What to Do When Your Ex Moves on RIDICULOUSLY FAST | Matthew Hussey

What is painful to our egos is this idea that someone dates us, we break up, and then they say about someone else, I've never been this sure before. Jessica says, hi, Matthew and Stephen. I just got out of a six month relationship that was pretty serious. Of course, we fought like any other relationship, but arguments were always over his behavior on social media and how I felt disrespected by what he would do. He was amazing and always corrected his behavior until it would happen again. He told me it's too early on in the relationship to have this much drama and the boundaries I put on him. So eight days after we signed a lease for an apartment together, he broke up with me over text and is now dating someone new. The new girl has randomly liked a couple of things of mine on social media, which I found strange. And she's posted pics of them with the caption, if you know, you know. And screenshots of their text conversation saying he's never been so sure of anyone until her. Was my entire relationship all in my own head? Love your podcast, by the way. It's been helping me get through the darkest time of my life. So, look, firstly, in answer, in direct answer to your question, was my entire relationship all in my own head? The answer is, there will have been an experience being had there. Okay? There, in any situation, there are, we can feel something and then we can go into another relationship and we can use big words and feel something again to a less lesser or a greater extent. That doesn't mean that the person didn't feel something in the relationship before that. And many people have had that experience. You, Jessica, may have had the experience of feeling something in one relationship and then going into another relationship and feeling something again. It doesn't invalidate the last relationship that you feel something now. What is painful to our egos is this idea that someone dates us, we break up, and then they say about someone else, I've never been this sure before. That can be a real blow to our ego because what we're hearing is what I feel now is superior to what I felt when I was with you. Now, Firstly, there has to be a kind of radical acceptance that we have where we say, if someone feels that way, then by definition they were not my person. That if they genuinely feel like they've never been more certain, then I don't need to mourn them. This person is not my person. There will be someone who feels that about me, and this isn't my person. So that's the starting point. Even if what he feels is real, then in this situation, then what you're learning is that this person truly wasn't your person. They're not with someone else and questioning it and thinking about you. They're with someone else and they have all of that certainty, which for you means you can genuinely move on from that person. It's both painful and it offers a genuine opportunity for closure. And like I said, there will be someone out there that feels that level of certainty or will has the potential to feel that level of certainty about you. Now, that's the most optimistic interpretation for him, because the truth is, if you had a, quote, pretty serious relationship over six months and now straight away he's having a very serious relationship with somebody else, There's a good chance that what he's feeling right now is not sustainable. That it's just a new set of feelings of certainty, of dopamine, of giddiness that cannot necessarily be trusted. I don't think you can really know what he feels in this relationship. Lots of people say things early on in a relationship by text, that are said in that passion of big feelings that are proved to be wrong months or years later, or they just don't, they don't have the staying power. They don't last. So you shouldn't, just because someone is posting things, that doesn't mean that you should take that so seriously. I'm not saying that from the perspective of wanting this person back. I'm just saying from the perspective of, You feeling mad? Sometimes when someone suddenly, when we break up and you said he broke up with you over text, when they break up with us after something serious, and then immediately are like, I've never been more in love before about someone new. It can make us feel mad. And I don't mean angry. I mean mad. What is going on? What world have I been living in? It does create that feeling that you've articulated. Was it in my own head? And the truth is, and sometimes the scary thing is that someone can be having a very different experience than we are in a relationship. We are fighting for the relationship. We are willing to invest in the relationship and they are planning their exit at the same time. And that's a real, that can affect our ego because, well, A, it can make us trust ourselves less because we go, what's wrong with me that I didn't see that we were living two completely different realities? But it can also just be really, it can feel embarrassing. you know, it can feel painful because we go, God, what a fool am I that I was giving all of this energy to this relationship. And I was under this complete misapprehension that this person was having the same experience as me. And don't beat yourself up for that. You gave your role in a relationship, and someone wasn't willing to give you. the same thing. That's not a portent of things to come. That's not a sign that in the future you're not going to be loved. It's just an example of a situation where someone wasn't willing to give you what you were willing to give them. And what's important about a situation like this is you look back on it and you say, Could I have seen that sooner? If I look at it now, were there actually a lot of signs that this person was not willing to give me what I was willing to give them? And if so, why did I ignore those signs? Was him breaking up with me over text after six months of what you describe as a pretty serious relationship Was that out of the ordinary or was that actually an extension of what I was seeing before that? You know, you talk about these fights over how he was on social media, but he would keep reverting to type. You said he would momentarily correct his behavior and then it would happen again. This doesn't speak of a person who is respecting your wishes of someone who is trying to build bridges. and someone who was afraid of losing the relationship because he kept doing the same thing over and over again. So, I think it's just important to say, was I truly mad in this situation? Was I truly just completely oblivious? Or did I see things that made it clear to me that this person was not willing to give what I was willing to give? And if so, What am I going to do to build my strength, my confidence, and have a concrete standard that means in the future when this happens, I don't continue down the path if I'm seeing that once I communicate something that's important to me, it's routinely ignored or this person keeps reverting. to type. But I. I think it's safe to say that some of these things that you're talking about are character flaws in this person in their life right now. And that one of the things you should be really happy about is that you're no longer subject to those character flaws, that you have the opportunity to find someone better. Because someone who, after six months with you, can simply break up with you by text is someone you should be really, really glad. you didn't give six years of your life to, because who knows how much damage that person could have done over that kind of a time period.