They're not emotionally unavailable, they just don't like you.
A journal entry on why you don't need to hate your ex.
“You can do so much better.”
“You’re too good for them.”
“I never liked them.”
“You dodged a bullet.”
“Their loss.”
Every time I have gone through a breakup, these are the types of phrases I am inundated with by well-meaning people with honorable intentions, and I’m sure I’ve been one of those people telling a friend how much better they are than their ex.
The worst part? It helps.
In spite of the fact that telling yourself you’re better than your ex helps you feel better to some extent, I want to challenge the idea that in order to heal you need to villainize or hate your ex. I know, I know, sometimes people do terrible and unforgivable things to their partners and in those cases maybe they deserve to be hated! I have exes I hate. I hate the one who assaulted me twice. I hate the one who lied to me for 10 months about what kind of person they were.
Sometimes people betray you in such a way that the only way forward is to hate them, and I absolutely do not believe that we have to forgive in order to move on and finally find peace.
But a lot of times, nobody in the relationship needs to be crucified. Beyond that, I think it is always a dangerous game to stake your ability to feel good about yourself in another person being or doing worse than you.
The TikTok-ification of the modern parlance drives people to throw around terms like “narcissist,” “gaslighting,” “emotionally unavailable,” or “dismissive avoidant,” to name a few, without fully grasping the meaning and implications of those words. They have come to mean absolutely nothing and 9 times out of 10 they are being misused in the first place.
Just because somebody didn’t like you enough to form a deep emotional bond doesn’t necessarily mean they’re emotionally unavailable. Just because somebody was selfish doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a narcissist. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be, and just because someone wasn’t the type of partner you needed doesn’t make them a bad partner, it just means it wasn’t a good fit.
Why do we feel the need to paint those who wrong us as villains in such a severe manner when the truth of the matter is sometimes two people just aren’t a good match for each other?
Maybe you’re not too much and they’re not not enough or vise versa, you two just aren’t compatible. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that something didn’t work out doesn’t mean that either party is a bad person.
I truly believe turning your ex into a monster in your head rather than someone you once loved dearly that just wasn’t meant to stay in your life is an (often subconscious) means of absolving oneself from confronting the ways they also were imperfect in a relationship.
I am going through a break-up right now, and I don’t hate my ex at all! In fact, I love him. Part of me probably always will and even though I initiated the breakup, I don’t think he is a bad person and I never will. He’s a wonderful, lovely, kindhearted person and I truly hope we will reconnect in one way or another someday.
I don’t need to badmouth my ex and slander his name in order for me to heal and move on, and I don’t need to harbor resentment towards him just because the relationship was no longer working for me. Was he perfect? No. You know who else was imperfect? ME!
Everybody has blind spots and when we paint our exes as horrible people just for having flaws rather than showing them grace, as I said I think often times it’s a means of keeping us from having to face the ways we fell short too. Remember, at one point you loved this person. At one point things were working well enough to stay together. At one point they were your whole world. It’s okay if that love is still there, and it’s okay to not hate your ex and you absolutely don’t have to hate them in order to move on.
I don’t want to try to force myself to hate somebody who I will always love in some way as a means of feeling good about myself. I can find ways to feel confident and secure in who I am in ways that don’t require someone else being worse than me, and I will opt for that every time.
Wow...I really needed to read this today. Thank you for your honest words.
Great post! I totally agree. Sometimes it can a blessing in disguise if someone ends a relationship as it means it's not a right fit - no need to demonise them and vice versa! I see this more with men honestly, where they complain about their exes and demonise them for it when they're clearly just upset they were broken up with. People should be kind enough to accept that sometimes people are just not a good fit and if someone is willing to go through the emotional trauma of initiating a break-up, then they're probably not doing it lightly or just to annoy the other person. And, as you say, it doesn't mean they're a bad person either! It just wasn't meant to be and they're strong enough to recognise that. I wish people could give each other enough grace and space to be themselves and make decisions without it having to be so much about the other person (the level of emotion involved depends of course on context and we're not robots - for eg. a marriage of 20 years ending will throw up more emotions than the end of a 6 month relationship!)