Knowing your value as a man after a breakup with a woman. It’s not easy, because many women can and often do easily find a new guy after a breakup. That’s heart-wrenching, especially if you were extremely serious about your relationship. So, let’s talk about how to still see value in what you have to offer as a man. Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster. Here I teach men how to move on from their ex-girlfriend.
Coping with a breakup as a man is extremely difficult. Ironically, regarding the topic of knowing your value after a breakup, I think this is something that is rather a pattern that is displayed by women. Though, I guess women like to call it knowing your worth.
When a woman had a breakup, you instinctively know what’s going to happen next. She’s going to make or share vague posts about deserving only the best, deserving more, messages about if he won’t give you what you are worth, someone else will, and so on. Women are professional salt-into-the-wound rubbers after breakups. It’s almost as if they want you to see that they think you sucked and they want to assert that they made the right choice. But that may not even be the worst part of the typical breakup pattern with a woman.
An ex-girlfriend making the typical “I’m worth it” posts isn’t necessarily something out of the ordinary. This is how women are wired. They are biologically programmed to have high standards for their relationships, and so they will be very vocal when they feel mistreated. Yes, some women may take it a bit far, but it is what it is. When a woman is done with a man, she is done with him 100% for a while.
The harsher part is that women not only voice their disappointment after a breakup, which makes you feel bad as it is, they are also very likely to go on with their lives, go wild and free, have excessive amounts of “fun” in the forms of parties, and they may even hook up a lot with men after breakups, or they may start a new (rebound) relationship very early on after the breakup. Meanwhile, as a man, not only do you have it harder to find someone else after a breakup, it’s very likely that you don’t want to move on. When a man is with a woman, even if he may be screwing up or has been neglecting his girlfriend, he tends to be fully committed and he could not imagine ever dating another woman.
This is why breakups are such massive shocks for men. It may be possible to somewhat predict or anticipate that a breakup could happen. If your relationship wasn’t going well, then you probably had a somewhat functioning barometer that told you that something in the relationship was broken. Maybe you considered the possibility of an impending breakup, but I assume even if that was the case, you still didn’t want it to happen. You thought somehow it’ll be fine. You wanted the relationship to work out and you had hopes that the relationship could turn around and improve. Now, obviously, if you sort of saw it coming, should you have done something to fix it? Sure. And this is an important life lesson for you as a man, to always be a leader in your relationships and try to address the problems head-on. But anyway, what is done is done at this point.
Your relationship ended without either of you reconciling your issues, and because you were extremely committed to your ex-girlfriend all the way up until the end, your self-esteem is crushed when you find out that your girlfriend is dealing with the breakup much easier than you.
Whereas you feel like you are still halfway stuck in it with one leg, your ex has started walking in a new direction a long time ago. Now, I just want to be clear, in case women are watching. Of course, a woman can feel exactly the same, but it’s more likely that it’s the woman who’s already making moves early on after a breakup.
When your ex starts moving forward step by step, when you practically feel as if you’re frozen in time, trapped in the same place, and you are anything but ready to start from scratch, it really makes you wonder if there is something wrong with you. If you are unable to let go and want to cling to the last relationship, but your ex-girlfriend has already gathered a lot of momentum, then you cannot help but feel that it is you who is in the wrong. It is you who wasn’t worth anything within the relationship and as a result, it seems logical why your ex is now moving forward so easily.
This can destroy your self-worth and self-esteem more than you could have ever imagined. It might make your feel like your ex saw no value in being with you, and that would imply, that you didn’t bring anything useful to the table, even though I’m sure you really tried hard to be a good boyfriend, and even if you probably made a bunch of big mistakes, your heart was probably in the right place.
All of this may even cause a big identity crisis for you, when you all of a sudden are confronted with the question of whether or not you are a good man. After all, if you were a good man, your ex-girlfriend wouldn’t move on so easily, right? At least, that’s roughly along the lines of what you are asking yourself.
Now, I cannot give you one universal truth that applies to every breakup situation. Sometimes you really messed up big-time, but at the same time, I think it’s quite common that there was a degree of big mistakes being made on both sides of the breakup. Relationships are filled with drama, especially unhappy ones and the ones that ended in a tumultuous breakup.
And so of course, breakups are also never pretty. No matter who among the two of you is more to blame, or even if none of you is really to blame and the relationship just ran its course, it’s important to recognize that the actions of your ex-girlfriend after a breakup have nothing to do with you. This is one of the biggest mistakes that men make after a breakup.
