Out Of Relationship Mode, What Goes On In A Man’s Mind After A Breakup

I‘ve been more than just seeing a girl for about 2 years. You know the whole exclusive thing and all.

Well we recently broke up and now it’s time to move on.

I feel like I’m in relationship mode. Like my “game” isn’t what it was. Like I lost the edge I had… and on top of that I feel like going out to enjoy a few casual affairs.

But doing that is much harder when you’re in relationship mode, isn’t it?

You start searching for women who are young, easy, but show no signs of wanting you back.

Maybe it’s the guilt – a self-fulfilled prophecy – because you feel bad having lost someone so close.

Almost like a mourning phase with the anger, regret, then acceptance thing.

You want to make it more real by giving the separation enough time to prove to your “nice” self that you gave it all.

I imagine if we suddenly end a long term relationship and then immediately sleep with a few women it sort-of degrades the past experience. De-valuing what it meant.

So if we hold off a little – give it time to settle in – it feels like it meant more.

It’s our little way of NOT admitting we were wrong AND how we DID try hard enough.

What I see, right now, as men we’re destined to stay in relationship mode for a period after a separation.

We become more nurturing to the women we meet destroying attraction and lowering our self-confidence just a little.

Then we get angry for doing those stupid things. Like someone stole the identity we had before the relationship…

And now we have to claw our way to back to who we were before the whole thing started.

With all that we find ourselves trying way too hard. We contact a few past girlfriends for anything we can get from them.

We end up making so many more mistakes and each one of them seems like an idiot thing to do – or like it means more now.

But it doesn’t – does it?

Who cares if we screw it up with a girl and you don’t find her in your bed within a night or a week.

Who cares if we say the wrong thing, act a little skittish, or run out of things to say.

Hey – men and women do that stuff all the time and putting pressure on ourselves is unfair.

I’ve found this whole “attraction game” at some point seem like we’re supposed to be these perfect little men – and then we become the ultimate man where women are beating down our doors the like they do with the “naturals.”

Here’s the truth:

NO WOMAN HAS EVER ASKED ME TO BE PERFECT!

In fact being perfect actually pushes women away. No woman with any real self-esteem wants to feel inferior to you or me.

The whole dominance – submissive thing is important but there’s a clear distinction between “inferior” and “submissive.”

One’s a female role – a sexual thing – a relationship side. The other is someone trying to achieve superiority over someone else by making them feel inferior.

What goes on in a man’s mind after a breakup, yes depends on the whole “why” or “what caused it” and is slightly based on the residual feelings left dangling close enough to emotionally grab again…

BUT based on my own experience our thoughts linger for some time. We search for our identity. We think about the bad, the good, and sometimes all the things we could’ve done different.

If we wait – we give it more value and it means more in the end.

If we don’t wait – we’re distracting ourselves and searching for an escape. Something to make any of the pain dissipate quicker and easier even if it’s just for a night.

In somewhat “normal”  breakups, if there is something like that, men, including me DO experience a loss and although we may show it differently what goes on in our mind is a break from “relationship” mode.