The BetsyG-Spot

By BetsyG

I was having dinner with my friend and sometimes editor Ron shortly after he read my essay Epiphany. The piece was about how my vision had suddenly cleared and I realized that there were a bunch of reasons I no longer wanted to get back together with Mike, who’d broken up with me to try to reconcile with his ex-wife. The main reasons were that he was a liar—which I learned when he broke up with me—and likely an alcoholic, which on some level I’d known all along.

I’d been bending Ron’s ear about the breakup for over a month, but he hadn’t heard anything about Mike’s shortcomings until he read the essay. Here we were at dinner, and I was jawing about how good it felt to be past the breakup, when Ron—normally restrained and dignified—practically grabbed me by the lapels.

“Forgive me for being blunt,” he said, refined even when nearly apoplectic. “I can’t help but think that your readers, like me, are going to wonder what the hell is wrong with you that it took so long to get over it.”

I appreciated the assessment (blunt assessments are most welcomed from those who are least apt to make them), but wasn’t really worried about what people would think. That’s because I understood exactly why it took so long, and it’s common enough behavior that it has a name.

It’s called “Dumpee Syndrome.” Coined by Greg Behrendt, the guy who wrote He’s Just Not That Into You, the phrase describes the obsession to undo a breakup you were on the receiving end of, even when you know the relationship had irredeemable problems. The syndrome is described in Behrendt’s new book, It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken, co-authored by his wife.

I’d like to make a distinction between an irrational response to a breakup that’s for the better and the response I had to being dumped by Gary, with whom I had a near-perfect relationship (minor detail: he didn’t love me). In that case I think I felt miserable because I was miserable. Not the same thing as Dumpee Syndrome.

But my reaction to the Mike breakup clearly was that. I did have strong feelings for him, but I also had strong feelings about his drinking, so much so that I’d essentially broken up with him over it the day before he broke up with me. I had felt confident about walking away from him if he couldn’t change his drinking habits. So why was it such a tragedy that he dumped me? Why did I fight so aggressively to reverse it?

I experienced the same thing when my ex-husband left me. I had been unhappy in the marriage for a long time but couldn’t bring myself to end it. When he left me, though, I had a near breakdown and waged a bloody battle to turn him around. Again…why?

The article I read about Dumpee Syndrome described the characteristics of the syndrome but didn’t explain the psychology behind it. So I wondered if, for me, it was about being competitive, because in both cases a third party was involved. While there may be some validity to that theory, it doesn’t feel like the explanation for my seriously depressed emotional state.

A more likely answer is that rejection hurts. I’m using the word “rejection” as a simple term for something much more complicated. Mike knew me. He understood and valued my best qualities. And even though I rationally understood that the breakup was not about me but about Mike’s sense of responsibility to his family and his attachment to his lifestyle, his choosing anything over me made me question my worth. If, knowing me as he did, Mike could walk away, maybe my good qualities didn’t really have the value I thought they did.

So perhaps I was fighting to hold on not to Mike, but to the image of myself I saw reflected in him. If only I could make the case the right way, get him to see, to reclaim the gift he’d dropped at the return counter, I could hold on to that image.

If that theory holds true, maybe I did, after all, suffer from a version of Dumpee Syndrome with Gary. Because I’d never felt as precious as I did with him, and when he said he didn’t love me, I wasn’t a glittery diamond anymore, but a bit of fool’s gold.