Longest a failed romance has #$%ed you up?

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A former co-worker gave me a formula: Take the amount of time you've been involved with someone, halve it, and that's how long it takes to emotionally recover from a failed romance.

In my experience, that's been completely false!

Example 1: A woman I was involved with briefly, at age 22 - off-and-on for two months - whom I considered my first and only adult love, yet who dumped me in a cruel and abusive fashion: This left me deeply upset for a year or so, and in spite of her enormous character flaws, I don't believe I fully lost my feelings for her until age 24 or 25...?

Example 2: A woman who asked me out at age 25, to whom I said yes because "Eh, why not?", dumped me after two months. I felt fine in a day.

Example 3: A woman my age in a class I taught took a liking to me and started flirting with me around this time last year. It made me feel stupidly happy and excited, even though I thought she was a little...childish. We had to restrain ourselves on account of the student-professor relationship, but with maybe a month left in the course, we disclosed our feelings for one another. She assured me she was very interested and would wait for the end of the course. At that point, she became distant (skipping class) and less communicative; she finally rejected me by e-mail, after I explained to her that all the uncertainty had caused me to suffer. Nine months later, I still think about her (I just woke up from a nightmare about her), in spite of my clearer perception of her unattractive features, in spite of my belief that a relationship ultimately wouldn't have worked.

That's pretty much the history of my love life, by the way. (I had a girlfriend in my early 'teens, too, but we're still on okay terms.)

No real patterns, other than that my co-worker's been consistently quite wrong! On the other hand, I'm not like most people, and, in addition to my fairly extreme lack of success, I'm deeply insecure and ambivalent about all things romantic.

At age 17 I had a girlfriend for about two months, until she broke it off.

I obsessed about her for the next eighteen months, until the end of high school.

My first relationship went for 2.5 years and I only needed a good nights sleep to recover from that one ending.

I think that relationships could have something of a mathematical pattern, as people are probably more controlled by physiological factors (ie, hormones, genes, etc) then they might realize or accept.

But it would have to have scientific evidence support to be worth taking seriously. So I would ask first where your friend came up with that formula.

But if he can make up a formula, I can too I guess.

Take the amount of money you spent on the person, convert it to Euros and your pain will last approximately 1 month per 500 Euros expended.

Blue Bean you are a cool one indeed. Probably couldn't remember his name after breakfast.

engaged for three years. was madly in love. he hit me. i broke up with him. was upset (depressed and angry) for about a year afterward.

My first love - we were together a year and a half (were engaged about the last six months of that), I found out he was also engaged to another woman. It was five years before I dated anyone else.

Other breakups have taken me anywhere from a week to a year to get over. There is no real pattern as to how long it takes me, except that the more invested I was in the relationship at the time of its end, the longer it took me to get over it.

I don't think there is any real formula for this kinda thing. Its just a matter of recovering from hurt feelings and a broken heart (or ego bruisings in some cases). After dealing with it, its a matter of moving forward and choosing not to live in the past. At least from what I know and have experienced, there is no formula. I could get over being dumped by a girl I dated for ten years in ten days and maybe I can sleep knowing I did the very best I could to make the relationship work and come to realize the ending of it was inevitable. Or I could not get over the girl who doesn't respond to me after three dates and try and look for any explanation possible as to why instead of letting it go and moving forward.



With that being said.... Its possible I and many others like me could have a harder time of letting go of what could have been rather than what was.

Let's see...met her a little over seven years ago, dated for a few years, and I'm still pretty messed up over it today.

Haha! I dated someone for about 2.5 years before he tried to kill me...it's been four years since that happened, and I'm STILL terrified of dating. I would't put too much stock in neat little formulas; there are a lot of variables to consider.

7 years and counting.

Permanently!

Both situations happened when I was 18, and completely destroyed my ability to feel infatuated. In one, a girl agreed to go out with me, but broke the date when I told her I didn't have a car. In another, a girl went on a date with me, but a few months later, didn't want to dance close at a dance event. I have not had any crushes on girls/women for the past 13 years, even the ones I thought were awesome.

During my freshman undergrad year, I became quite fond of someone who I thought was "perfect". She dumped me after I foolishly told her how I felt. It took me nearly 2 years to get over the disappointment.

However, time can heal wounds like that. Several years later, while I was working on my first master's degree, we crossed paths again. We chatted for a few minutes and I went home wondering what I ever saw in her.

More than a decade after that, I found out from a mutual acquaintance that she was still in town. I called her up and invited her to go for coffee, simply for old time's sake. She didn't even remember who I was.

Was she worth it? Nope.

I fell in love with my 1st girlfriend when I was 20. We were only together for about 6months & then on & off for about another 6months. I feel into a bad depression after we broke up & i was depressed for 5 years. I was still hung up on her after I got out of the depression till I got my 2nd girlfriend when I was about 29. I think some of the problem was that my 1st girlfriend was the 1st person I connected with & I had bad OCD & anxiety issues that are well managed now by meds.