I had a conversation with Melanie Curtin on her podcast Dear Men about something pretty much every guy I work with deals with at some point: getting over an ex. And honestly, it brought up a lot for me thinking back on my own experiences with breakup pain.
We talked about how guys often try to distract themselves way too fast, jumping back into dating before they're actually ready. I shared about a relationship that ended when I moved cities, and how much I beat myself up for not having led better, for not having the hard conversations we needed to have about what my move meant for us. That lack of leadership, the things I withheld, the presence I didn't bring, that stuff burned. It created this special kind of pain that comes from realizing too late where you didn't show up.
The conversation went into how powerful ritual can be for marking these transitions. Not just trying to logic your way through it or white knuckle past the feelings. One of the big shifts for me came during a seven day silent meditation retreat where I literally had nowhere to go, no Facebook to check, no distractions. Just had to be with everything. Something lifted on day six.
We also talked about why so many guys try to stay friends with their ex right away, often out of scarcity, this fear that they'll never find that connection again. And how that usually just keeps you enmeshed, ripping the band aid off over and over. The thing is, you can probably be friends again someday. Just not right now. You need actual space first.
The core message: the only way to move past a feeling is to feel it. Not numb it, not distract from it, not try to think your way around it. And for a lot of us men, that grief work happens best when we're actually being held by other men, in a container where it's safe to let go.
If you're going through this right now, or you know you're carrying some stacked grief from past relationships that never got fully processed, reach out. That's exactly the kind of work we do in our men's groups and programs at evolutionarymen.com.
