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After the Breakup: Women Sort Through the Rubble and Rebuild Lives of New Possibilities
By Angela Watrous and Carole Honeychurch
New Harbinger Publications
176 pp $13.95

Here is how I handled my own breakup trauma when, not quite a year ago, a woman I thought I loved, on the rebound from ending her own 11-year relationship, dumped me:

I sought out everything at my house that belonged to her -- everything that was in my refrigerator on account of her, anything at all that in any way reminded me of her, every gift she'd ever given me -- and in one spontaneous, 15-minute eruption on a sunny Saturday morning, I took all those things and more, stuffed them into the largest shopping bag I could find under the sink, sprinkled it with the sloppily snipped confetti of every card, every letter, every note she'd ever sent me, and planted it smack in the middle of the vestibule of her building, not caring who saw it or who might steal it.

I wrote her dozens of letters, angry one day, begging and pleading the next. I called her when I knew she wouldn't be there, just to hear her voice on her answering machine. I walked by her apartment over and over again, hoping that maybe I'd see her, yet utterly dreading the possibility. A sudden health club devotee, I ran miles on the treadmill before work, then came home and watched hours of mindless TV. I gorged on as much therapy as I could afford. I tossed and turned and ruminated over her late at night. In short, I obsessed about her (and sometimes, I still do).

I also spent considerable time and money reading books about relationships, breakups, and how to mend a broken heart (Amazon.com alone lists 88 matches if you search for titles with the word "breakup," and you could fritter away more than one afternoon browsing the relationship books at your local chain bookstore).

Somehow, I missed Angela Watrous and Carol Honeychurch's After the Breakup: Women Sort Through the Rubble and Rebuild Lives of New Possibilities. That's a shame, because it is one of the best books of its kind, and might have made me feel just slightly less insane.

The authors got the idea for this book when both of them, within six months of each other, ended significant relationships.

"Together, we worked through our breakups, from the initial shock to the rebuilding of our respective lives. As we sorted through our emotions, which ran the gamut -- failure, disbelief, sadness, relief, exhilaration, depression, anger, frustration, anticipation, resentment, acceptance -- we found that these emotions didn't follow the linear order we expected," they explain in the introduction. "We found that we would 'slip,' experiencing emotions we thought were behind us. In short, we set out to write this book because we want you to know that you're not alone, that you don't have to simply laugh this off, and that you will come through this."

The authors were determined to write their own book after finding piles of books for women trying to get over a divorce, but few addressing women who were lesbian or bisexual. For these reasons, the women focused on the experiences of women in relationships outside of marriage, both gay and straight.

Watrous and Honeychurch do not claim to be experts, at least not the kind with credentials and degrees. But they have suffered through traumatic separations and describe themselves simply as "women's issues freelance writers who have recently rebuilt their lives after difficult breakups"; both live in the San Francisco Bay area.

During their research for the book, they interviewed dozens of women of different ages and sexual orientations about their breakup experiences and coping strategies, effectively creating "an extended group of friends" who could offer valuable advice to readers going through similar traumas. They also cite the work of a handful of researchers and practitioners who have studied nonmarital breakups and include an excellent bibliography. (One excellent resource has escaped their attention, however, Carol Becker's 1988 book Broken Ties: Lesbian Ex-Lovers. Much like After the Breakup, it relies on valuable testimonials from a diverse group of women.)

In the first chapter, called "Ground Zero," Watrous and Honeychurch describe the crumbling emotional structure of troubled relationships. Breakups are "a sort of demolition and reconstruction process. The past relationship is like a condemned building: For some reason, it's no longer habitable, and someone has called for the wrecking ball."

Many of the women interviewed describe the experience of standing amid the debris feeling shocked, scared, angry, alone, sad, relieved, guilty -- virtually immobilized by a shifting set of intense emotions.

"I just remember going to the movies by myself all the time and lying on my floor and crying, and constantly feeling that wrenching feeling," says 30-year-old Lucy, who is cast off by her partner. "I couldn't believe this person I was so close to was gone."

Anybody who has gone through gut-wrenching feelings of loss and grief will welcome the coping strategies included in this book. The authors reassure women that, as hard as it is to be at this juncture, "rejuvenation will come."

The section called "Rebuilding" describes the recovery process, when women begin to accept that the relationship is over, to let go, and to conceive of their lives again, even if they continue to sort through the rubble. "You've arrived at an opportunity to decide just who the postbreakup you is, and who you would like her to be," they write.

One woman named Joy comes to a realization: "It was like putting a puzzle back together. I had to lift up couches and look behind the refrigerator for a lot of the pieces, but every day I made significant progress."

In the final section, called "Settling In," the authors treat the process of moving forward with one's life, the time when it is possible to close the doors on the old relationship and consider the possibility of a new one (or not -- the authors encourage women to embrace and enjoy their stronger, single selves).

This section of the book addresses the dilemma of whether and how to remain friends with an ex; how to overcome inevitable emotional setbacks, such as the pain of learning that your ex has moved on to his or her next relationship; and how to identify and benefit from the positive changes that have resulted from what began as a traumatic event.

Aside from the issues of emotional recovery and self-esteem, the authors touch on the pragmatic side of recalibrating your life, addressing issues such as finances, religion, real estate, friends and family, music, and sex.

My own fluctuating and confusing emotions and behaviors over the past several months were easier to understand after reading this book. It also helped me see more clearly why the woman who threw me overboard years ago needed to do so in order to sort through the rubble of her own breakup, and why somebody "on the rebound" is almost always a bad person upon whom to pin one's hopes. All breakups and all women are different, the authors note, and there is no predictable or normal path they will take. I'm not convinced, however, that many readers will share the sentiments of Jeanette, a woman quoted at the end of the book who, having come out the other side of her own breakup trauma, exclaims, "Breakups are good! Woohoo!"

However, it is safe to say that almost every woman going through a breakup trauma -- whether she be the person who leaves or the one left behind -- will find something in these pages to help smooth out the rocky road.

-- Barbara Raab, a regular contributor to NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, is a New York-based writer and television producer whose essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Salon.com, Insightoutbooks.com, Planetout.com, Womensenews.com, the Advocate, the New York Blade, Chicago Outlines, and the San Francisco Bay Times.

First published October 26, 2000
Last updated October 27, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive

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