How to deal with people who don’t want you to leave them and refuse to accept that the feelings you may have once had towards them are long gone.
I’ve received many letters from people asking me for advice on how to deal with people who don’t want you to leave them and refuse to accept that the feelings you may have once had towards them are long gone.
Not many people know this, but years ago I wrote a book about tumors titled How to Deal with Cancer and Die Suffering, in which I described the 5 stages of dying. Or, to phrase it differently, I described the methods of dealing with the pilgrimage you’re about to embark on. The one that leads you 6 feet under the ground.
The stages go as follows: denial, anger, negotiation, depression, acceptance.
Here’s a short illustration of what it basically looks like.
The doctor tells you:
“You’ve got cancer.”
The patient reacts in the following way (the time between the subsequent stages may vary):
Denial: There’s no way that’s true!
Anger: Oh, for fuck’s sake!
Negotiation: How about we cut this thing out?
Depression: Oh, fuck, I’m done for.
Acceptance: “I’ve always loved you all.” See ya.
If we apply these stages of dying to the stages of leaving your partner, we’ll quickly notice that the situation is verysimilar. If we give a right diagnosis to the person we wish to break up with, we’ll be able to deal with her better and foresee the subsequent stages.
On the other hand – each one of you will be able to determine which stages you’ve been through yourself. Most of my readers are losers who have been dumped quite a few times.
The situation: we tell our loved one that she isn’t our loved one anymore. What happens next?
DENIAL
In this stage, we can’t do much more than assuring our partner that all of the butterflies in our stomach are long dead and we don’t feel anything for them anymore.
Classic quotes of denial uttered by women dumped by Jason:
“You can’t just leave me like that”, “I can’t believe you’re actually doing this”, “What did I ever do to you?”
ANGER
This stage is especially dangerous for women. Men are known to get physically violent at this point. Threats start being thrown around pretty quickly. Your naked pictures wind up on the internet, you keep being harassed by a person breathing heavily into your phone, your friends start discovering your secrets and everybody finds out what an absolute cunt you are.
Classic quotes:
“you’ve never loved me at all”, “that was despicable behavior, you know”, “I gave you a blowjob every morning…”, “get out of my sight or I’ll kill you.”
NEGOTIATION
The most exhausting stage. Your ex, who has now understood the new situation and released all the anger, starts grasping at straws. She wants to change your mind. During this stage, 79% of women go back to their partners. 89% of men don’t change their mind and don’t go back to their women.
The people that went back to their partners experience a relapse after a year, at the most. They’re dumped again and they need to revisit the first two stages.
Classic quotes uttered by women dumped by Jason:
„Why can’t we simply try one more time?”, “You don’t even know me yet, you don’t know who I am”, “So everything that we used to have, does that mean nothing to you?”
DEPRESSION
Women are more prone to it and it lasts for a longer time, but it’s men who truly take it the hardest.
It’s the stage when we find out – accidentally, from our friends – that our ex tried to kill herself (she’s magically survived), that she’s drinking herself to death, that she’s dropping out of university, won’t study, won’t leave the house and won’t even pick up the phone. Sometimes, we get calls from our ex’s friends, who are kind enough to educate us about the effect of our decision and ask us if we could call the whole thing off and go back to how things were.
Classic quote:
„I’ll kill myself if you leave me.”
ACCEPTANCE
Funny enough, it’s harder to break up with somebody if they seem unphased by you dumping them. The happier the person is, the worse you feel. Don’t even get me started on the horror of discovering that our ex found somebody new and tells the world that she’s happily in love…
Classic quotes of the ones being dumped:
“maybe we can stay friends?”, “now I know that you don’t deserve me”, “I’ve met somebody.”
Classic quotes of the ones doing the dumping:
“maybe we can stay friends?”, “how did you find somebody else this quickly?”, “maybe you could come around to my place..?”
I didn’t raise this topic today by accident. One of my friends, one you know very well, is currently dealing with the aforementioned stages. But I’ll talk about that some other time.
The 5 stages of breaking up. That’s what terminally ill relationships look like.
It’s like dying from cancer. Finding a cure is statistically impossible, neither us or our loved ones stand a chance. And they always lead to death. Either your body or your heart will perish.
Most of you know these stages from your own experience. Some of you went through them or witnessed other people going through some of these stages, right? Some of you are cracking a tiny smile, thinking: “damn, this sounds really familiar.” Knowing the tales of the previous relationships of our current or potential partner, we can clearly determine which stages they’ve been through.
There’s a simple conclusion you can reach – people who have been dumped and didn’t go straight to the 5th stage aren’t worth your trouble. Indeed, only the 5th stage is acceptable. All the other ones are for the weaklings, idiots and gingers.
There’s nothing more ridiculous and demeaning than having to fight for somebody’s love.
