Getting To A Happy Place Once Again After A Breakup

Some things to consider and focus on after a breakup to get to a happy place and feel like your old self again.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who has been following my work for 5 years and who has read 3% Man, 22 times. He was with his now ex-girlfriend for about 4 1/2 years. He wasn’t happy with work, so he moved to Florida to become a commercial pilot. His girlfriend broke up with him after he moved, and she started becoming distant. She said she needed to work on herself. It’s been 6 months since the breakup. He’s doing well again, but he still thinks about his ex, and it hurts that she dipped. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Hi, I’m Coach Corey Wayne and this is my video coaching newsletter. And the topic of today’s newsletter is going to be Getting To A Happy Place Once Again After A Breakup.

Well, I’ve got an email, this is from a guy, he’s been following me for five years now, and he says he’s read 3%, Man, 22 times. And he was with his now ex-girlfriend for about four and a half years. They’d been talking about getting engaged. And last year about, I guess around a year ago, he just wasn’t happy as what he was doing for a living. And this is where they’re also talking about getting engaged, their future, things of that nature. And he’s just not happy. And as I spoke about in 3% Man, it’s us guys, when we’re stable, when life is going well, the career is going well, we’re stable financially. We’ve got a stable roof over our head. We’ve got a stable group of friends. We’ve lived in an area for a particular period of time.

That’s typically when we’re going to be most inclined to feel comfortable enough to want to be in a long-term relationship. If there’s chaos in your professional life, if you’re a brand-new entrepreneur, and your business isn’t stable, it’s not doing well, you’re going to tend to gravitate more towards short term relationships, friends with benefits, that type of thing, where you’re not really going to get attached, because you just don’t feel in a place where you’re stable enough to be in a long-term relationship.

Maybe you’re moving around a lot. It’s hard to feel stable if every 3 to 6 months, or once a year you’re moving to a completely different city, because it’s like when you do that, it’s like you hit the reset button on your life. You got to get familiar with where to hang out, where you like to eat, where you go to dinner, what you do socially. You got to make new friends. It takes time to make new friends. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it takes time to establish yourself and build a new social life for you. And so, as a man, when your life is unstable, you’re typically not going to want to be or feel comfortable enough to be in a stable, long-term relationship.

That’s most guys. It becomes a lot harder for a guy whose life is unstable to maintain a healthy long-term relationship. Because you can’t give away what you don’t feel that you have for yourself. So, this particular guy is going through a difficult time. He’s not really happy in his purpose and mission. Plus, he’s young. I think he said he’s 27 and the girl was 24 and they were together for years. So, she was about ~19/20 when they started dating. He’s ~22/ 23 when they started dating. Now he’s 27 and he still wasn’t in that place.

And so, he decided he was going to move to Florida to become a pilot. And a couple of months after he moved, he noticed, like her attitude changed. She started becoming more distant. Plus, on top of that, he’s not feeling very stable as well. And then she ends up dumping him. And so, here he is six months later, and he’s just now starting to get back to the place where he’s starting to enjoy himself, and enjoy his time alone. Because in order to create a great relationship, you’ve got to get to a happy place first.

You got to be at a place where you love your life. You love what you do socially for fun. The groups of people that you’re hanging out with, and you can be by yourself and be single and have a great time, even if you’re just sitting in your house or your apartment, and watching TV, or watching the boats go by, or the birds flying around in your backyard, or the squirrels jumping around in the trees, you got to get to a place where you can be alone by yourself and have an absolute blast.

Because if you’re not enjoying yourself, you’re not enjoying your life. If you’re not proud of yourself or proud of your life or where you’re at, and you’re not excited about it, it’s going to be pretty hard to get a woman excited about it as well.

And so, this guy, he’s moved, he’s in a different state, he’s six months past the breakup. And now, things are starting to come together a little bit. He’s starting to get some momentum. And so, it’s like anybody that’s going through a breakup because probably most 80% – 90% of the people that come to me have just had a breakup or they were dating a girl they really liked, and things went sideways. Or maybe they’re in a long-term relationship and the wife served him with divorce papers, or she wants a trial separation, or something to that effect.

