Your Ex Is A Jerk? Ok, Now Move On!

So this afternoon I was watching an episode of the Tyra show with guests who claimed they suffered from sexorexia (in other words they no longer engaged in sexual activity of any kind as a punishment to themselves for some other issue). Well there was this dude on the show telling everyone how he hasn't had sex in 8 years because his ex-girlfriend disappeared for 5 days then came back and said she didn't want to be with him anymore--and it broke his heart. The ex was on the show and the guy was sitting on the couch crying and looking at her saying "you never even said sorry". Dude it's been 8 years. As if that's not bad enough, he proceeds to talk about how he lost his job, has no money, his car is falling apart and women don't want him because he doesn't have, in his words, "bling-bling". Well, sir, maybe if you focused your energy on working and building up your finances instead of walking around depressed about a relationship that ended 8 years ago you wouldn't be broke.

Ok, I don't mean to make light of his pain. We've all been there. There's an ex that completely abuses your trust and treats you in a way that no human being deserves to be treated and you are in more pain than you even knew was humanly possible. I don't know about you, but when I was in the situation it made me feel better to tell people how much of a jerk my ex was. But it wasn't so much out of hate for him. I wanted to make myself feel better about how much anger and pain I was feeling and I thought if I could get my friends and family to say he was a bad person then I could justify all the pain I was in.

Watching that guy showed me something though. We will all probably suffer some kind of betrayal at some point in our life. And it is great for friends and family to offer us their shoulder to cry on as we try to move on from those painful experiences. But the important thing is that we move on. I won't place any kind of time limit on moving on...it took me years to recover from my ex. But when it's been 8 years and you are still crying like it happened yesterday you haven't moved on. And though you may want the whole world to see how bad of a person your ex is the only thing you actually end up accomplishing is making yourself look crazy.