Love, Actually – Learn to Love Again

Brandt Ranj, Staff Writer
May 3, 2012
Filed under Opinion

Don’t sit in your lonely room

Just staring back in silent gloom,

That’s not where you belong.

Come with me, leave yesterday behind,

And take a giant step outside your mind.

- Monkees

One of the toughest aspects of dating is recovering from a bad breakup. I’ve seen perfectly rational people abandon all hope and mortality in the post-breakup landscape. Fear not, all hope is not lost.

Friends try to be helpful by telling you such enlightening clichés as, “There are a million fish in the sea,”to which you should respond, “Then hand me an extension cord and a toaster.” Then progress can be made.

One of the most daunting thoughts is the proposition of starting over with somebody new. The person with whom you just broke up already knows a lot of personal information about you, are you really going to tell somebody else the entirely too embarrassing details of your life from age five ‘til present? The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is you’ll find somebody new eventually, in good time, to whom you’ll present one story at a time and in response receive a story of his or her own. Also remember that the more embarrassing stories you have, the more interesting of a person you are!

Another aspect of dating after a break-up is the fear of getting hurt again. This gets to everyone, but I’ve found is more prominent in the female community. To this I can only say that my gender is not filled solely with soul-crushing jerks who like nothing more than to love ‘em and leave ‘em.

In fact, outside of the stereotypical jock archetype, you’re likely to find a lot of nice guys, and before anybody asks — yes. A lot of the “nice guys” end up in the friend-zone despite being perfectly dateable, but that’s another subject entirely, isn’t it?

Getting back “into the ring” isn’t all that bad though; if you wait long enough to fully recover. Don’t let anyone push you back into it. Despite trying to be helpful, some folks have a hard time minding their own business. Once you decide to play the field again, though, everything you learned about yourself and preferences in a partner remain. Prerequisites you may not have had before might be super important now, the only way to learn more about what you like is ultimately to have a few poor dates, but they turn into embarrassing stories to tell the person that really matters.

My sign-off, for this article and for the year is to get back on the horse, or if you’re a guy become a horse? That may have come off a little better in my head, but regardless my points remains solid. Get out there and try new stuff!