In Defense of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Let me begin by stating that I love the mentally unstable.

I don't mean this in a coy "I'm cool like Wednesday Addams" kind of way. I don't mean it in a vacant "No one feels my pain" way. I mean it genuinely. I enjoy the company of those people who have been diagnosed with various forms of mental illness.

Bipolar? OK. I know you're not literally going to be Jekyl and Hyde with me. Unless you're off your meds, and that'll be ok, too. Tourette? Sure. I know you likely won't have sudden bursts of foul language unless I beat you at Mah Jong. I know to expect ticks and difficulty maintaining eye contact. And that will be fine with me.

I have probably had more contact with the mentally unstable than the average person. Sure, I'm no psychiatrist or orderly at a hospital. These are people who live, sleep, breathe, and shit the mentally unstable. I am not one of these people. But I am someone who has had a great deal of contact with the mentally unstable. Or perhaps I should put it this way: Compared to the average person, I have probably had more informed contact with the mentally unstable. When I talked with these people, I knew damn well that they had some sort of mental instability, and it made very little difference in the way I treated them. I don't say this as if I'm a saint. All I mean to say is that I likely treated them with the same indifference and nonchalance I do to everyone else. Just because you're crazy doesn't mean that you're on the top of my "To Do" list, for Christssake. You will harbor just as many self-defeating thoughts over there as you will sitting on the other side of my desk, thank you very much and wait your goddamn turn.

All that being said, let me sum up: I love the mentally unstable. They play a significant role in our society and should not be ashamed of who they are. If there were a ribbon for the mentally unstable, I probably wouldn't wear it. But I would support it.

However...

I have grown tired of a certain phenomenon that I find is growing increasingly common - the "crazy" ex-girlfriend. Everyone seems to have one nowadays.

"Hey Jeremy, how're you doing? I heard you and Melissa split up. Is that true?"

"Yeah, jesus. She's fucking crazy, man."

"No way. You two were great. Weren't you together for, like, three years?"

"Yeah, but she went totally psycho on me. I told her I thought we were better off apart and she went totally fucking nuts. Crying, screaming, throwing shit at me. She kept calling me, over and over."

"Holy shit, man, I'm sorry. Is she still after you? Are you ok?"

"I'm fine. She shows up at my work, sometimes. She always says she wants to talk, but I just keep telling her the same thing over and over again, you know? I just think we're better off without each other, you know? Then she starts crying again, and it all starts over. Christ, look - that's her calling on my cell."

"Fuck me. I had no idea Melissa was crazy like that. I'm sorry."

And so on. I hear conversations like this all the time. Of course, the tables are reversed sometimes, too. Sometimes it is the crazy ex-boyfriend who is being maligned. This is not meant to be a gender specific phenomenon. But I am not a tripod, so from here on out we relate to my needs.

Why are people so surprised that people are upset after a break-up? Break-ups hurt. They are painful. They are nasty. They throw your entire world into upheaval. You wake up one day, knowing you have a partner, someone to be there for you and to be your sounding board. Think you'd like to quit your job? Great, you have a partner to discuss it with. Have a bizarre dream about having sex with your dog, except it had the face of your best friend in kindergarten? Perfect, wake up your partner. Your partner is one of the few things in this world that you can rely on day to day. I can rely on my job sucking my ass. I can rely on my $0.82 coffee refill at the Mobil On-The-Go. I can rely on my partner.

And then they go and screw it all up. They've met someone else. They've grown away from you. You've grown away from them. You've grown apart from each other. They have finally realized that you're fundamentally different and can never have a healthy relationship. Whatever. No matter what the reason, it all hurts the same. They reject you.

Rejection hurts.

After a kidney transplant, you take heavy duty medication for the rest of your life. Know why? Because rejection hurts.

Teenage suicide spikes from mid-March to mid-May every year, just after college acceptance letters come out. Know why? Because rejection hurts.

When we get rejected, we hurt. When we get hurt, we experience pain. This pain can be physical, emotional, psychological, or existential. This is not news to anybody.

So, why are we so surprised when our ex's are so distraught after a break-up? Where are all these "crazies" coming from?

Granted, there is a very small percentage of the population who actually get a crazy. One out of a million of you reading this really will find a crazy. You'll be going along and realize you're in
Fatal Attraction or any Josh Hartnett movie. OK, I'll give you that.


But the rest of you are simply not recognizing the repercussions of your actions. What is surprising about crying, screaming, ranting, raving, begging, pleading at the feet of the person who has just tried to break ties with you? A partner, a real boy/girlfriend, is like a psychological appendage. You don't need it to live, sure. There are plenty of amputees out there living full and productive lives. But you certainly don't want to offer up an appendage unless absolutely necessary. And you'll fight like hell to keep it, often even when it is gangrenous and threatening to intoxicate the rest of the body.

Dismissing someone else's pain is cruel and it minimizes the quality of the partnership you had when it was in its prime. The pain that you cause the person you are leaving is part of that partnership still; just because you have decided that this partnership is over does not end the partnership. The story continues because the emotions continue. Denying that there is any cause for pain denies that there was ever anything there to begin with. And if that's the case, then you were both crazy, living together and pretending that you were doing something.

I want to live in a world where I can overhear these conversations:

"Hey, Jeremy. How're you doing? I heard you and Melissa broke up?"

"Yeah, we did. I realized that we weren't good for each other, even though we love each other."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know, exactly. But I know it is true. I feel it. And I told Melissa so."

"Jesus, how did she take it?"

"As well as I would have taken it if our places were reversed. She cried. She screamed. She threw things at me. She begged. She pleaded. She tried to have sex with me one last time."

"That's crazy."

"No, it isn't crazy. I hurt her. I hurt the hell out of her. And that is not a rational state to be in, so why should I expect her to respond rationally? This is what people do."

"Do you feel sorry for her? Are you going to take her back?"

"No. I'm not saying I'm going to take her back. I'm just saying that her response is understandable. I don't like it. I don't regret my decision. But this is the natural consequence of my decision. I have to accept that."

Yes. Yes, that would be lovely.