After the breakup, you are often still in the mental framework of considering yourself and your ex-girlfriend as one unit. As such, if your ex is dating around, partying, having fun, traveling a lot, living a brand new life and acting as if the breakup was the best opportunity for her within the last years… Well, you tend to relate her actions to you. You think you are the cause for that. You are what triggered her to seek something that you think is probably better for her, or more precisely, you think whatever she is seeking out right now is better than you.
Neither of these things are necessarily true. What your ex-girlfriend is up to right now isn’t always an indicator that she has found something better in life. At the same time, your ex doing things that may look like they are better than what she had with you, might not be related at all. In theory, you could be one of the best men in your area, so you could be considered the top-notch choices in the local dating pool of men, and an ex could still act rebellious, have rebound relationships, and do all kinds of things that seem extreme, disrespectful, hurtful, and so on.
As such, whatever your ex is doing after the breakup should not be something that you relate to at all. Obviously, understanding this on a conceptual level is very different from actually applying this as a mindset. For most guys, it’s nearly impossible to detach from the way their ex-girlfriend is exploring a new life after a breakup.
Perhaps to a degree it’s because to you, this new life exploration just can’t be done this quickly. To you, these things take time, they require careful consideration, perhaps you want to first analyze your pain and emotions, and going through prolonged periods of struggle is part of what it means to you to move on from the relationship. Women seem to want to overcome their breakup pain as quickly as they possibly can. In that way, you two have completely different breakup experiences and it’s crucial that you always remind yourself of this.
You are not worthless as a man when an ex-girlfriend moves on very quickly. Plus, an ex-girlfriend may look like she has already moved on, but all the things she is doing could just as much just be a facade so she doesn’t have to face her breakup pain. And therefore, you shouldn’t feel bad for feeling bad. It’s easy to compare yourself to your ex but there’s just no point in doing so.
Being in pain, doubting yourself, and struggling with starting from scratch is a natural reaction after a breakup and you should not compare your own process for moving on to the way that your ex girlfriend is moving on or whatever else she’s doing. Maybe she’s not moving on at all, who knows, we can’t read her mind.
I know it’s hard, I know a part of you is constantly questioning if there is something wrong with you, and whether there is something that needs to be urgently fixed with you. Perhaps there are things that need to be improved. Pretending that isn’t the case would be foolish.
Of course, I definitely want you to identify where things went wrong in the relationship, especially from your point of view, so the next relationship will be better. But you have to come to these conclusions without hating yourself endlessly. Even if you find reasons or indicators that would justify having a lowered self-esteem, you should use these realizations to work on yourself, to empower yourself to become stronger, smarter, kinder, and more loving in the future. I know that you are going through a lot right now, but what I know with even more certainty is that you will come stronger out of this, so don’t give up and don’t beat yourself up too much.
One thing that you should never forget, is that the same woman who broke your heart because she seemingly no longer sees your value, also fell in love with you BECAUSE she saw all the value that you provided. And let’s be honest, it’s much, much easier to see the good sides of a person early on, when dopamine is high. But later on, that is a conscious effort. I’m not saying this to put you down and suggest she’s correct in no longer seeing your value. What I’m saying is that valuing your partner, to a degree, is also a choice. Love is a choice. And just moving on from a partner, and pretending like they didn’t bring you a lot of happiness, good times, security, stability, thoughtful care, and so on, is kind of foolish if you think about it.
It’s a very narrow view of our partner. Of course, you aren’t a fundamentally man from who you were when you first dated your ex-girlfriend. I mean, theoretically it’s possible, of course, but I think the vast, vast majority of guys aren’t a massive downgrade from who they were before, after let’s say, 3 years of dating. So, you’re still for the most part, the same guy, who brings a lot of value to the table. Your ex fell in love with some of your qualities for a reason, and I’m sure all of these things still exist within you. Maybe you did make some mistakes… But realistically, that just means, that you now have some lessons to learn from, you know what to do better in the next relationship, and you still have all the other great qualities that made your ex fall for you.
So that means, you’re still a valuable guy, and in the near future, another woman is going to see that. Of course, I encourage you to work as hard as possible on yourself, and make yourself as attractive as humanly possible, without driving yourself insane. But also, don’t forget that you still have a lot of things to bring to the table, even if right now, perhaps you feel a little bit defeated, and you feel like you have no value because your ex doesn’t see it. Honestly, it’s even possible that your ex herself would start to wonder in 3 months from now, that actually, you weren’t all that bad, in fact, maybe she’ll realize that you had way more good qualities than bad ones.
So, don’t focus on the indicators that make you believe that you don’t have anything of value to add as a man. I’m sure there are countless things that are really great about you, and whatever you’re beating yourself up about regarding the last relationship, maybe even justified so, that’s all stuff you can work on and improve. So stay positive, and don’t think you’re not a high value man, because I have confidence that you are.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.
