Calling your ex a psycho just makes it harder to move on | Unpopular Opinion

I decided I’m bringing back the Unpopular Opinion series on the blog, and I want to kick this series back off with a strong opinion I have.

Even if your ex deserves to be villainized, you should never villianize them.

This isn’t advice about “taking the high road” or “being the better person,” but this is advice that is meant for your benefit. I firmly believe that you should never call your ex insane, or psycho, because each time you do that, it subconsciously gives them power, and places you in the victim narrative.

Here’s my TL;DR of this post (although, please read it all because high bounce rates hurt the blog haha)

Getting over a breakup is level 5 hard. But getting over a victim mentality is level 10 hard, and that’s what you need to steer clear of.

Something weird happens after all relationships end. No matter how amicable your breakup was, your brain starts creating narratives that make you hate your ex.

It makes no sense because you’re not seeing them anymore. You’re not talking. No more “bad actions” are happening to you. But your brain goes back in time throughout your relationship history and deems a bunch of moments as “bad” so you can hate your ex.

And every time you deem your ex as “bad” you subconsciously deem yourself as “good” and place yourself in the category of someone who did nothing wrong, was completely hurt, and the victim of a situation.

The reality of it is - it’s not true.

None of us leave relationships where one person was horrible and the other was an angel. But for the sake of this being an Unpopular Opinion piece - I’m going to shoot for the moon here.

Even if your ex was Ted Bundy, it greatly benefits you to act like he was not Ted Bundy.

Maybe you were cheated on 10 different times. Maybe your partner hit you. Maybe he racked up debt on your credit card I mean…there are lots of horrible things out there that people do to their partners.

I’m not preaching for toxic positivity where you act like your ex was great and don’t take care of yourself. But I’m advocating for the idea that you take someone off of a pedestal.

Taking people off of a pedestal is always a good thing to do. It doesn’t matter if the pedestal is overly positive, or overly negative.

Maybe your ex sucked, but telling your girlfriends over brunch that he was the spawn of Satan gives him so much power and the worse your ex was, the less he deserves to be spoken about.

I once dated someone who was horrible. Like, truly, the type of person where after you date them you walk around going “I thought that type of character only existed in Hollywood movies…how could someone do those things and blend into society with the rest of us?”

And for years, it was so hard for me to get over him - because I thought he was a sociopath. Honestly, maybe he was, who knows! But for years he stayed in my mind as this ex that I thought I would never be able to move on from.

It wasn’t until one day I was talking with some friends about the situation, and they said he was the devil. And I paused and realized something - he wasn’t. He was entirely human.

Sure, he committed distinctly “bad” acts. But…there were times that I was moody around him and gave him a hard time. There were vacations he took me on that blew me away. There were nights we both made each other laugh until our sides hurt. He wasn’t the devil he was…just a guy.

It was the type of realization you can really only achieve after time away from a situation - but it was so needed.

This guy I dated wasn’t evil. He was just…a man. And he also did nice things for me. And I also did him wrong in ways. It felt really freeing to realize.

So if you’re having trouble getting over someone in particular, take a moment to think about your narrative of them and the words you use you describe them to your friends.

Do you call them evil over brunch? Do you say that they were a sociopath? Or insane? You’re holding them in really high regard if you do. Sure, you’re not saying they’re an angel, but you’re saying they’re the devil which is still intensely powerful.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but think about the nice things you ex did for you. It won’t make you miss them - I promise.

And it might seem insane, but think about the bad things you did to your ex. It won’t make you feel guilty, it actually will empower you a bit.

Because the truth of the matter is, we all play the villain in our relationship at times.

And when you call your ex psycho, or say that he completely killed your self-confidence, or you won’t stop tweeting about how horrible he was, you’re setting yourself up for failure because you’re putting yourself in a narrative.

The thing that makes moving on from a relationship the hardest, is when you put yourself into a victim mentality about the relationship.

It’s so hard to move on from someone when you think that they did you wrong. It’s really hard to get closure when you think that you were disrespected or you got the short end of the stick.

But trust in me - if you take time to think about what you did wrong, and what they did right…you will feel incredible. I truly promise - you will feel incredible.

So just try this for two weeks.

This way of thinking has made my life so much easier. They say the opposite of hate is indifference, and when you spend time after a breakup thinking about how horrible your ex is, it does put mental energy and time and thoughts right back into that relationship.

So let me know in the comments below if you’ve ever tried this way of thinking before. Do you view your exes in a positive light? A negative one? Are you still in love with any of them? I live for the drama!

Until the next one,
S