And so most people, when they first come to me, they’re kind of in a similar type of situation. The relationship has ended. Typically, they didn’t want it to end. They didn’t want to get friend zoned. They didn’t want to get served divorce papers, whatever it happens to be. And so, my job as a coach is to get them back to the place where they’re happy with themselves, happy with their life, and they’re displaying their most attractive characteristics. Because it’s obvious that when this guy was going through a difficult time with his career, he’s just not going to be on his A-game. Nobody is.

When you’re going through a really difficult time in your career and you’re getting up every day and you’re like, “Oh, man.” It’s like, Steve Jobs had this quote he used to say. He says, “If today is going to be my last day on earth, would I want to do what I’m about to do today?” And he said “Well, the answer was no. Too many days in a row.” He knew that he needed to change something. And so, if you got those kind of thoughts going through your head and you’re not really excited about what you’re going to do today, you’re going to have to make some kind of change in your life.

It doesn’t mean you make major life changes, and you change your what you do for a living, but maybe how your life is organized or what you do socially, or maybe just what part of town you happen to live in. Maybe it means moving to a different part of town that can afford you a better lifestyle and a better social life. So, with that in mind, the other thing is statistically, most people in long term relationships, especially like in this case, they were together for almost five years.

Most people in this situation are going to take about a year and a half before they completely get over the breakup. And there’s no emotional charge, meaning you can look back on your time together and be indifferent to it. It’s like you don’t no longer feel that negative charge because when you’re in a relationship, your whole identity, your whole social life, everything becomes structured around that relationship, especially if you’re living together.

And now all of a sudden, the person’s gone, and you’re like, “What the hell do I do with my life?” You’re with somebody for something years and you’re living together. Everything that you do revolves around each other’s lives. And then all of a sudden, that person’s completely out of your life and you’re not even talking anymore.

There’s a process. It takes time to get back to a place where you get up and you’re excited about the day, you’re excited about what you’re going to do in a week, and you’re excited what you’re going to do with your friends or your family or whatever you’re going to do socially. So, this guy has made a lot of good progress. And so, it’s a good email for people that are going through it or in the process of going through it so they can see what it’s going to be like.

Viewer’s Email:

Hi Coach Corey,

I’ve been following your work for about five years now and I wanted to reach out to you with a topic I truly struggled with in the breakup recovery process. I’ve read your book How To Be A 3% Man approximately 22 times (It’s the day my birthday is – easy to remember) and my ex and I broke up about six months ago. We were together for 4 and a half years and the relationship was just like you described in your book, effortless, and everything I could have asked for in a relationship. Eventually, the idea of engagement was being discussed while continuing to grow together as a couple, but this coincided with me not being happy professionally, so I moved back to my home state of Florida to pursue a career as a Commercial Pilot.

Well, as tough as that was, you’re leaving your girl and your relationship, your whole identity associated with that. To basically go back where you started. There was this quote from T.S Eliot from his poem Little Gidding, I think 1943. And I love this quote because it’s so true about life. And especially the older you get, the more you realize it’s just true. And it goes like this. It says, “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

And so, you’re back in Florida, where you started, in essence, getting know back to your roots. Maybe you’re reconnecting with old friends, things of that nature and life’s a circle. And so, here you are in essence, back where you started after this great adventure where you had moved away.

Once the move occurred, I could sense a change in her behavior as she became more distant and ended up dumping me to “work on herself” while not feeling established enough in her life to be able to stay with me long distance.

Well, the reality is women don’t dump men they’re in love with. And so, as long as they were together, I mean, you’re together four and a half, almost five years. He’s going to slip up. It’s like if I was him and I lived his life and was going through what he was going through, it’s like I wrote about this in my book. It’s like when I was with Katie, my English girlfriend, you guys may have seen some of the videos when she came to hang out with us a few months ago and film. It’s like I had just started this new business. My life went from being very stable in real estate, to totally being unpredictable and unknown.

