Dry Your Eyes Mate

Once upon a time, in a beautiful castle, far far away, there lived a Prince and a Princess who lived happily ever after…

A Princess, A Prince and Their Castle... Oh Disney

Uh-Uh (that’s the Family Fortunes noise right there)

What Disney don’t tell the 5 year olds, is the Prince and Princess had a horrible, miserable break up a couple of months after filming and it took days, months, years, getting over it and pulling themselves out of this utter heartbreak.

Wait ‘til you see 500 Days of Summer kids! 

"This is not a love story. This is story about love"

500 Days of Summer.. Even my girl crush on Zooey Deschanel didn't stop me hating her!

Whether you’re a man, woman or other, gay, straight or other… Nothing will stop your eyes welling up with tears when a certain song comes on the radio, or you’re throwing stuff out and come across an old card or letter… Nothing will stop the feeling that your heart is going to break out of your chest when you think you’ve just seen them standing at the other side of a bar.

The thing that still affects me most is certain smells, it’s probably the same for a lot of people. Scent is one of the most powerful senses, which I don’t think people always realise.

I had a horrible relationship not so long ago (When I get round to that it will probably have parts 1-10) and some months later, I thought I had got over it… I was happy, I was constantly surrounded by amazing friends, I had an ENORMOUS crush on a guy that I spent a lot of time with and I was generally relatively content, he had stopped crossing my mind every 30 seconds, I could get angry rather than upset…

Until I was walking through the restaurant I worked in… balancing 3 plates in my hands and a man walked past me wearing his aftershave… Avoiding ruining their food with my salty tears and weeping onto my customers, I went to the table, shoved the plates down as fast as my hands would allow, quick stepped back to the kitchen and melted into a flood of tears.

It was bizarre… This scent had totally washed over my whole body… Reminded me of everything and it was just too much to handle.

However much a person tries to hide it, I believe everyone has these feelings and it is horrific. When you watch a friend cry over a girl or guy, you can never quite relate, your brain – the clever thing - helps you forget those feelings as fast as possible. Unless you really make yourself and let yourself remember, you can never quite empathise (unless, you too, have gone through a break up recently).

But how do these feelings affect men and women?

When you’re young, in your teen years… You look at the exterior…

You see a girl cry every day for 6 months and the boy just get on with it, like nothing has happened (for the most part). You assume she will never be the same and he’s already over it.

In my older years, I realised this was really the opposite of what was going on. During that “grieving” period (I realise this is an extreme word to use)… The girl is letting all those emotions go and once she’s come out of it, of course, some feelings will still be there, but she will have, in part, “Got over it”

What happens to a boy, or man, seems to be a lot more complex… You only realise this when you’re older though and you can actually crack through the exterior.

Why are so many men “content” with no strings attached relationships?

I was chatting to yet another guy on POF, only for the pretty hilarious and friendly conversation we’d been having, ended with “So are you up for it? Banter and fondling, but no emotions ok?” … I decided to question why he felt like that. I could be the love of his life and he wasn’t even willing to consider it.

His answer came, as suspected:

“I don’t know, scared I guess, don’t want to get hurt”

This sealed it in my head.

Men are affected far worse from break ups than women.

They bottle up their feelings, mainly because of pride. There might be the occasional person that sees them, a female friend, a best mate, a parent, but the rest of the time, the advice they get goes about as deep as “Let’s go shag a load of fit birds”…

It’s like they get revenge on that one girl by breaking the hearts of many others.

My advice to this guy went as follows:

Man the f*ck up...

You have two choices... You either dwell on it, let it affect you for the next however long, have meaningless sex with girls and probably break a few hearts just to get revenge on someone else...

OR... you spent a weekend wrapped up in your duvet watching PS I love you and other such shit, let yourself cry, eat junk food and drink some beer... Then pull yourself up and move on! 

That feeling when you see her will never go away... But it will fade...

Let it go

If guys could talk to their mates (and I don't just mean those select few, I mean all of them) without fear of being called a pussy and not get embarrassed or their pride hurt, the world would probably be a better place. 

The reason I gave this blog the title Dry Your Eyes Mate is because I have the utmost respect for Mike Skinner to write such a frank and honest song about what a man goes through after a break up. Especially when he's such a "lad".