There's no single right way to break up with someone — but for some reason, an awful lot of us feel the need to meet up with our exes after the relationship has ended to give the whole thing a post-mortem. That's the topic BuzzFeed Yellow tackles in its video “What It's Like to See Your Ex”… and you know what? It's actually really useful. Like the “Honest Sex” video we looked at last week, this one takes a tough relationship topic — in this case, how to find closure after a breakup — and tells us not what we want to hear about it, but rather, what most of us probably need to hear about it.
I mean, think about it for a minute: Why do we even do relationship post-mortems? We pretty much never end up getting the closure we want from them; instead, they're like some kind of weird, self-imposed torture we put ourselves through for no explicable reason. Interestingly, though, the point this video makes is that post-mortems can be a useful part the moving on process — you just have to make sure you're approaching them from the right angle. The trick isn't to get all caught up in which might happen when you meet up with your ex, or what might have happened if you hadn't broken up in the first place, or any of the wild places our imaginations can run off to when they don't know what to expect; it's to go into the whole thing with your eyes wide open. Take a good look at your ex without the aid of any kind of lens, rose-colored or otherwise. See them for who they truly are, the good, the bad, and the in-between. Don't wait for them to give you closure; give it to yourself instead.
Oh, also? Props to BuzzFeed for representing the whole range of relationships in their videos lately, not just heterosexual, monogamous ones. When we talk about being the change you want to see, that's what we mean. Well done.
Check out the whole video below — and just remember: If your ex wants to get together to talk, it doesn't necessarily mean they're dying:
Or leaving the planet:
Or getting married:
Or that they want to get back together:
No expectations.
Watch the video here:
Images: suez92/Flickr; Giphy; BuzzFeed Yellow/YouTube (4)
