My ex made me miserable. How do I learn to trust again?
With advice from E.M. Forster
I (32 year old woman) broke up with my boyfriend six months ago. We were together for four years. He did not treat me well and I didn’t fully see it until near the end. By this point I was a wreck and it scares me how long I let it go on for.
Now it’s over I am much happier and I really want to meet someone else to share my life with. But the trouble is that whenever I go on dates I’m seeing red flags everywhere. For example: a man asked to rearrange our 3rd date lately. I was really touchy about this and it led to an argument, but after thinking more I don’t know if it was that bad. Or, another man made a casual comment about an item of women’s clothing he doesn’t like, and I couldn’t see him the same way afterwards (my ex often made me feel bad about the way I dressed). I never used to be so quick to judge people and I feel like I’m getting in my own way. I can’t seem to get past a few dates with anybody without finding something wrong. Clearly I’m still hurting and you might think I’ve started dating too soon. But what I want to know is: how can I let go of this suspicious, judgemental mindset and open myself to love again?
I think lots of people will relate to this question. Recalibrating your relationship with the world after it has shown you its darkness is a rite of passage almost all of us endure, and it’s never easy - so try not to be so hard on yourself. In your letter, you talk about judging your dates, but it strikes me that the person you’re judging most of all is you. I don’t think you have reason to. It makes complete sense that your mind and body are on high alert at the moment - you had a painful four years, and you want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Wouldn’t it be weirder if this huge experience had left you entirely unchanged?
I remember feeling exactly this way when I started dating again after a tough relationship. I was so keen to see every minor transgression as a sign of something worse (mind you, this didn’t stop me from dating plenty of crappy people, so go figure.) At that time, when I was constantly scanning partners for signs of toxicity, I remember feeling sad and frustrated by the idea that I had left behind a version of myself who was wildly optimistic about human nature. Surely, that was the ideal me, and the person I had become was a broken, bitter old crone, no good for the adventures of Youth anymore. And yet - during this time, I also discovered new facets of my personality that I liked. I challenged someone I was dating on their awful behaviour in a way I never would have done before.
So it may not be a bad thing that you are a little tougher; a little more attune to the things that rile you. It sounds like, in your last relationship, you struggled to make your voice heard: perhaps on these dates you are testing your ability to stand up for yourself; flexing a new ‘self-assertion’ muscle that can’t strengthen unless it’s used. (And no, I don’t think it’s too soon to date. You are being reflective about your experiences, while pursuing what you want. There’s nothing wrong with that.) Instead of hoping to find your way back to the person you were before, perhaps the goal is reaching a net-neutral attitude, one that balances your newly acquired instincts for self-protection with a more open-hearted curiosity. Because you’re right: just sitting in judgement on the people you’re dating, waiting for them to mess up and let you down, is not fun for either of you.
So, if the aim is getting to a balanced place - becoming ‘open to love’ without letting red flags slip under the radar - how do you get there? How do you know whether a man’s hatred of peplum skirts is the harbinger of misogyny or just a harmless opinion? I wish so much that I could give you a bingo sheet of irredeemable phrases, actions and views, leaving you free to let your guard down and relax so long as those numbers aren’t called. Unfortunately - outside of the overtly terrible stuff - I don’t think life is as simple as that. Some good men are late. Some good men don’t get on with their mothers. And plenty of bad men have learned to avoid the obvious missteps but reveal their badness in other, less documented ways. This is why I have mixed feelings about the language of ‘red flags’ in the first place. It can be hard to judge an action outside of its context.
I am reading Forster’s A Passage to India for the first time at the moment, which is a brilliant novel set in British colonial India in the 1920s, exploring the cruelties of imperialism, as well as the friendships between British and Indian people. But something smaller that the narrative keeps returning to is this thing about the impossibility of judging a person’s behaviour in the abstract. At one point, a British woman, Mrs Moore, meets an Indian man, Dr Aziz, in a mosque. They instinctively like each other. When Mrs Moore describes the encounter to her son (a magistrate keen to see Dr Aziz through a negative lens), he repeats the facts of the meeting back to her, and Mrs Moore is surprised to hear that they sound negative. She ponders.
In the light of her son’s comment she reconsidered the scene at the mosque to see whose impression was correct. Yes, it could be worked into quite an unpleasant scene. The doctor had begun by bullying her, had said Mrs. Callendar was nice, and then—finding the ground safe—had changed; he had alternately whined over his grievances and patronised her, had run a dozen ways in a single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain. Yes, it was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential life of him had been slain.
Without access to Aziz’s tone and body language, to the fullness of him as a human, the facts of the meeting are horribly misrepresentative. Fortunately, however, Mrs Moore trusts in her own memory of the encounter. I think, to be open to love, you have to learn to do the same: to trust yourself. In fact, even if I could give you that bad-behaviour-bingo-sheet, I wouldn’t want to. It would only teach you to rely on my instincts, rather than learning (or relearning) to have faith in your own.
Instead of tallying up lists of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviour Ross-and-Rachel style, try and listen to your body. How do you feel on these dates, and how do they leave you feeling afterward? Do you feel safe? Respected? Listened to and appreciated? Do you feel like yourself around these men? There are plenty of ways to reschedule a date and leave someone feeling all the things I just mentioned. Equally, there are plenty of ways to reschedule a date and leave someone feeling terrible, so I don’t think it’s ‘judgemental’ or ‘suspicious’ to care about this if your instincts tell you to. After spending four years with someone who treated you poorly, it could be that you’re just not willing to waste any more time on someone less than brilliant. Maybe I’m projecting, but when I was dating after my bad relationship, every time my instincts told me to worry, I was absolutely right.
I do think that when you meet someone you really like it may suddenly, miraculously, not seem hard at all to place their mistakes within the wider context of who they are. I think your body will know; your mind will know. You will feel at home and excited around them. Right now, you are doubting yourself, because you stayed in a relationship that hurt you. But having found the bravery to leave this behind, you are actually stronger and wiser than you have ever been. If you truly think you know what’s best for you, then being open to love will follow naturally.
So go forth and date - I believe in you. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite poems by Derek Walcott. Read it and remember that all you need to do to be open to love is believe in yourself.
Love after Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
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Excellent response. Warm, kind, and profound. Very lovely.
Fabulous, clearly spoken advice. It fits for platonic relationships, too. Fabulous