How can he just replace me so fast?


So you’ve been dating for a while now.  Even though things have felt dicey lately, you still assumed your relationship with him was rock solid.  But you did notice a slight distance coming over the two of you.  Finally, you get the dreaded text that he wants to break up or take time because he just doesn’t feel the same about you.  In seconds you went from feeling mildly insecure to feeling like you just got hit by a bus.

The double whammy, he breaks up and already has someone new

The double whammy comes when you find out he’s already been seeing someone new.  Upon confrontation he claims he’s been dating but it hadn’t meant anything and was not the reason why he broke up with you.  He assures you that the problem were about the two of you.  But there he is, already involved with the new girl.  He’s taken her out with friends, met her parents, or brought her around his work or kids.  He compliments her photos on Facebook and admires her publicly to your utter dismay.  Suddenly you realize that he’s doing for her what he never did for you.  And you wonder, how can he replace me so fast?

Men look for replacements, that is how they operate

Instead of marveling about how he could just replace you so easily, you must understand that many men do operate this way.  When they see a relationship deteriorating or they aren’t particularly happy they will start searching for options.  They may do so consciously and even unconsciously.  You may have become the other woman to him way before the breakup.  In his mind, he’s been slowly relegated you to someone he’s seeing but does not intend to be with.  And he’s been looking.  This is why by the time he lowers the boom and outright says he’s done, he already has someone new.

It’s a process.  And rather than be surprised over how quickly you were devalued and then discarded, you need to understand that he’s had his eyes wide open scanning options for longer than you may have realized.  And he doesn’t want to be alone and depressed over a breakup like you’re about to be.  So he’s moving on at light speed.  At this point, he’s not doing this to hurt you so much as to help himself.  It’s about him and his comfort level.  He might want someone there so that the breakup is an easy painless transition for him.

Men get replaced too, when a woman leaves them all but overnight for someone else.  But it is way more common place for women to be replaced.  If you’ve just been replaced, expect to be crushed over the breakup and nursing your wounds for a while with no new men in sight.  Meanwhile, expect that he will be out and about with his new woman as though he hardly missed a beat.  Rather than get depressed over it, you should realize that many men operate this way.  They want a replacement and they don’t want to go through a breakup patch all depressed and alone.  So they secretly plan their way out of the relationship ahead of time.  You might get broadsided with a breakup text but they knew it was coming way before the send button was pushed.

One of the key things is to realize its just the nature of the beast.  Some men move on like this and there is little you can do.  They line up someone else and while you’re reeling they are getting close and personal with the new girl.  In many cases you will discovered that you literally overlapped with this girl and were part of a triangle before he chose to move on with her instead of you.  As soon as she’s in the background you just won’t be able to work things out with him because you’ll instinctively know something is up.  So your relationship gets weaker and he walks away with her.

If you can think being replaced following a breakup as typical male behavior it will help you deal with your pain.  It’s not so much an insult to you or a statement that you aren’t worthy, it’s about them wanting to move on smoothly without having to get their feet wet.  What a girl needs to learn about this is that she should be taking care of herself after a breakup, because he most certainly is.

No contact can help when a man replaces you so seemingly easily

If you’ve been replaced and are reeling over how someone could replace you so easily, it may be time to go no contact with this man.  Get back to whatever life you had before he came onto the scene, however lousy it was.  That’s your life and you need to divert focus back to that.  Sure you might not be about to tap dance off with prince charming like he seemingly has with her, but you do have a life.  Time to pick up the shattered pieces.   Your life is going to go on whether you like it or not so you may as well make the best of it and work to turn over a new leaf.

When he breaks up with you by rebounding with the new girl, who he winds up actually staying together with long-term, it can be devastating to see him that happy.  Watching him in fact find love with someone else, and seeing how happy he is can be truly hurtful.  You might find yourself looking her up on Facebook, spokeo and other social sites.  You might stalk her and analyze her pictures, her friends, her life.  And you wonder why her and not me.  All of this obsessing while understandable, does you no good.  It slows the healing process.  In the end you just feel lousy like you weren’t good enough for him.

You might be better off shutting your ex and whoever he is now with out of your life for a while.  Try to turn off the inevitable obsession over having been replaced.  Ignore them, block them, and don’t look at pictures of either of them or spy on them.  It’s called no contact and while it can be a lonely time, it might help you slowly get over that breakup.  Because if you stay emotionally engaged while he is literally with someone else, you are setting yourself up for more pain, more failure.  Mentally, you are waiting like a doormat wishing and praying that it doesn’t work out with the new girl. 

What if it doesn’t work out with him and her?  If you’re still obsessed he might run back to you when he gets into a tiff with her and use you as a quickie.  If you’re still obsessed with someone who had no problem, literally no problem abandoning you, its abuse waiting to happen.  Don’t be a doormat waiting for him to crash and burn with the new girl because he won’t.  He’ll just keep moving forward in life.  If you do take him back or try to triangulate this new woman and fight for him, he will lose all respect for you.  He may come back when he’s on an off day with her and just use you for an ego boost.  He may even woo you back only to set you back to the status quo as soon as you give in to his vacant apologies.