I had no idea how long I was going to take to figure out my business model and Katie wanted to go back to school to become a chiropractor, which is going to take about six, seven years to do. And if she was going to go in the States, there’s a lot of classes that they wouldn’t give her credit for. So that would add almost two years to her degree. And on top of that, I’m not stable. I’m not in a place where I’m feeling like I want to get married.

It’s like maybe a year before, I’d been thinking that definitely. You know, first year or so that we were dating. But, when I decided to do what I’m doing now, and I had and I still had no idea what the right way to package up my services was, what my business model was going to be. My future was a big question mark.

And if you’re in a long-term relationship, and especially for us, we were, you know, we were long distance, she would come and stay with me for about 90 days at a time, and then she’d have to go back and then she’d come back 2 to 4 weeks later and then for another 90 days. And so, we’re like living together and then we’re weeks apart. And then she’s going to go to school and maybe get two weeks off during the summer. And I was like, what are we going to see each other maybe once a year at that. I was like, I didn’t really want to want to do that.

I mean, we did some videos on that because a lot of people wanted to know, and there were some really good, good videos, good topics, and they’re still being released on YouTube and Instagram, Facebook, Rumble, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Spotify. They have all those out there if you guys are interested in checking those out. But when you’re in that place; I didn’t feel stable, I wasn’t ready to get married or anything like that.

I was in the middle of building this big house. I was planning on having a bunch of kids, I had figured eventually I may have four children, and I was selling the house. It was like halfway completed. And it’s like my whole “Splat” it’s like I’m in a video game, it’s just like hitting the reset button on your life, and like “Poof” it’s like starting over at zero again.

And so, when a guy is going through that, he’s not going to be the best candidate to be in a stable, long-term relationship, or marriage, especially like in this case. Now, this guy was doing long distance, so he left because he was not happy. And when you go, there was obviously a period of time before he realized he was unhappy. And that’s going to have a negative effect on his relationship and his ability to show up and be in his masculine and be the leader. It’s like when you’re unsure of your future as a man, it’s really hard to focus on and do little things you need to do to maintain your relationship, especially when you’re young.

I mean, she’s 24, he’s 27, so they barely even got started yet. I didn’t even graduate college till I was 25, and I’m not a doctor. I should have graduated at 22. But because I took semesters off and I took forever to get into my upper-level college and the degree program changed, it’s like that set me back, added an extra three years and we took almost took me twice as long to finish college as all my other friends did.

So, but at the end of the day, she dumped him, and she didn’t dump him because she was in love with him, she dumped with him because she had fallen out of love with him for whatever the reason was. And anybody that was in his position that had gone through what he went through and was going through the same thing with his career, it’s going to be next to impossible for most dudes to maintain a relationship and that especially like he’s moved to another state.

She’s 24 and I’m 27 and the plan was for her to move down here in about a year and for us to really take the next step in all of this.

I wish I could say the recovery has been easy for me but quite the opposite. It took some time to start refocusing on myself but then all of sudden just like you said in your book and videos, I started to rediscover my old self again.

It’s like, yeah, you have to get to a point where you can enjoy your life because two people come together to share their completeness, not to complete one another. And you want to get to a happy place first and then meet somebody. Because if you’re looking to somebody else to make you happy, after some point, the honeymoon period wears off, the infatuation wears off, and you realize you’re still the same unhappy person. And when you realize that, that the other person you’re with is not really making you happy, then you stop making the effort to keep the relationship going and keep them engaged and interested in giving on the level that you need to be if you’re going to be in a committed relationship.

I’ve been hanging out with old friends, going on lots of dates with other women (even though it sucks at times), hooking up with those women (that doesn’t always suck lol) and really started applying myself in the gym. This past week, I got my Private Pilot’s license (first major step in this journey) and while I still love my ex and believe she may be the person down the road, I now feel more ready than ever to see where life takes me in this journey regardless of the outcome with her.

Yeah, it’s like once you lose your attachment to that. And plus, the fact is that she could have worked on things, but she chose to dip. And maybe you reconnect later in life, maybe not. You should always focus on your mission and purpose. She wasn’t excited about coming down here to Florida. I don’t know where he lives in Florida, but he just in Florida. And that women vote with their feet. If they’re with you, it means they voted for you, and she voted with her feet.

