Heartache, Heartbreak & Healing After A Breakup
Dealing with heartache, heartbreak and healing after a breakup.
In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer who has been following my work for several years but lost his way and stopped being the 3% Man he was capable of being. He got lazy and got away from the principles that made him a success in his relationships.
He shares his experiences and the pain of his recent breakup in hopes that they may alleviate the pain of those who are also going through a breakup. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.
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This guy goes into extensive detail on how he kind of got away from over time, the principles that he learned in my first book, How To Be A 3% Man, and obviously how it influenced his relationship and how he was showing up. And so, he goes through the process of some of the things that happened in the breakup and some of the red flags that were there that he just completely ignored because he got lazy, he got complacent.
And this is what typically happens to a lot of guys, is they do everything right for a few months or a few years, and then when you’ve been with somebody for several years and the months roll by, it’s easy to get lazy, to get complacent. I’ve got a friend of mine who got married recently, and him and his girlfriend, his now wife, both worked out quite a bit and they’re in great shape. But I was hanging out with him recently and he’s like, “We haven’t worked out in eight months.”
He still looks good, but he’s lost his muscle tone and she’s kind of lost her muscle tone. And I was like, “Bro, I love you, but you’re fucking getting soft, man.” And so, I pointed that out to him, because that’s what a great friend does. Great friends call each other out, not from a negative perspective, but just saying, hey, look what’s happening, because he’s been through a divorce before. The same thing happened. He was married close to 14 years, but he got lazy, he got complacent, he stopped taking care of business.
Eventually, it led to the end of his relationship, because he stopped being the guy that his wife fell in love with. And then by the time 10, 12, 13, 14 years had rolled by, things were just unsalvageable for him at that point. And I didn’t know things had gotten that bad. It wasn’t until after they split up that he was like, “Yeah, you don’t want to admit to your friends, especially you, that you became a bitch in your marriage.” I was like, “Why didn’t you call me dude? Why didn’t you tell me?” Because they both presented this image to the world that everything was great and everything was fine, and it looked fine from the outside, but on the inside it was not.
So, obviously, we’re talking about How To Be A 3% Man. And I also highly recommend that you guys get into Mastering Yourself, my second book, because it’s a book of self-reliance. It’s basically an autobiography of my life and all the things I’ve been through and the lessons that I learned. And I share these things in raw, real detail in hopes that you can learn from them and not make the same mistakes. And then, my latest book Quotes, Ruminations & Contemplations, Volume 1 is basically two hundred and fifty quotes from different random videos and articles that I’ve done over the years.
And what I we did is we’ve got QR codes, so you can use your cell phone or any kind of mobile device and it will take you right to the original article if you’re interested in it. But also with the audio book, it’s kind of like what I do in my YouTube videos. I’ll read the quote and then I’ll kind of freestyle for a bit whatever comes to mind. I’ll tell stories or examples, and all of the feedback I got on it is great. I’ve got nothing but five-star reviews so far.
And so, the audio book is a great for mindset, because it’s all of the principles of everything that I teach, from pickup, dating, relationships to sales, skills management, success mindset, self-reliance, personal responsibility, philosophy. So, it’s just a microcosm of everything I teach. Everybody that’s been through it really likes it, because it ties everything I teach together. So, it’s available on Audible and iTunes, and obviously you can get it in paperback, Kindle ebook and a hardcover as well.
Viewer’s Email:
Hi Corey,
I wanted to get in touch and share my story and perhaps give your readers a little hope or insight into how to deal with the heartache surrounding a breakup, and/or the dangers of not being a 3% man! I had come across your work years ago after a bad breakup and purchased a copy of your e-book and read it through a quite few times, (can’t remember how many).
So, he started out good. He started to learn the fundamentals and things obviously worked for him, but you’ll see that he got away from that.
I watched hours of the YouTube videos and began to apply the details I learned. I attracted a fab girlfriend, (we’ll call her Jasmine), but that broke down after three years when I lost my shit one night and yelled at her. I moved out of my center and wasn’t myself, due to not managing stress properly coupled with a very poor working pattern.
Well, that reminds me of my buddy I was telling you about that had gotten married recently and he hasn’t worked out for eight months. The last several years of his marriage, he and his wife weren’t even having sex. So, you can imagine, but that was not the image that they presented to the world. “Everything was fine,” but it wasn’t, he says.
