Suppose that you went to your graduation party wearing a torn t-shirt and shorts then you noticed two people whispering while looking at you. Won’t you think that they are talking about you?

The human being’s mind doesn’t interpret the events that happen around as they are but instead it gives each event a meaning based on the beliefs and ideas it holds. In the previous example the person thought that they were talking about his shirt because he already knows that it was torn. If on the other hand, the guy was wearing a very expensive suit and the same situation happened, he would have probably thought that this happened because of the nice suit he was wearing.

And this can create self esteem issues right at this point but let’s move on.

To make the long story short, you don’t see reality but you just see the reflection of your thoughts and ideas. Now suppose that someone thought he was not an interesting person and got dumped, what do you think is the first thing that comes on his mind?

This person will think he was dumped because he is not an interesting person and here is the bad part. The person already has an emotional wound and the breakup touched this wound and thus he felt real bad after this breakup.

Of course he never knew the real reason for being dumped but since people see a reflection for their thoughts, he just associated being dumped with the thing that he doesn’t like about himself which is thinking that he is not an interesting person.

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Everyone does exactly the same thing when they get dumped. The following are a few examples that illustrate how this happens:

• People who think they are not that good looking feel bad after the breakup because they think that they were dumped because of their looks.

• People who think they are boring think that they were dumped because they were boring.

• People who think they have problems expressing their feelings think that this was the reason they were dumped.

As you can see, after a breakup people bring up the thing(s) they hate about themselves most and then accuse it as being the reason for the breakup. The conclusion is that some people feel very bad after a breakup, because it touched this emotional wound they had and not because they loved the person.

This means that if you were 100% sure that you weren’t dumped because of that specific reason, then you wouldn’t have felt that bad and the breakup wouldn’t have affected you like it did. After a breakup you should make sure that you aren’t feeling so bad because of such an emotional wound. If you discover that the wound is the main reason for feeling bad, then you should know that you are not in the pain because of that person but it’s just your emotional wound that is making you feel bad.

Up until now I am sure that you started to realize that most of the reasons that make someone feel bad after a breakup are not related to the person who dumped you but they are rather related to personal issues.

There is also something else called “The act of retesting”. Some people start to reexamine themselves and their personalities after a breakup in order to look for possible reasons that made their partners dump them. It’s as if the person is reevaluating himself in order to find an explanation for what happened.

The problem with retesting is that it always leads the person to his emotional wounds and then he associates them with the breakup. Sometimes the shaking of the person’s self confidence hurts more than the breakup itself, and a person would feel much better if he/she thinks they were dumped for a reason that is not related to them.

External Dependency and Love And Self Esteem

External dependency is the term that refers to people who depend on external factors in order to regulate their moods or to forget their life problems. Some people depend on cigarettes in order to feel in control, others depend on drugs just to escape bad moods and some others depend on love just to feel good!!

The problem with external dependency is that is does not solve any problems, it just accumulates them and when the external source of mood regulation is lost the person usually finds life intolerable.

Yes, you may be in love with someone for a few years just because you’re depending on the relationship to feel good or to forget your life problems. Those are the people who believe in phrases like:

• Love is the solution to all problems

• I am always down unless I am in a relationship

• I can’t live without love

The other big problem with dependency on love is that it usually leads to falling in love with the wrong person. After all, if mood regulation is the major goal behind the selection of your partner you won’t take a deeper look at other important factors that could destroy this relationship.

Suppose that you were feeling so bad and were experiencing a very tough period of your life, and then you met a cheerful girl who tried to help you get over all of these problems. In this case, you may get attracted to her and fall in love with her, but a few months later when the problems start getting solved and you start to feel happy again you may find yourself not in need of that person and you’ll end up with a breakup.

Surprisingly there are millions of relationships out there that are based on nothing but external dependency. In order to know if you are in a relationship because of external dependency or because you love those people just ask yourself those few questions:

Do I feel bad whenever I am single?

Am I able to enjoy my life when I’m single?

Do I feel down unless I am in a relationship?

If your answers were yes then you are surely externally dependent on the relationship just to feel good. You need to understand that the healthy state is feeling good when you’re single and feeling better when you’re in a relationship.

If you are externally dependent then your problem is not the person who left you at all, you just need anyone to make you feel good. If this is the case you should take serious actions towards dealing with your external dependency.

Ask yourself these questions: Why am I always feeling bad when I am single? What’s really bad in my life that is making it intolerable? What can be fixed in order to make me feel good?

Confronting yourself in such a way needs a tremendous amount of courage, but it’s the only way to get over external dependency. If you don’t deal with external dependency, you should be aware of the following results:

• You will only be accumulating your problems and you will never solve them

• You will always fall in love with the wrong person

• The next time you breakup with someone you will feel 10 times worse because of the accumulated problems that were carried over without being solved

In short, you never loved that person; you just needed to deal with the problems that you have in life that were making you unable to tolerate being single. Deal with your problems so you won’t need external dependency, and only then you can have healthy relationships.