Don't bad mouth your ex or complain about your exes in general.
One of the major challenges Gays face is developing relationships in a hostile world. This is one of a series of short essays to help people find a boyfriend.
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Do not say bad things about your ex or complain about exes in general.
Complaining about your ex is an impediment to finding your future relationship.
It is also tiresome to others.
I notice that there is a frequent practice of people saying bad things about their ex or exes. This is something you shouldn’t do.
When people were going on about their ex being a horrible person, I used to joke:
Either it isn’t true and you are slandering them, or it is true and you letting people know you have poor judgement or its some of both.
I wasn’t trying to enlighten the person complaining, I just didn’t want to hear about it. Likely your friends will share the same feeling. But there is truth to it.
I didn’t say it to people who had just broken up and were understandably upset, I would say it to people still complaining about an ex-boyfriend they had had months or years ago.
If you just broke up and need to vent, do it in one week or less, do it with close friends, not strangers or people you have just met,
It is also often true that it is slander or it is poor judgement. There are those Gays who have had a series of ex-boyfriends that weren’t good.
Likely if you are emotionally upset about your ex, you will tend to exaggerate and slander and the people who know your ex won’t think highly of it.
This will be perceived as “drama” which is a despised quality on Grindr.
However, there are these additional negatives which will impact you getting a relationship.
[1] Everyone will wonder what you might say about them if they are your next ex.
[2] It will be a sign of a person lacking emotional maturity and that you come with lots of drama.
[3] Having you as a significant other might involve is a lot of time listening to complaints about your ex.
[4] You relationships have a track record of breaking up.
You are making it harder for yourself in meeting new people.
If someone inquires as to what the reason was, just say, “It is in the past, it just didn’t work out.” Again, say it with a detached voice.
No exceptions to this rule. It might be your ex was a serial killer and the police broke down the front door and rescued you just in the nick of time, but you will say, “It is in the past, it just didn’t work out,” which is true. Okay, if some toes or fingers are missing you might have to say more, but you get the point.
If the break up was over a week ago, ask yourself why are you still complaining about the ex? How are you put together emotionally such that this is a continuing emotional drama? Again, it broadcast to others that you have issues and lack maturity.
If your voice is emotionally upset on the issue, it will be like a flashing red light alarm to warn others about you.
You might as well tattoo a biohazard sign on your forehead.
You also open up to community judgement as to why your relationship broke up. This might prove to be unpleasant. You might discover that general opinion is in sympathy with your ex and since you are already having drama over the issue, you will be potentially aggravated to being more upset.
Finding out that the community feels you are at fault and not your ex, might be an opportunity for personal reflection and self-improvement, but this is a theoretical idea. I have never known it to happen.
The other thing is that the problem with your ex might be a repeating problem you have had with other ex’s. People will wonder as to why.
Further if your ex is like you, it stimulates him to talk badly about you, and the two you will then have an ongoing war of words, a lose-lose situation. It isn’t a lose situation for the general Gay community, since for them, it is a biohazard warning to avoid both of you. If he instead refuses to say bad things, it gives him the moral high ground and you are seen as a vindictive psycho.
Likely, if the ex is smart, he doesn’t want to talk about it either.
If he is talking about you, and you keep silent, he will look like the vindictive psycho.
Many of the persons who are aggrieved because you turned them down at the club will have schadenfreude, that is derive satisfaction over your suffering if you talk about your ex and being the victim. Don’t give those losers satisfaction.
Moving on.
However, the biggest reason not to be talking about your ex, is that you aren’t focused on your future. To the extent it is something you feel compelled to talk about or feel emotionally about, or think about, it is something tying you to the past and occupying your thinking. It is wasted mental energy and mental time. You aren’t thinking about the future and meeting someone new.
Again, if someone asks why you broke up, be gracious and vague and without blame. Say things like, “We just didn’t have chemistry,” “We drifted apart,” and other uninformative responses, even if you broke up because he tortured your cat.
Ed Sebesta is one of the bad Gays who is writing not so much to make the world a better place, but to hear less whining.