I knew inside that the instant I started shouting the relationship was going to be over. I had obliterated her attraction for me. So, when she finally said she would go, I didn’t beg for forgiveness or a second chance, I just let her go. I’ll come back to her in a little while.
Knowing that being myself and owning my actions is far more important than begging to keep a relationship alive, (needy behavior), I let her make her decision to go her own way, while I went mine. I spent a lot of time re-reading the book and learning who I was, so that I could focus on myself and my goals of being the best I possibly can be. It was a painful time, but one where I learned to relax, to get out of my comfort zone, go meet people and be MYSELF again!
So, I’m sure you hear this a lot. When people go through in breakups, men and women both are like, “I feel like I lost myself. I feel like I lost who I was.” And that’s the point I was making earlier, that it happens slowly. This is not something that happens over a few days or a month or two. It’s many months and years.
Just like my friend who was married for a lot of years, a decade and a half, he just completely got away from being who he was. And then he was always walking on eggshells and he became a pleaser, because he didn’t want his wife to get upset with him. So, he was being someone he wasn’t in order to please his wife, and the reality was, she didn’t like that version of him either.
Before long, I had attracted a girl who was quite a bit younger than me, (in her 20’s and I was in my late 30’s), who is gorgeous and quite loving, we’ll call her “Penny.” But, and this was the kick in the balls, I was so wrapped up in this girl I failed to do anything about the red flags.
Remember, human beings make our decisions, our purchasing decisions as well as our relationship decisions, based upon our emotions and our feelings, and we use logic and reason to justify those decisions. That’s why it’s so important, understanding “How To Be A 3% Man” and trying to keep a clear head, especially the first 90 to 120 days of a relationship.
Because the other person, and ourselves included, we can hide who we really are for about the first 90 days. And if you’re go goo-goo ga-ga in the first 90 days over a girl, and then you start seeing the red flags three, four or five months later, it’s not going to matter. You’re just going to do it anyway. And then it ends in a train wreck.
Her relationship with her parents wasn’t overly loving or healthy, but she still lived at home with them as it was financially better for her, (Red flag #1).
So, she wasn’t even able to hold down a steady job and pay her own bills. You want a woman who’s also going to be self-reliant, not somebody that’s just totally dependent on you for everything. Can she balance a checkbook, can she make a car payment on time, does she pay her rent on time?
She also had a great trouble articulating her feelings — even when I went through the steps to open her up properly — which sometimes caused conflict in the relationship, because she misinterpreted playfulness as insincerity from her own past experiences, (Red flag #2).
So, what I say all the time, you want a woman who’s easygoing, easy to get along with, and when you ask her what she’s thinking and feeling, she just tells you and doesn’t stonewall you and go, “I don’t want to talk about it!” Even though I know that not every guy is in a relationship with a woman like that, and I go into detail how to open those women up, but it’s a lot more work and a lot more effort. That’s why it’s so important to do your homework up front on a woman before you get too far down the road.
I mean, it’s beautiful when a woman feels safe and comfortable enough with you to share her thoughts, to share her feelings, so you can help meet her needs and make her feel loved and supported. It’s really nice. But when you have a woman that stonewalls you, and I’ve had girlfriends like that in the past, it’s like, man, it just makes things so difficult, and so full of drama, and just unpleasant.
Like, me personally, when you know how good it can be, when it can be easy and effortless, and you’ve got somebody that’s just difficult, because that’s all they know and that’s the environment they grew up in, it sucks and you’re not going to want to stick around. It’s hard to stay interested in somebody like that, because they just become unbearable after several years.
I know what you’ll say, “that shit’s on you dude!” and you’re absolutely right!
Well, if you’re the leader, if you chose to get into a relationship with somebody and you ignored the red flags, is that her her fault? Or is it your fault for ignoring the red flags? You know, I’ve talked about this a lot lately. A lot of guys in the red pill community want to complain about women and the way they are, complain about single moms. But it’s like, hey, at the end of the day, dude, you’re the one who stuck the ring on her finger and ignored all those red flags.
