How to thrive after a breakup

It can be really hard when a relationship ends but I've just interviewed Rosie Wilby, author of The Break Up Monologues on The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak. Hold on, you can get through this.

Photo by Dovile Ramoskaite on Unsplash

Just before Covid struck I fell in love.

It was a proper rom-com beginning.

My canal boat had broken down near Murder Mile in London, my son Charlie was just about to start his new school in London and we were still 27 locks away from our mooring in Kings Cross.

Chris* was a friend of a friend (‘You’ll like him, he’s great with a screwdriver and will rummage around in your engine and rescue you,’ he said.) ‘I don’t want to be rummaged or rescued,’ I huffed.

But actually in this instance I needed to be rescued. I knew nothing about canal boats and I’d just bought one and we had broken down. My son Charlie had got into the London Screen Academy, a new film 6th Form just created by the Bond people and the Working Title production company and Charlie was the most enthusiastic I’d seen him since puberty hit. By a miracle he had applied and got in. We lived in Sussex and it was going to be a massive commute for him so I had come up with the mad idea of buying a canal boat and living in London. I wanted to do everything I could to support him.

Great intentions.

Great idea.

But not so great when we broke down, especially opposite this sign.

Especially as I was moored under the bridge over the Lea, just south of The Princess of Wales pub.

Enter Chris, the man with the magic screwdriver. He arrived, he rummaged and fixed the boat and and just like that …I fell in love.

It helped he looked like Robert Downey Junior.

Fast forward three lockdowns, my job contract ending and Charlie getting into university and Chris got down on one knee.

He asked me to buy a camper van with him.

I said yes.

We dropped Charlie off at Falmouth University and travelled around the UK in our camper van.

Again, it sounds romantic.

I hated it.

We rowed a lot.

I thought it was the camper van that was causing us to row.

So, we moved into a house on the wild coast of Northumberland together.

Three months later, we split up.

On Christmas Eve.

Chris finally left in February to go travel the world and I was left rather heartbroken.

That’s why it was so lovely to interview Rosie Wilby, award-winning comedian, podcaster and ‘Queen of Breakups’ for Metro last week.

She talked to me about the unexpected joy of heartbreak. Joy? I said. It’s awful.

“You need to harness adversity as a catalyst for change,” she replied.

How?

“I often feel at my most empowered, enlivened and enriched when things have gone wrong but then I’ve managed to get things back on track. That’s the moment when we can really appoint ourselves sort of hero of our own narrative. There’s something very thrilling and liberating about that upward trajectory of that journey again, when you have been crying on the kitchen floor, and you put your life together again.”

Hero of my own narrative? Now you’re talking!

Rosie talks from experience. In 2011, Rosie was dumped by her girlfriend by email. ‘I did feel a little better about it after correcting my ex’s spelling and punctuation! But I’ve been obsessing about breakups ever since,’ she says and embarked on a quest to investigate, understand and conquer the psychology of heartbreak.

Rosie believes that as heart-breaking as breakups can be, they can also be an unexpected route to happiness.

In her podcast and book The Break Up Monologues: The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak, the self-styled ‘lesbian Louis Theroux’ puts her relationships under the microscope and interviews her podcast guests and friends about the ‘glorious benefits’ of breakups.

I interviewed Rosie for my Big Happiness Interview for Metro (you can read the whole interview here) and felt incredibly comforted by her words.

Not only can we bounce back from heartbreak, we can bounce back stronger.

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Here’s the short version of the interview with Rosie:

Do you think that there is a set amount of time to recover from heartbreak?

There’s this idea of proportionality, which suggests that how long it takes you to get over someone should be proportional to how long you were together. I don’t think that’s true at all. I’ve spoken to people on my podcast, who were heartbroken even after a very short relationship. They were so convinced that the person they were with was ‘the one’ that they felt a profound sense of loss, because they’ve lost that imagined fantasy future. But whatever the length, there’s a real joy in liberating us ourselves from all of these types of heartbreak and sadness and loss because we will find other ways to be joyful and other ways to be strong in ourselves or embrace being single.

