She said, He said: On Their Breakup

After the breakup, I remember sitting there trying to make sense of it all. Replaying conversations. Going over what I said, what I should have said, what I could have done differently.

Trying to figure out if the relationship meant as much to him as it did to me.

And then I look up, and he’s already moving on. Or at least, that’s what it seemed like.

He’s out, posting, and even talking to someone new. Acting like the relationship barely even happened. And I’m left sitting there thinking, “How are you okay already?”

Have you ever felt like that? Like you’re the only one still in it after a breakup? That part hurt more than the breakup itself.

Because now it felt like everything we had didn’t mean what I thought it did.

Like I was the only one affected and the only one feeling it. But what I had to learn is that what you see is not always the full picture.

From my experience, men don’t always process breakups the same way women do. That doesn’t necessarily mean they do not feel anything, though. It just means they handle it differently. And a lot of times, they don’t deal with it at all right away.

When my relationship ended, I went inward. I thought about everything. I felt everything. I replayed everything.

I sat in it. He did the opposite. He distracted himself.

Maybe you’ve seen this too. The man stays busy with friends, work, going out, dating, or whatever. But I just didn’t feel like doing any of this.

Men seem to do anything that keeps them from having to sit still long enough to actually feel the breakup.

So from the outside, it looks like they move on fast. That’s exactly how it looked to me in my situation. But looking back, I had to be honest about something else too.

Sometimes it’s not even that deep.

Sometimes a man moves on fast because he just wasn’t that invested. And he just doesn’t care

That was a hard truth for me to sit with. Because it’s easier to believe he’s hurting in some hidden way than to accept that he might not be.

But both things can be true depending on the situation, I guess. Some men avoid. Some men distract. And some men really do just move on so quickly because they were never all the way in.

And if I’m being real, there were signs. I just didn’t want to accept them. There was the inconsistency. The lack of emotional depth. The way I was always the one trying to make things feel more solid than they actually were.

I was more invested. And when you’re more invested, you feel the loss differently.

Meanwhile, I was doing the hard part first. Feeling everything like the confusion, the hurt, and disappointment.

Then processing it in real time felt heavy. I remember thinking something had to be wrong with me.

Like, why am I still stuck while he’s out here living his life?

Have you ever questioned yourself like that?

But here’s what I didn’t understand at the time. That difference in how we handled the breakup shows up later. What I was doing, as uncomfortable as it felt, was actually helping me heal.

At least I was facing it and sitting with it. I was working through it. You can do it too. So even though it might feel like you’re stuck, you’re actually moving forward.

If he’s moving forward, maybe he hasn’t processed anything and is just delaying it. Or maybe he wasn’t that invested; then of course it’s easy for him. Either way, it has nothing to do with your worth.

That is the part I had to learn. I remember thinking, “There’s no way he’s already over this.” But he looked fine and acted fine.

His moving on like nothing happened made me question everything. But just because somebody looks okay doesn’t mean they actually are. And sometimes it means exactly what it looks like.

So, forget wallowing in it. You can replace a person. You can distract yourself. You can stay busy.

Figuring out what I ignored, what I accepted, and what I wouldn’t accept again took time. And it wasn’t pretty. The truth hurt, but it also freed me.

Sometimes you have to heal quietly and uncomfortably in a way nobody really sees. But when you come out on the other side, you’ll notice a paradigm shift.

That’s how it was for me. I was thinking more clearly and I was emotionally stronger. It was like one day, I wasn’t replaying everything anymore. I wasn’t questioning my worth or wondering what he was doing.

I was done. I had finally moved on too, and the feeling was a beautiful thing.

He said:

Brother Gbenga, see how she wrote a lot of words without actually saying anything tangible or real?

That is the definition of this lady, who now is in your dm shedding crocodile tears and claiming she was wronged

I was talking to this lady about marriage for a whole year.

I was very invested, and I travelled to see her at least twice every month while she only visited me twice

We were always on the phone, and I made some serious impact in her life

I didn't know that she only had my time because her boyfriend had gone for NYSC, and she felt he would never come back to her

So she used the opportunity to entertain another suitor so that she wouldn't end up alone

I was the second fiddle, the one she allowed to get to the first base but not the second

I was naive at the time

I played along according to her rules, and she was quite good at stringing me along too

One year went by; her man finished that NYSC and came back for her

She dropped me like I didn't matter

It was easy for her

She was not invested; she was not into it as deeply as I was

I was the one who invested time, money, hope, aspirations, dreams and everything

She just played along and watched me fall into my own web of expectations

When I realised this was what she did, I decided not to play it fair

I sent pictures of both of us to her man

We didn't do anything that nasty or improper, but it is still the picture of another man with his woman, and it was suggestive enough

She had no idea the pictures were sent to him by me

I had seen him in some of her albums and somehow gotten his phone number from one of her chats while we were still chummy

The man couldn't take it, and he broke up with her

That was when she came crawling back to me

I knew I was just the placeholder until she healed, and I played the role of comforter very well

In a way, it was to my benefit

I got all the things she wouldn't give me in that one year easily in those three months after he broke up with her.

While she was with me, she kept begging him and reaching out to their mutual friends and his relatives who knew them as a couple

Even though I was there, now accessing the second base at will, I was still not the one

Her body she was willing to give, but her heart was still with him

I fought hard so that she could see me, but she didn't

He was all she could see

Sometimes, while she was in my arms in the throes of love, i would hear her whisper his name and cry

She was not my girl.

I had to accept that eventually.

He came back for her just as their breakup was hitting three months

She sneaked back to him without my knowledge at first as they began to patch things up

Then after three weeks of their clandestine meetings, she summoned the courage to tell me he had reached out to her and she had been meeting with him

So I did the right thing; I broke up with her.

Now see all the things she wrote to you, sir.

How can you tell the truth from that vague nonsense?

She is playing victim without a word to explain what really happened.

I just felt I should offer some clarification, sir.

Thank you, sir.

O.J.