You need a year to get used to being single

Getting used to being single is like moving to Denmark: everything seems completely foreign and it costs a bit of work and time to acclimatize. The first month you spend asking "Where am I? Who are these people with whom I am always walking?" And at night you will be constantly assaulted by the desire to go home. It will be a first month bathed in tears and rare cocktails, and you will hate it, but you will also love it. During those first thirty days, the protagonists will be tragedy and self-pity on the scale of the great productions of cinema, and you will feel entitled to all the downs that the body asks of you.

But the time passes, the months follow each other and the moment will come when your friends tell you that it was already mild to hear you cry with your nostalgia stories. There will come a day when you tell what you think is a funny anecdote about your ex and someone leans towards you and whispers in your ear, "Hey, I know it's not easy, but it's been a year, bro."

And that person will be right. One year is the limit to wallow in your misery and it is also what usually takes to get used to being alone, in gauging your life and accommodate the new situation, perhaps taking some intermediate steps.

These are those steps.

The first month: the break
These things rarely take one by surprise. When you stop to analyze that turn that took their lives a few months ago, you realize that it was more than predictable despite the fact that neither of them dared to speak about it. Instead, they spent the day fighting over who had made the purchase or pretended to be fine when they had spent the night crying. None of them verbalized what their true fear was and in the end everything broke out due to an excess of pride and sloppiness.

So you move to your friend's couch, and you wake up every morning with a certain taste of socks and roses in your mouth. You do not regret too much, but you wonder who you are now. If you are a man, you will try to answer that question by letting your beard grow. If you are a woman, the answer may be behind a fringe or in dyeing platinum blonde. You get drunk constantly, regardless of your sex, until one night, maybe after fifteen days, you sleep with someone you really do not like at all and they do it without protection; and everything in your body seems strange to you: what is that? Why is this part here so soft? And what the fuck happens to his neck?

The first month is impulsive and surreal, and when it's over, you have not learned anything, other than that Tinder is crap.

The second month: post-rupture sex
There are only four pleasures in the life of an adult. These are, in no particular order: toast with gratin cheese, Christmas naps, the sound of rain on an aluminum roof and post-rupture sex. There are those who think that these sexual escapades do not bring more than problems, and they are right, but they are people who have not lived fully, because post-rupture sex with your ex is a delight.

It usually starts two months after leaving it. The typical thing is to stay for a coffee; Suddenly one of the two gets tear-jerked (probably you) and you admit that it's costing you a lot. "I miss you," you tell her. There will be a brief pause, in which your ex will weigh all the alternatives. Recognizing that you feel the same would be a sign of weakness, but now that you have vitreous eyes, there is nothing to lose. "Come to my house for a while," he will tell you. "You left some DVDs that you have not picked up".

And you go home and fuck wildly. Maybe there are kisses, maybe not, but it will be like reliving the sexuality of your adolescence. You will see that everything is as you left it at home. There are all the things that you appreciate so much. Memories. That familiarity The overwhelming union of sadness and forbidden fruit. You hit and you scream with the ceiling fan because your heart hurts, but your genitals are singing. And for the first time in a month, everything will be great again. No, great, no. Everything will be more wonderful than ever.


The third month: the second break

The only problem with sex after a break is that it ends after two days. Either he unites them again or destroys them. The second option can manifest itself in different ways, although it really boils down to one fact: one of the two will get bored first.

If you are the one who does it, congratulations! You have managed to continue with your life and now you can go on to read my other article, "Falling in love is wonderful!" Otherwise, stay here, because one day you'll hear, or you'll hear from a message or Instagram that your ex has met someone and that the two are leaving in a very fast car without looking back, while your figure it is reduced to a negligible point in the rear-view mirror.

The sixth month: you say you're fine, but you do not believe it or you
It's been a while since you cut your hair and it has grown back, and you've had several dates in which you had a good time. You tell your friends you're fine, looking at them without blinking, and they immediately perceive that you're not. But seriously, you're fine. And then, on a Friday night, you drink three bottles of wine and during the next four hours you do nothing but harass your ex on social networks. You still had that thorn in it, and when you take it away the feeling is incredible, but suddenly you realize that you still notice a twinge in the same area. You see pictures of your ex and his new partner smiling, swimming, playing with a dog, and the pang intensifies. His Facebook posts are grotesque and gracious. There are friends - people of good that you know and in whom you trusted - who have indicated that they like all that garbage and that, worse still, they have written "¡Qué linda!" on the comments. The pain is unbearable. It is no longer like having a thorn, but a whole bush stuck in the side. It's been six months. By now you should have been able to do a clean slate, but no.

The ninth month: well, it seems that you have finally overcome it
At this point, you probably have a favorite shirt to tie and a well-formed opinion of Tinder. If you like men, you will have learned to hate those who appear in their profile picture holding a fish. If you like women, you will have learned to hate flower wreaths.

Your life will have acquired a comfortable rhythm. You will no longer feel the need to invent hypothetical conversations in which you will collect the whole truth of the universe to condense it in a diamond tip and throw it to your ex. That will be left behind and now you will be happy.

Except on Sundays. You're never happy on Sundays, because the single life consists of living with the volume at its best: the highs are very high, and the bottoms are bottomless. And after a great Saturday night, there is no time for more loneliness and despair than on Sunday afternoon.

The twelfth month: and now, what?

Well, now you already surpassed it. You've been installed in the bachelor so long that you do not even remember what a relationship is. You call your friend: "What a fart, are we going for a cheve?" And your friend: "To egg! I tell my girlfriend". And you: "What, nobody invited your girlfriend."

You hang up the phone thinking that your friend is fatal. Because, from your singleness, relationships seem like a real madness. Fuck, you're so single that you start to doubt that you can fall in love again. Could it be that Tinder and cynicism have nullified your ability to impress you with another person and want to unite your life with yours?

You want to do that, and one day you will do it. You will fall in love again and serve three plates of that pasta with garlic bread, while you contemplate the most beautiful person in the world. And then the two will be thrown on the couch, weary but full and very, very happy, while someone else who just broke see your photos with a false roe.