What advice have you got for someone who is has just broken up with someone and  you feel like you will never be happy again?

Firstly, acknowledge that it’s awful when you break up with someone. That’s why I set up the podcast, The Breakup Monologues, and then ended up writing the book because I wanted people to feel less alone because I think that is the initial real sadness, isn’t it?

It’s the loneliness that the person who was so entwined in our lives is not there anymore. Perhaps we’re still in touch and somehow managing some kind of co-parenting or some kind of friendship, but they’re not there in the way that we anticipated, and we have this huge loss to come to terms with.

Is it a good idea to stay friends with your ex?

It has to be managed carefully. Because of course, if you just continue being in touch or continue living together, as many people do, but just in separate rooms, perhaps there’s always that hope that you are going to revive and rekindle things. It’s about finding clarity and being really honest with one another but being really kind as well.

If you’re the one breaking up with someone – what’s your best advice?

It’s about giving the person you are breaking up with as much agency as possible. So maybe stating that the breakup is going to happen, but let the other person have input on how it plays out –  how you co parent, how you live, how it works practically. The breakup that propelled me into speaking and writing about breakups was when I got dumped by email. Even though when I read the email five years later, I can see there was kindness there, I just felt broken by the fact that the relationship had ended, and I felt my agency had been taken away.

How do we take responsibility for the part we’ve played in a relationship ending?

Obviously sometimes our partners are just cruel and unkind, and they’ve had an affair, or they’ve done something horrible, and there’s really not much we should beat ourselves up about. But sometimes when someone breaks up with us, it might be because we are closed off to hearing that our partner wasn’t happy. It’s good to be able to look back and reflect with some sense of your own responsibilities in relationships that haven’t been as successful as you wished. We’re all learning and growing.

What else might help you?

I know people who’ve have created a ‘breakup bucket list.’ I know people who’ve written the book that they’ve been putting off writing, or they started a comedy career, or taken up sailing or windsurfing, or water skiing or interesting activities that their partner just had zero interest in. I have spoken to so many women, who started their dream careers after a big breakup. A lot of women are juggling relationships, kids and so many different things. And then divorce or a breakup can be a catalyst to think: what do I want to do for me in my life? You can seek the things that enrich and reward you and start to make you feel really empowered and good about yourself.

How do we stop ourselves sinking into victim mode?

I spoke on my podcast to Rebecca Humphries, whose partner Seann Walsh was photographed kissing Katya Jones (his Strictly Come Dancing partner). Rebecca is a perfect example of claiming your agency and turning the narrative around so that you’re not a victim, because she not only had to do that for herself, but she had to do that in the public realm as well. The press spoke about her as the victim, the ‘poor girlfriend’ who had been cheated on. She tweeted ‘Hello there, my name is Rebecca Humphries, and I am not a victim’ and took charge of the narrative. (Go look the tweet up – it’s a masterclass in not being a victim!).

Photo by Peter Schulz on Unsplash

It went viral, and huge tribe of women rallied around her, offering their support. We may not have huge Twitter followings, but we do have our own networks and have platforms where we can speak up, even if it’s talking to your group of friends and saying: I don’t want to feel like this, how do I change it? How do I own it? How do I move forward? We can all do a what Rebecca did and find our own way of saying ‘I don’t want to be a victim.’

How do you love again after a breakup?

Breakups can be a healing and learning experiences. But my breakups that have been less gracious and kind were the ones that prompted me to go and speak to a therapist and become a bit more aware of my own behaviours. Many of us find love again by online dating. I was very sceptical about online dating, after I’ve had all kinds of weird experiences. (I once met a woman on a first date, and she brought a panel of her exes along.) I thought love only happened in ‘real life’. And then I went on internet dating site and fell in love with the woman who became my wife.

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It’s five months on since I lay crying on my kitchen floor and Rosie is right, it’s great to find your inner hero and start creating a new life for yourself.

I am, I will.

And so will you.

Let’s create a life we love.

To see Rosie live:

http://rosiewilbynews.blogspot.com/p/gig-list.html

*Not his real name.