Ruined Songs, Lost Money, Bye-Bye To Work Opportunity And Other Realities of a Breakup

[00:00:00] Have you ever lost something other than a boyfriend or a girlfriend post a breakup? Money, a place to live or even a friendship? Friendships. They are actually the trickiest of all because when the breakup happens, more often than not our friends excites.

[00:00:29] Guys, it's also something which happened to Ruchika who I met through Twitter. She tells me that in school she was dating a guy and they had a lot of friends that they would hang out with all the time.

[00:00:55] But when the breakup happened, she had to let go of a lot of friendships. But that is not what defines Ruchika. Ruchika is an amazing podcaster and she hosts the podcast Sanskari Sass which by the way you should check out.

[00:01:15] And she has put all of this behind her but she tells me that when this happened to her it really really broke her. More than the breakup, actually the collateral damage is what hurt me.

[00:01:33] So with my breakup with my first boyfriend back in school, we had pretty much the same friend circle. You know everyone, all of my friends were his friends and we all hung out together. And when we broke up it kind of became like a rift.

[00:01:51] You know half the group was trying to be neutral and half the group was choosing his side. And eventually I just had to remove myself from that friend circle because it was just getting too conflicted for me to hang out with them constantly because I was the one

[00:02:05] who did the breaking up. So some of them kind of blamed me for breaking his heart and all of that. And in retrospect obviously I see that they weren't really my true friends. So now I don't see it as collateral damage anymore.

[00:02:21] It's like it's good riddance but at that point it was definitely really hard for me to sort of get rid of a lot of my friends. Hey Richika's friends who dumped her at a time when she was extremely vulnerable.

[00:02:33] Maybe you need to search how to be a better friend on Wikihau. But guys other than friendships we also see a lot of our favourite places get ruined. I mean you know restaurants where we once ate together. All of this just becomes part of a collateral damage.

[00:02:50] Collateral damage, casualties, something that wasn't supposed to happen but it was inevitable. I think in the context of break up it would mean that when a relationship ends there are other things that kind of end too. They also die a very painful death.

[00:03:14] And guys if you've ever broken up I am 80% sure that you've had a deal with some kind of a collateral damage. Whether it was something funny like losing the boxes that you once shared together. It's also gross by the way.

[00:03:30] Or it's a t-shirt that you shared together because as we've ranked it's so much fun wearing your partner's t-shirts. Or it could also be something serious like money and even work opportunities. Which is why I thought that there is so much to talk about collateral damage and

[00:03:48] that is why I made it into episode 7 of How I Delved With It, a podcast about break ups. So guys let's begin episode 7 with me Divyani Ratanpal. Sudeep Nagarkar is an author who has written 10 best selling novels on romance guys. 10 I haven't written one okay.

[00:04:13] Few things left unsaid that's the way we met it started with a friend request sorry you're not my type are just some of his most popular books. He is followed by lax of people on social media but before all of this began and

[00:04:28] before his words on romance sold a million copies. He too was struggling to cope with the collateral damage of his breakup. Even when it's hard to tell you about my experience I had a girlfriend during my college

[00:04:41] days and we broke up like because of the some internal issues and after that I never felt like going again to the college and that is why I had a couple of year drops in engineering because of that thing because I never went to college.

[00:04:59] Guys Sudeep had to repeat years in college because he did not want to go back to the same place where he once shared good and bad memories with his ex guys a lot of us we avoid restaurants

[00:05:13] and even activities that remind us of our ex and we end up making a lot of changes just to accommodate this difficult situation in our lives and in my friend what's last case it involves making some urgent changes to her playlist and even her Friday plans.

[00:05:33] I think the songs that you once enjoyed together the long drives that you once enjoyed together they kind of taken away from you I mean you're you every time you listen to those

[00:05:43] same songs the tracks that you played when you were say going around the streets of the when you were going around the roads of telly exploring this place or that place they're kind

[00:05:54] of like taken away from you like I remember listening to a lot of chain smoking like a chain smokers chain smokers yeah change I remember listening to chain smokers he introduced me

[00:06:05] to them and I don't think I can listen to chain smokers again anyway I don't regret it they had terrible music so didn't lose out on anything much but yeah that yeah I think songs just

[00:06:16] have such a vivid memory and a lot of songs are ruined you know we end up like losing half our playlist like I remember so mine was a long distance so every time we'd come to delhi and I would drive

[00:06:27] him like I would drive him around the city and I remember he would play this track yeah and I can't listen to that fucking song again like now it I love that track what a composition

[00:06:41] everything but he's ruined it forever so we used to watch a lot of movies together and I think since the breakup I haven't seen much of films I love watching movies but this

[00:06:58] I mean it's not that I don't watch movies alone but I kind of have stopped keeping track of what coming next because when the person was in your life you're like hey what do you want

[00:07:08] what do you want to watch this Friday which movie is coming up and then you're always excited about the next release because yeah Friday it becomes a thing so I think it's been a while since

[00:07:18] I've watched movies also so fucker has taken away that one thing I liked a lot it's funny how even though the emotions between two people have completely evaporated the physical items that they both once shared still remains as sturdy and as tangible

[00:07:42] and sometimes we can even make a power move with them this is how Vishnu did it so basically what happened was someone I was dating I had given her a lot of my clothes and some

[00:07:55] of my favorite t-shirts some really really cool ones and so when we broke up very suddenly she had all my clothes so I told her listen I'm not gonna come collect all my clothes but you

[00:08:07] can just give it to your roommate who she didn't like much so that was very satisfying for me because she had to see her roommate who she hated where all the t-shirts that were mine for the next

