A friend IMed me a (rhetoric) question I have heard three more times before and am tired of answering anymore, so here’s a public answer. The question was: “How could you meet another girl when it hasn’t been even a month since you broke up?”—some even go on and say “Your ‘love’ was only so much, eh?”—and my answer is:
There is no minimum fucking “requirement” on how long one ought to be single after a failed relationship, no matter how serious the relationship was.
In fact, it is very rude to ask such a question if one doesn’t have a fucking idea about what kind of in- and post-relationship heartache the person that was asked the question had to go through before finally announcing the end of relationship. First, this is a matter of prudence: What one says about his/her relationship is not the whole view of the relationship. Furthermore, this is also a matter of respect and consideration: People often don’t say much about their personal struggles for whatever reasons, some of which are emotional and psychological self-defense touching the sufferers’ soft and vulnerable sides. Throwing a value judgment at it often makes them feel they need to bare more details about the struggles just in order to avoid being misunderstood, and that ends up causing more pain than comfort.
And my case. Of course, I decided not to talk too much about it online; that silence is not to be misconstrued, especially when I already gave a reason behind that silence, which is not “Oh, I’m so embarrassed at myself and have nothing to say about it.” To those who want to say “But still…”, I will however say this: Already at the end of July did I determine the past relationship was untenable, and I have prepared for a “soft landing” for nearly three months before finally cutting the fuel off to the engine.