Kiwi journalist Sarah Catherall has been there, done that when it comes to broken relationships, including the collapse of her nine-year marriage. Now, with several ill-advised relationships behind her (and her now successful Mr Fuck Yes) she’s penned a book, How to Break Up Well: Surviving and Thriving After Separation to help other women navigate the windy road of break ups, with practical and expert advice intermingled with her own personal experiences. Here, she writes about her own story about how being a dumpee made being the dumper massively difficult as she figured out her own personal worth.
I was hiking down an icy mountain, freezing cold in a blizzard. The man I had been dating for three months had accompanied me on an all-expenses paid trip to Taranaki for a travel story I was writing. Everything had been paid for: the hotel, the food, the transport. “Are you okay?’’ I asked him, my breath billowing around me like a cloud.
He had been quiet for the last few hours. He stopped on the side of the mountain. “I don’t think I’m into this anymore.’’ He said it so defiantly that I knew I would never change his mind.
Three years earlier, my husband had said the same thing. “It’s over,’’ he told me, ending our nine-year marriage.
Mountain Dumper was hardly my dream man – the healed me, 15 years on from a marriage break-up, wouldn’t have gone on a single date with him. I met him via an online dating site. He lived in a rental, he was broke, he had three bratty kids and a high opinion of himself. Even my best friends didn’t like him and questioned why I was dating him. “If you don’t break up with him, I will,’’ one said.
But I couldn’t end it. And he got in first, which made me think: what is wrong with me?
The end of my marriage 15 years ago was an absolute shock which I talk about in my new book How to Break Up Well: Surviving and Thriving After Separation, it also had a huge psychological effect. My husband dumped me and that meant that as a dumpee, I was scarred. Apparently our brain chemistry changes when we’re rejected in love.
Sarah Catherall
For the first 40 years of my life, I had been securely attached. As far back as the 1950s, the American psychoanalyst John Bowlby identified four attachment styles: about half the population are secure and the rest are a mix of anxious, avoidant or disorganised (a la all over the place). He links this to the way we were parented. I had a mother who showered me with love so I felt securely attached, and then my husband became my primary attachment figure. So another consequence of being dumped was that I was no longer securely attached and I became anxious in relationships.
When I was dating post-divorce, I fully expected the guy to leave me. I didn’t rate myself. I looked for signs that I wasn’t good enough. I texted too much, I was too eager to meet up and too desperate to convince the man to see me.
And I seemed to be a magnet for being dumped: go out with me, and you can dump me. And if I wasn’t absolutely sure about someone, I had no idea how to dump him.
After Mountain Dumper left, I spent the next few years dating men who were either not quite right or they couldn’t commit. I’m not trying to talk myself up in a narcissistic way, but I did date men I wasn’t really sure about. They were fine, or a bit of fun, but no-one I was prepared to spend the next chapter with.
But I clung on.
There was one I had an off-again off-again relationship with. After a few months of being together, I did break up with him but he stared at me with sad, puppy dog eyes, and then when I was at home on my own on my child-free nights, I questioned my choice to be alone. I found it so hard to be alone. I was so used to being part of a couple that I felt inadequate without a man by my side.
As Rhonda Pritchard – the retired relationship therapist – told me when I was researching my book, between a quarter and a third of the population live alone. Even though society tells us we should be in a relationship, women are also more likely to be alone, especially in their later years.
So I called Andrew* and we got back together, and after a few catch-ups, everything that was wrong about him was amplified.
Finally, I summoned the courage to end it. He was sad but probably relieved. I could tell that he hated being in limbo and he was more into the relationship than I was. I swung all over the place like a pendulum. Once I finally ended it, I still had moments of loneliness, when to stop myself approaching him I renamed him in my phone: *Andrew* don’t text.’’ – a good strategy if you’re tempted to keep in touch with someone you’ve just broken up with.
Eventually, I did meet my partner eight years ago and he is amazing and a great match for me, which makes me look back at the time in-between him and my marriage, shake my head, and think: Why? Why did I settle for someone just to be with someone? And if I wasn’t sure, I still couldn’t bring myself to end it.
I had this habit post-divorce until an acquaintance said a few words which I’ve remembered ever since. We were sharing our dating horror stories, and she said: “If it’s not fuck yes, then it’s fuck no.’’
A relationship break-up is a chance for personal growth. And if the relationship isn’t right, it’s also a chance to move into a new chapter either on your own or with someone more suited.
My partner is “Mr Fuck Yes’’. You know a “Mr Fuck Yes’’ when you meet him. I’m also now securely attached but it took me a few years and a lot of healing and learning to become that way.