You’re the one that lived in those states where the laws are, quite frankly, completely slanted against you. It’s like, why would you want to involve the government in your relationship? Because if you want to get out of that relationship, your bank account is going to decrease and the divorce attorney’s bank is going to increase. They’re going to love you. They’re going to love your money, they’re not going to love you, but they’re going to appreciate the cash.
I failed to be a centered and objective man when it came to getting into a relationship. I allowed myself to get swept up in the emotions and the fun and not look at all aspects of the situation. A couple of years into the relationship, when a situation exploded and her parents kicked her out, she moved in directly with me, another major mistake of mine. She hadn’t had the time to be out there and develop herself and that’s my fault, (I’ll explain why shortly).
Yeah, this is interesting. You’ll see in a second.
So, fast forward two more years and our relationship had settled into a routine, and we all know where that’s leading. Yep, you guessed it, we broke up. I’d had a very bad day at work, had a couple of beers when I got home, and when she got home after me, she exploded because it meant we “couldn’t do anything fun together that evening.” In truth, I believe this was just a catalyst and that she’d made the decision to go a couple of weeks beforehand, even though she kept telling me it was a “snap decision.”
Yeah, women will pick a fight when they’re ready to break up with you and have a big blow up, and then they’ll say, “Well, that’s why we broke up.” But if you look back at the several months before it, it’s like, things were getting to that point. But the average guy, when that happens, he’s like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have yelled at her. Oops, what a jerk I am,” but it was several months of things going sideways.
I had learned from past mistakes, (and your 3% Man book), not to beg, not to argue, just to let her go. She seemed mortified that I was “okay” with letting her go. It was tough, and although it’s only been three weeks since she went, it still hurts a little bit. But guess what? It was all my fault.
If you don’t take personal responsibility, then you can’t fix it. If you say it’s all her fault, then you don’t have to work on yourself. There’s nothing to do, you just pick a better quality person. And then, you go and you get in a relationship, and because you didn’t learn and you didn’t grow, you repeat the same mistakes, you attract the same kind of person, because God has a sense of humor, and the same shit happens all over again. And it’s the pain that causes us to finally go, “That’s probably not the right way to be showing up in life.”
I allowed myself to get comfortable in the relationship. I stopped courting her. I allowed my stress at work and in other areas of life to creep into the relationship, and like a cancer it spread until her attraction for me wasn’t sufficient to keep her there. I failed to tackle the red flags early on. It took Penny three days to move out. In that time, I helped move boxes, remained calm, didn’t beg to try again. When she came around the last morning, she said she would be happy to remain friends.
Yeah, hard pass on that.
I replied to her that I’d done some thinking and gave her my own version of the “not happy with just being friends” speech — your readers might want to check out your 7 Principles article.
Yeah, if you’re going through a breakup, or you got pushed away, or you got friendzoned, “7 Principles To Get An Ex Back,” that is what you need to focus on. Watch the video several times, read the article. It’s on my website, UnderstandingRelationships.com.
Penny was blown away with how clear and determined I was regarding the situation; it wasn’t what she was expecting, and she told me I seemed different. I had spent the last couple of nights without her reminding myself to get myself together and be in my center again, and it CLEARLY showed as she made a comment about it. Aside from one instance where she had to communicate with me to come over to pick up a parcel that was delivered to my house, I’ve gone full no contact.
Yeah, in essence, you’ve both walked away from the negotiating table, because a deal is not possible.
So, Penny is gone. My house feels very empty and sterile without her. It hurts. Are those reasons to act like a little girl and cry or hide away? Of course not! It’s time to learn, to grow, to think introspectively and be who I am supposed to be — a 3% MAN! Now, the reason I see her moving in with me as my fault is that I hadn’t spotted a MASSIVE flaw in my character that I hadn’t realized before.
This is what a real man does. He doesn’t say, “It’s all Penny’s fault. She came from a bad background, a broken home, a broken family, and it’s all her fault. Therefore, the next relationship will be better.” He’s looking at it going, “Well, it’s either through my actions, or the level and tenor of my thoughts, or my emotions, or my intentions that I put out into the universe. That’s why I attracted this particular woman.”
