The Break-Up

Caution: If you haven't watched the movie 'The Break-Up' *ing Vince Vaughn & Jennifer Aniston and are planning to watch it, stop reading this post now.

I watched 'The Break-Up' last evening and quite liked it. It's different from the usual romantic comedy. More real than most.

It's about this couple, Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston, who live together and how their relationship breaks down. Vince is this typical guy, untidy, comes back from work and watches TV while Jeniffer is the one who handles a job, manages the house and cleans up after him. Things spiral out of control one evening when their families go to their place for dinner. Vince screws up by not getting what Jeniffer asked for and one thing leads to another. Jeniffer breaks up in the hope that Vince will come around. Instead, both of them take a hard stand and refuse to budge. A lot of things happen until Vince realises he is also to blame for the situation. He comes out of his shell, tells Jen how much she means to him and apologises for screwing up and not appreciating her. But it's too late. Jen decides she's had enough and the two go their own ways. That is how it ends.

I identified with the movie a lot. Having been in a relationship for over five years and broken-up, I know what a big break-up feels like. There are many things that I learnt from the movie but I'll just touch on a few points.

First, I realised how selfishness and looking at everything from the 'my' perspective can reduce all your good qualities to nothing. For whatever good qualities I had when I was going out, I screwed up by taking a hard stand. And by the time I realised, it was too late. I didn't appreciate how much she did for me and even when I did, I probably didn't express it well enough. I was too self-involved and in the process lost someone that meant a whole lot to me. And it all came out of my fear. My fear of being taken for granted. I was so scared it would happen that I didn't give even what I should have, forget going beyond that. I never want to make the same mistake again.

The second thing that strikes me is that in most relationships where there are problems, both people are equally responsible for a break-up. In our eagerness to point out the other person's follies, we forget all that we do wrong. Introspecting is a difficult thing but it always helps to ask yourself 'Could I have done anything to make things better?'. More likely than not, the answer is 'yes'. I can definitely say that I could have and should have done better.

The last point that strikes me is a theme I have read about on many of the blogs I visit, that relationships come to an end some time or another. That every thing and every person has its/his/her time in our lives. And sometimes, you can do nothing but watch while the person walks out of your life. I experienced this first when my girlfriend and me broke-up and again when my father passed away. Like I said before, I could've changed things around in the first case but in the second, there was just nothing I could do. We tend to feel life has given us a raw deal but it is never so. What would life have been if I hadn't met my ex-girlfriend at all? How would life have been if I hadn't had the chance to spend wonderful years of my life with my father? It would certainly have been poorer. Both experiences strengthened my faith in that Higher Power that ordains the laws of life. Losing a relationship is never easy. But with faith, the pain becomes softer and the experience, one you can learn from.