SPFPP 206: Finishing the Job - Break Through the Breakup with Erin E. Davidson

Author of “Break Through the Breakup” (NOT “HOW TO” Break Through the Breakup) Erin E. Davidson joins us to damn near tell the book as it relates to my own personal experience navigating a break up in real time. At the time of this recording, I was blessed with this book to support me through my own healing process as opposed to going through it as I normally would which was just confusing to everyone involved. We speak to the importance of not only how to manage breakups but also how to maintain a healthy relationship throughout this episode. It’s important that we maintain our own identity apart from our relationship while in it. Yes, I found this book after my break up, but it showed me in hindsight what I could’ve done different whether a breakup was in the stars or not.

One thing that stuck out to me was the importance of maintaining your support network throughout the relationship. For me, I’ve made my partner my main source of support even for our relationship. The main reason for this is that many of my friends aren’t non monogamous. While they can hear me and support me, there wasn’t really much understanding because to them, I was just single, and any feelings about this situation were invalidated. When I went to reconstruct my network for support, that looked like creating a ‘baseline’ of what support looks like in a language my friends and I could mutually understand which was disrespect/respect. So what I learned from this was that my friends can identify if a story I share is disrespectful regardless if they understand the relationship structure or not, and then offer support from that place.

We discuss how relationships during the pandemic also have shifted in a sense of not being able to support and be supported in the way we’re used to since we haven’t been able to be in person for much of the time.

Grief was a major focus in this episode. We not only grieve the person we are ending the relationship with. We grieve the memories, the future we envisioned, and who we thought we’d become alongside them. This was a hard reality for me personally because when you fall in love fast like I do, you grieve a lot. Unaware of this grieving process, I’ve dismissed and invalidated my own emotions because of how little time we spent together, or because I date multiple people at once. This wasn’t just my unconscious belief, but it was projected onto me by society that values quantity of time over quality of experiences in the life cycle of the relationship whether friendship, friend with benefits, a relationship, casual, or engagement. A relationship is a relationship, and grief is grief. The type of relationship we grieve may just shape the intensity or duration of time we experience the grief. What Erin taught me is that there’s no shame in grieving any relationship. We’re told as men especially that we shouldn’t feel sad or angry about a relationship ending but the reality is that sometimes endings are sad. How we feel is how we feel. We SHOULD feel this way. When we make space for the feelings that accompany grief, we move through them smoother.

Another important topic here was closure. We control closure ourselves. Closure isn’t “no contact” it’s simply revisiting boundaries and expectations and not always with the other person. Sometimes you have to revisit your own boundaries and expectations when it comes to this other person you’re ending things with. Maybe not following their social media, only engaging cordially when around mutual friends and settings, or whatever else you decide is best for your own mental health. Whatever you choose, let it be YOUR decision and not something influenced by what others think you should do. You know what’s best for you.

When dating, we don’t have to be fully healed or in love with ourselves to love someone else. Sometimes it takes for us being loved by someone else to show us how to love ourselves. The challenge is identifying what being loved is vs familiarity. When selecting partners, we unconsciously seek to finish the job of whatever our pattern was with our parent. That familiarity is magnetic and in order to move through this, we may have to go to an extreme of different in order to find middle ground. We get good at recognizing the familiar patterns in partners that trigger our cycle and then we can consciously choose a different behavior to reframe our beliefs about what a healthy relationship is.

And finally, sex with your ex. Good communication can make this healthy. This dynamic usually works for the person who is detached from the relationship history but can be unhealthy when the other is still holding on to hope and hurting. It’s important to be clear with your intention and to be honest with yourself and the other person involved.

What an interview this was! While different than the expected, I mentioned this show evolves with the audience, but I didn’t mention how I’m evolving as well. I believe it’s important to remember that this space is still also an extension of me and naturally, I’ll share here for the sake of supporting the healing of those who find their way here.

Last little disclaimer is that I mention season 2. This was recorded in July 2021 and posted in December. You’ll hear references of uncertainty about where this show is headed because I chose not to edit them out :) Thank you for being along for this journey!