Because, again, if it’s not your fault and you blame somebody else, there’s nothing to fix, there’s nothing wrong with you. And then what’ll happen is you’ll get in the same kind of relationship down the road, which is what happens with a lot of these dudes in the red pill community. They just keep attracting the same girl, and then they just say “all women are the same” and they become bitter. They hate women, they’ve got mommy issues that they never get over, because it’s too easy to just point the finger and say, “Well, all women are the same.”
I was re-reading your book to reaffirm what I had learned so long ago, and as I went to go make some tea, (yes, I’m British), I had an epiphany about what I was doing with this last relationship. A genuine light bulb moment. I was trying to rescue her.
Captain Save-a-Hoe.
I hadn’t realized that I had some very deeply buried abandonment issues from childhood that had never been dealt with, and I wasn’t conscious of until now. So, when Penny came along, somewhere in my subconscious a scared little boy was saying that he could save this girl from the heartache he had suffered so many years ago.
That’s pretty wise. That’s pretty amazing that you had that realization, dude. So, I’m proud of you. Good job.
What this says is that there’s still more work to do on myself — that job never ends — which is something I have always known but didn’t realize it would have hidden aspects that might surface years later.
What’s funny is that I recently learned that Jasmine has been asking after me, even though she has a boyfriend. She had bumped into a friend of mine, and in front of her current boyfriend was asking all about me… she’s obviously at a point where she’s starting to wonder if the grass is greener on the other side. And she would be right, but that’s another story. I have a feeling that there will be some contact from Jasmine at some point, but so soon after a breakup and without more work on myself, that’s somewhere I’m not going.
How many people, how many celebrities do you see that it’s like, they have one breakup after being together for a year or so, or two, whatever, and then literally within weeks or months, they’re in a relationship with somebody else and then they’re engaged? And then they get divorced, the same thing starts all over again, and they don’t do the work on themselves, they keep making the same mistakes.
So, what now? I am working on myself again. I’ve resolved my stresses at work, and I am actively sorting out the stress from other areas of my life, cutting out the toxic friendships and removing drama wherever it had crept in.
Whatever you allow in your life, you’re inviting more of it.
The first piece of success with being a 3% man again was that I secured a 5k pay rise at work. How’s that for getting my shit together?
Sweet, good job. Because if you start to see your value, then you’ll stand up for yourself. You’ll ask for the things that you want. And if somebody is not willing to offer it to you, as a self-reliant man, you don’t cry about the government not paying you enough and “we need to raise minimum wage.” You’ll just be like, “Fuck you assholes. I’ll just go find somebody who will pay me what I’m worth. And then once I get that job secured, then I’ll happily give you my two weeks notice and you can fucking pound sand.”
A little piece of me still hopes that Penny makes contact and wants to rekindle the romance, but she’ll have to decide that for herself. Otherwise, I’m pushing forward to grow, develop and be a better man — one who NEVER again takes his eye off the ball.
There is an unexpected side-effect to all this too. Making myself the priority, letting Penny go, resolving to keep learning, taking another deep look inside myself, has made the whole process easier. In the past, a breakup would hurt for months and months. I think we’re in week three still, and I am remarkably clear in my head and my heart. Of course, there are ups and downs but those will pass in time.
You’ve got to feel it to heal it.
Then, I’ll be living the life I want and making a future that’s fulfilling, whether that’s with someone else or not!
I hope this story gives some perspective for your readers, (if you decide to use it), and I also wanted to say that finding your site again to reaffirm my learning put a huge smile on my face to see that you’re still there coaching men to be the men they were born to be. I’ll certainly be pointing out your work in future to those that need it. Many thanks, Corey!
Best wishes,
Bob
Well, all you’ve got to do is flip over any one of my books, and it says right on the back why I do what I do: “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” ~ Thomas Jefferson.
So if you’ve got a challenge or a question or something you need help with, whether it’s your personal or your professional life, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen and book a coaching session with yours truly.
“For a man, being yourself, knowing yourself and what’s important to you and living by a code of honor, principles and values are essential to maintaining a balanced, healthy and productive life. If you don’t know what you stand for, then you can easily be manipulated, controlled and led down a dark path that can lead to self-destruction and ruin. All men must have a compelling purpose, mission and vision for their lives that inspires and motivates them to reach their full potential.”
~ Coach Corey Wayne