[00:08:19] few months and it was very very very satisfying well it worked out for Vishnu but asking back for stuff guys it is a nightmare and it is so awkward that some like Cyrus don't even bother too much

[00:08:35] with it there have been many instances that I've suffered collateral damage in relationships sometimes I tend to be very generous on my partner and my generosity extends up to the limits that I

[00:08:51] end up giving a lot of money to them so and when the breakup the whole phase that happens it kind of feels very awkward to ask the person that hello excuse me you owe me some money can I

[00:09:05] have it back and in that tension among the two things just get lost and you obviously do not want to go back into that ugly space guys talking of ugly spaces I'm also reminded

[00:09:17] of this instance where a friend of mine called me in the middle of the night and told me that he had to move out of his house his live-in with his girlfriend because she told him to just get out

[00:09:31] in the middle of the night and he had nowhere to go and then we found him a place when I asked Sudeep who by the way is our celebrity guest for this episode and I am not gonna shy away

[00:09:43] from rubbing it in when I asked him if any of his friends had been through something of a similar collateral damage here is what he said you know you see which like yeah these things happen

[00:09:55] these days like where we are into the days when they are living relationships happening or when you are in your college days where you share the room together where you are on a rent

[00:10:05] or anywhere so that matter so it's actually funny because if that happened with my friend also and like he called me that this is the thing that has happened and I've been thrown out of the

[00:10:15] house as a first thing what friends do is like probably they laugh when I started laughing on that but in this situation not even to understand how should I react because I started

[00:10:25] laughing and he was like yeah you are laughing on my face bag that is the kind of thing that you are into yeah absolutely I think I think again you need to depend on absolutely I think

[00:10:39] again you need to depend on your friends who will give you space to stay you know that's the that's the thing that makes love story interesting right if you don't have such kind of experiences

[00:10:49] later on when you actually move on and you think about those particular situations you laugh on it but how crazy I was so you know all of this is funny and you know there are like for

[00:11:00] example songs and you know we talk about houses etc but then there are economic opportunities that one loses for example somebody was telling me that they were in the same industry the comedy

[00:11:11] industry and the other person that she was dating was a senior comedian and then you know he tried to not get her opportunities and he was telling his friends not to give her gigs because you

[00:11:22] know he had broken up with her so how important do you think it is to let aside your ego and not ruin the career or not ruin or deny the opportunities to your ex partner like

[00:11:35] it all comes down to ego you know we are alive we are like the person hurt us so we will not let them succeed or we will not let them have a good time so is it possible or how

[00:11:47] easy it is or how difficult is it to let go of this ego and actually set aside the personal from the professional see it it's not that difficult like if you see it in a very

[00:12:00] practical manner it's not that difficult at the end of the day as I said that it's your life you need to understand that what are your priorities hurting someone okay fine you have that kind of

[00:12:10] emotion of revenge you're doing it but then after a couple of months when that thing has you have actually done that thing you feel somewhere guilty that what exactly I gained from that particular thing I'd get nothing it's all about proving yourself that even after

[00:12:22] the bad relationship you are into a very good situation and you have done well in your life so that itself is a great message to probably give to everyone out there and I know guys

[00:12:33] everyone takes their own time to heal from a breakup but remember if you moor around too much you might just lose a really really good catch this is Amrita's collateral damage story

[00:12:49] you want to know what damage you face from a breakup ask me and there's one damage from a breakup that you can never undo and that is the damage of the other guys you miss out on

[00:13:02] when you're wallowing in the misery of your breakup I mean I was broken up by by my very sort of cool then boyfriend in college and he was like you know the school

[00:13:15] drummer boy and he dumped me outside a nightclub one night and I couldn't believe it he was talking to me casually breaking up with me chewing gum when he left I dug into that trash can I went

[00:13:27] into the dust bin I took out that piece of chewing gum that he had spat out into a piece of paper and I ate it that was how pathetic I was and I went home for the holidays and I was like this

[00:13:37] dead cat like my sister had to drag me for a walk in the park like this carcass and you know my dad was like what's wrong with you and I'd be like tracing things in you know

[00:13:46] in the dust there'd just be this mess but the worst part now when I look back is that I missed out on another amazing guy who was really had the hots for me that guy had the

[00:13:56] hots for me and he was so amazing and he asked me out for lunch one day when I was in the middle of my breakup kind of kind of you know drama and I was like okay maybe I'll go and then I was of

[00:14:07] course cried for another hour then I showered got ready and I turned up one hour late to the date which in Indian standard time is not much but by British standard time because that's where

[00:14:17] I was it was the ultimate snub and so that guy was like he had the class and the cruelty to wait for me and then when I arrived he then said I have to go now so that's when I realized again

[00:14:30] you know you'll realize what you've lost when it's gone I realized that I've lost a really good guy another really cool man because I was moping about the other guy. So guys by now I have been

[00:14:39] able to give you a nuanced perspective of all the things the different ways in which collateral damage can affect you but does that mean that you can no longer emerge out of it not quite.

[00:14:52] It's a matter of time when you'll get your movies back when you'll get the desire to watch stuff without that person and you'll be able to enjoy it but yeah it's a slow process but it's

[00:15:02] not permanent that's what I keep reminding myself a month from now three months from now it'll be a very different thing. I see I think the only lesson here is that what does seem as

[00:15:11] collateral damage now is actually gonna seem like a good thing that happened later on in the future. Well guys the good news is that collateral damages aren't forever. So guys in time you will be able

[00:15:34] to listen to your favorite song again and even go to that holiday destination without your ex.