If you want to prevent yourself from becoming the other woman to the man who dumped you’s new girlfriend, stay away from him girl.  You are not replaceable.  He just chose to get involved with someone else and so why in the world would you want to be with someone who saw it as no problem to ditch you?  People start dating immediately after a relationship ends for a variety of reasons.  They might even jump into a new relationship because it is easier than being alone.  It’s a band-aid so that they can avoid their feelings, the feeling you are having right now.  If he needs to deal with things not working by birthing up a brand new woman to be with then that’s his problem not yours.

You don’t want him back, because he left you

The best way to deal with being dumped is to turn your focus away from him and her.  Don’t call him, don’t look at photos, just suffer through the miserable phases of the breakup.  You don’t know if his new relationship is the real thing or just a rebound, but that shouldn’t matter. What matters is that he was able to cast you aside for someone else so easily.  He’s dealing with it the way he can, but the fact of the matter remains that he did abandon you.  Therefore there is little reason to want him back.  Men tend to repeat abusive patterns that you put up with so if you took him back he would likely do this to you again if the opportunity presented itself.

Waiting by the sidelines watching his life go on while yours stays frozen is a big mistake.  It keeps you engaged and turns you into a doormat ready for more abuse if it doesn’t work out with the new woman.  You are definitely better than that.  Some dating books say that within four to eight weeks you could try to get your man back, but I say this is a mistake.  If he left you and took up with someone new I would not take him back anytime soon.  You should be considering never taking him back again.

If a man leaves you like this, you should never ever take him back quickly or easily.  Don’t play get him back games.  Plan to go your own way for quite some time.  I wouldn’t even consider getting back with someone who bailed unless a year or two passed and that person seriously changed and came back around begging for another chance acting differently.  Even if he did come back you should require a much more committed relationship.  And he must be over, and I mean way over, whoever he left you for.  Make sure she is out of the picture one hundred percent otherwise you might find yourself in a disgusting love triangle again.

If a man replaces you that easily, he is probably a man you should not even consider being with.  Go no contact if you have to, and block him and his new woman out of your life in order to heal.  Don’t obsess about how perfect she is and how flawed you are.  Don’t obsess about how he is giving her everything he never seemed to give you.  Understand that many men operate this way and it is a fact of life that they like to have someone new while you are left reeling with nobody.  No matter how great she is, your life is about you now, not her and him. 

You had a boyfriend that walked out on you, hurt you, and never looked back.  No matter how much you miss him, dream of him, or pine for him, he did bail out on you.  He did drop you by a text message.  He did act callous.  He is probably not the person you should be hanging your happiness on at this point.  There are a million couples who are out of your life and have nothing to do with your existence, which is the category you should put him and his new her into.  They are just another couple in the world. 

The sooner you get over a man who dumped you for someone else, the better off you’ll be.  Think of the new woman as having done you a favor.  She saved you from agonizing longer and wasting more time on a man who didn’t love you enough to commit.  Understand that you have no control over what he does with her but odds are that he is on his best behavior with her because their relationship is brand new.  Eventually, he will become the same man you dated. 

If she does get more out of him than you did, the chances are she had better boundaries and required more of a commitment from him.  Sadly you can’t use what you’ve just learned on him because he’s already a horse that bolted out the door.  He’s gone.  But you can learn better boundaries so that when the next man comes around (it may take a long time but there will be a next man) you have respect for yourself.  You’ll know how you want to be treated and accept nothing less.  Men tend to treat you however you allow yourself to be treated.  A ruthless breakup like this can leave you reeling in why her not you questions and shocked over his ability to move on.  But eventually when you do get involved again you won’t let things go lax with your new man.  You’ll pay closer attention and have higher expectations which in turn will enable you to get treated better.

Men can move on fast.  It feels awful but it’s just what some of them do and it has nothing to do with you.  They just don’t want to go it alone.  They started looking when things started to sour and when someone came along that seemingly offered an attractive solution on a plate they jumped at the new opportunity.  It’s a brand new infatuation, a distraction for them, and maybe even refreshing for them, because they just prefer not to be alone.

Separate missing him from simply feeling lonely

If you go no contact and give yourself time to grieve and heal, your head will start to clear itself out.  Yeh, yeh, he didn’t skip a beat and is running around happily with the new girl, but you unfortunately aren’t him and are stuck in the lousy breakup aftermath.  Don’t compare yourself, or try not to anyways.  One thing that can help is to slowly separate how much you really miss him, from how much you miss the fantasy of having him and of being in a relationship in general.

Perhaps you will come to see that this man was treating you poorly for a while before he finally lowered the breakup boom.  You may have been more obsessed with the fantasy of a relationship with him, or just with being in a relationship period, than you realize.  Once you start to go over how he treated you, there may be a realization that he was not perfect for you either.  He was just better than nobody.  It does suck to be alone but in order to meet someone new you have to get over the old guy.  You never know where life will take you.  You might be flat-out on the mats miserable all this year, but then meet somebody new next year.  Take care of yourself and don’t worry about how he replaced you.  Worry about taking care of you instead.

How can he just replace me so fast

           

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One Response to How can he just replace me so fast?

  1. Jen says:

    This was the best article I’ve read and helped me

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