She chose to stay where she’s at, and she didn’t want to date long distance. And you never try to keep somebody who doesn’t want to keep you. So, he did the right thing. You got to walk away. There’s no point in staying hung up on somebody that; after I mean, you lived together after almost five years. It’s like, “I need to work on myself. It’s like, okay, well, good luck with that. Call me if you change your mind or you want to come visit.”

I dare my ex to find someone better than me every day but simply being me and in that, I’ve rediscovered just how amazing I am. Thank you for all the hard work you put into your coaching, and I look forward to you sharing this story with others. 

So, you can see his attitude has changed a lot because success is making progress in life. And if we don’t feel like we’re making progress, like when I was with my English girlfriend, it’s like after having a very stable life for a long time and then my life being in total chaos, and struggling to figure out my new business and business model. It’s like I didn’t feel at the time like I was making a lot of progress. And part of being successful and being happy is feeling like you’re making progress.

And so, when you can see progress, even if it’s incremental, like this guy who just got his private pilot’s license, it’s been six months. He’s been going out on dates. He’s hooked up with a few girls. Granted, they’re not knocking his socks off, but it’s better than nothing. And quite frankly, nothing will change your attitude towards a breakup better than meeting somebody new that’s enchanting and takes your breath away.

You completely forget about the person that didn’t want to stick around with you when you meet somebody new. And it’s all happening because he’s focused on his mission and his purpose and doing something for himself and building his life up. And so, now he’s just got his private pilot’s license so he can see actual progress in his life. And so, even though the breakup and moving from where he was to Florida, where he is now, was very painful and it was very difficult, he’s seeing the results because, he’s putting the time in.

Plus, he’s going to the gym and working out. He’s got his private pilot’s license now, that’s definitely some progress that he can see. And so, he can feel good about that. He can feel like he’s making progress in his life. And if you feel like you’re making progress, you feel successful, you feel happy. And that’s the important thing. And so, you want to build on that. Ultimately, the goal is he wants to be a commercial pilot, and so he’s got to get enough hours, he’s got more licensure and all that stuff, classes he’s got to take and things of that nature.

But he’s going from where he was, which was living up north somewhere to where he wants to be, which is now in Florida. And he’s already got his first private pilot’s license out of the way now, and he’s continuing to move forward, and check the next series of boxes, if you will, so he can continue to see further progress in his life. And when you got things that are going on in your life that make you smile, that make you happy, and then you go out into the world, people notice that, because most people are looking at the ground and you just go outside, they’re looking at the ground, they’re not paying attention.

They got a scowl on their face or whatever it happens to be, or they’re all up in their head. But people that are truly happy and having a good time, we all notice them. And women especially, notice dudes that are happy. And obviously if you’re happy, you’re more approachable. If you’re smiling, you’re more approachable. And so, he’s starting to see some progress in his personal life as well. But you can see this whole thing is a big process.

I wrote about breakups that I had, in relationships I learned from, and the process that it takes to go through this. So, there’s a process to breaking up. There’s a process to getting over it. And obviously, if those of you familiar with 3%, Man, there’s a process to meeting new women and attracting one that falls in love with you and wants to have a good, healthy, happy relationship, somebody that’s easygoing, easy to get along with, who’s nice to you, who communicates like an adult, treats you with respect, builds you up, in front of you, and when you’re not around, that’s what you want. Somebody that adds value to your life, they’re a net positive. That’s what you want to do.

So good job with your continued recovery. Keep doing what you’re doing, man. And thanks for sharing because there’s going to be some plenty of guys out there that are where you were 6 to 8 months ago and they’re not feeling too good about themselves or their lives. But you got to commit to the process, everything in life that you want to do, you want to accomplish. There’s a process to making that happen. And so, you got to commit to the process.

Sincerely,

BOB

And if you need help with that process or you have questions or things you’d like to get my help with, or a challenge go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen and book a coaching session with yours truly.