her and being stuck there wondering what the hell to do because all the quality time you spend revolved around her and her universe. It doesn't absolve you to work on your self esteem, but I'd say this piece of advice can (and must) be applied regardless of where you are in your self improvement journey. PS: how do you skip lines and make paragraphs on this site???

I love the longer videos Alex

Adam W

Awesome comment brother :)

Alexander Grace

Firstly, just like to say thanks Alex for another great vid. As someone who broke up with their 3yr girlfriend about 6 weeks ago, I kinda wish you’d posted this a month ago lol. Many points I’d agree with in this video from my experience, but as wise a 21 year old as I am (jokes), I am of course still on my journey and eager to learn more. She is someone that I loved often more than I loved myself, and her the same. She genuinely thought she would marry me, and although I’d joke about running away from her, I felt that if my life ended up down the road with her by my side, I would be ok with that. We were an iconic duo, taking the world on together and although things went sour, I don’t have much negative to say about her. Here is what I have learned from MY experience for anyone going through something similar: 1. Keep your self esteem in check. It’s tricky, but as Alex outlined in the videos, labelling out your “false beliefs” and rationally going through them, facing them, to a point where you no longer feel held back by your emotions towards those beliefs, which hopefully are no longer there, is powerful. In the relationship I was always the person with let’s just say, higher self esteem, but after this breakup, my whole world got rocked, and even me, someone whom my friends would always say is secure and sure of himself, am suddenly feeling very unsure of myself. Am I as great as I thought I was?, am I going to find another girl like her?, am I worthy of another girl like her, as beautiful as her? I would provide a confident answer a year ago. Today, not so much. I’m just grateful that I put in the work before the relationship to enter and always be confident and assure of myself. I can’t imagine the extra pain I’d feel if I was already starting from a disadvantage. 2. Things will be shit for a while, mainly coz, in my opinion, not that girls don’t feel anything, but because of the nature the game is played. She will have quicker relapse time in getting attention and validation. I’ve seen this in my own relationship. From what I know (I’ve blocked her on social media after the first pic and we don’t talk) is that she’s already posting hot pics on insta and getting guys I don’t even know commenting. It obviously doesn’t help if this girl is very attractive, in my case, unfortunately, one of the hottest girls I’ve personally ever dated. Whereas, when I tried using tinder (Ive had good success using it in the past) and got very low amount of likes and matches compared to what I remember and what I’m used to in person, I felt gutted, disappointed, ashamed I even thought I could do well. She on the other hand is avoiding using bumble more because she misses me, rather than because she can’t get herself a date. Don’t take this as a negative, take it as a plus. We don’t have the distraction of taking the quick free validation. Instead our position as men in the dating market is to build ourselves, so that upon the foundation our slow labour built us, we can once again dominate our own lives and self esteem in a way that few women can, based on the natural quick-fix validation they get and rely on sometimes. 3. It will get better. Plain and simple. For anyone who has experienced losing a loved one, this should come obvious. For me, it was losing my best friend 2 years ago. It was by far the worst thing that has happened in my life, and I still deal with the emotional impacts and internal dislocations I feel it has caused me even today. But one of the best feelings in the world was simply, one day, accepting that it had happened, I was at my worst. But I am still breathing, I am still standing, I am still here, 2 years later. Life has moved on, and I can still find happiness. It hasn’t been taken away from me. It was just difficult to see for a while. But now it’s better, and easier to see once again. The knowledge that times will get better is somewhat liberating as I now know that the impact something has on me will always be diminished with time, as long as I take the right steps afterwards. 4. It’s ok to cry. It’s actually imho a useful tool to release emotion. Even if you’re someone that would be described as a “manly man”, think of it simply as a tool in your arsenal. Up until my friends death, I think I would’ve been a young child since the last time I had cried, maybe not a “manly man” but I wouldn’t cry. For me it’s like releasing the emotional pressure you feel built up over time. I don’t know how long it’ll take to balance everything out, and I don’t know how long it will take until the next time I have to release, but I can always feel it building, and know that although I can’t force myself to cry, I know it’s ok. It’s actually very useful as I feel much more composed and relaxed the next day. This also comes hand in hand with taking the time to grieve. It’s super important and if you disrespect it, it’ll punish you for it. It happened to me 6 months after I avoided my friends death. I stopped here as my comment is already far too long. I appreciate anyone reading to the end and hopefully people take something from it. Thank you again Alexander, not because you are always right, but because you always make me stop and think about the deeper questions, challenging me to understand what I think I know at a deeper level, and to change the way I see things.

Julien

I know this was about beakups but that seems like sound advice in general for dealing with emotional situations. Thanks for sharing.

One process I use with clients is to get them to write 50 ways that the breakup was good for them. So its "Breaking up with xxxxx is good for me because______" It's amazing how you can change the narrative of a situation just by "digging for the diamonds"...

Communicate With Confidence

What are you talking about kyle ? You didn't even date the girl and yet you felt miserable. The topic of the video was how to deal with a breakup, when you have been with someone for long enough that you envisioned a whole life together, only to see it all collapse. I can tell you "though times" will last in this case, especially if you had a connection with someone you deemed to be of high quality and feel like you will not find it ever again.

Hugo Matiz

I remember my first ‘breakup’ like it was yesterday. I had been seeing this girl for about a month or so. She was a very beautiful woman with a lot of issues of her own, very hard to reach, didn’t have a good relationship with anyone in her family. She seemed nice enough and stated she wanted a long term relationship which I jumped all over. I asked her out we went out on a date. After ‘playing it cool’ to the best of my ability, I stated to her that I really liked her and wanted to move forward in our relationship (dumb, I know). She invited me to a party she was going to later in the week and told me she would like to explore feelings with me too. I thought this meant she was interested but it turns out, she just wanted a ride over there so she could flirt with the guys there. I turned into her chauffeur essentially. I tried to talk to her three different times and she responded very coldly to me, keeping her answers short but, had no problem chatting up all of the other guys there. Basically ignoring me even though I told her I liked her and she communicated the same. It was so fucking rude, lol. I told her I didn’t feel included and I would be leaving the party early. She would have to find a ride home. She the got angry and upset: “Why are you making this weird?” She said, “I thought you would be cooler than this.” It wasn’t even a breakup, it was just me standing up for myself and yet, that was the worst I have ever felt in my life, ever. That was the only time I have ever felt fear and sadness combined together. I was crying so hard I was screaming. I had to call my mom and talk it out, my emotions were all over the place. I couldn’t believe someone would treat someone else like that. She helped me through that. I would see that girl later on at other events days and weeks later. I did my best to have a good time while she was there, even though it was so hard at the time to do. I did a good enough job though because she stopped showing up. I would see her one last time a month after that and she looked like an alien to me, I don’t know how else to explain it. “Somebody that I used to know” seems to ring the most true. Tough times don’t last. Work through your emotions and know all bad things come to an end. Misery isn’t forever, unless you let it consume you. That’s all I got.

Kyle Worden