On Being a Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

I’ve been a psycho ex-girlfriend. It’s an embarrassing and incredibly hard thing to admit to yourself, let alone someone else. I’m telling the Internet because I think understanding the mentality of the psycho ex-girlfriend might be helpful, or at the very least, entertaining. I’d like to stress that my use of the term “psycho ex-girlfriend” is meant to be light-hearted & comical; I intend to simply discuss the unhealthy behaviors of ladies who lose control in response to breakups. I use the term lovingly.

You’ve all probably had at least one psycho ex at some point. Or you’ve heard stories. Are you curious about how the girl you once loved and cared for could behave like a sadistic, insane mega-bitch from Hell the second you broke it off? Allow me to offer some insight into the bitter, pissy heart of the psycho ex-girlfriend—who we are, what we might do, and why we would do it.

(Mental illness + Breakup) - Coping Skills = Psycho Ex-girlfriend. A lot of us psycho ex-girlfriends actually have a mental illness that negatively impacts our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If your ex-girlfriend’s reaction to the breakup was dramatic, violent, malicious, or just bizarre as hell, it’s possible that she has a mental illness and poor coping skills. Maybe it’s generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or perhaps a combination of illnesses. My own brand of crazy is called Borderline Personality Disorder. Borderline individuals are prone to shitty, dramatic breakups. The diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder looks like a recipe for making a future psycho ex-girlfriend. A little bit of insecurity, a couple splashes of emotional instability, a pinch of identity disturbance and voila! A monster is born.

Psycho ex-girlfriends don’t want to be psycho ex-girlfriends. Feeling and acting out of control is not fun. I get the feeling that a lot of dudes think that their psycho ex-girlfriend is just lovin’ all the drama she’s created. You imagine her kicking back, sipping a mojito, and smiling devilishly as she plots her revenge, as if her new goal in life is to ruin yours. While it may be true that the thought of you being happy with someone else is admittedly devastating, acting psychotic in response to a break-up is in no way a fun experience for us. More often than not, it’s an involuntary reaction as result of some unresolved psychological shit. We’re probably not painting our nails and giggling with our girlfriends about how we want to key your car. It’s way more likely that we’re listening to a song we both loved and crying in the dark.

You’ve offered us a shit sandwich but we’d prefer to watch you eat it. How thoughtful of us. :) After a fresh breakup, images of you with some anonymous woman who’s more beautiful, more successful, and more charming than we’ll ever be pervade our waking moments. Remembering the good times with you inspires nothing but despair. And so, we want you to feel the way that you’ve made us feel: insecure, depressed, and alone. We daydream about your future girlfriend dumping your sorry ass the way you dumped ours.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fantasized about breaking up with my ex in a bad-ass way before he could break up with me. For example, (a) baking him a breakup pie with “Goodbye, Asshole” written in frosting and then throwing the pie at his face, (b) going to a football game, getting on one knee, and proposing we break up on live TV, (c) sending a photo of my boobs to his phone with the caption, “Say goodbye to these!” or (d) hiring a pilot to trail a banner in the sky over his apartment that reads “Dear -----, I faked it every time. Love, Carrie-Lynne.” Oh, the possibilities!

You’re the crazy one, not us! That’s what we try to make others believe. One of the worst parts about being a psycho ex-girlfriend is the social consequences of our actions. If I’ve unleashed the cray-cray on my ex, he’s naturally going to tell his friends. This especially sucks if his friends are also my friends. The psycho ex-girlfriend may race to get your mutual friends on her side. If you get there first to tell your version of the story, we’re introduced as the villain. All of a sudden Jane, John, and Whoseewhatsis start acting differently around us. After you rejected us the last thing we need is to be rejected by our friends, too. That’d certainly be the motherfucking cherry on a shit sundae.

People love breakup stories. We may reflexively spew out lies or use selective storytelling to make you look like a total shitbag. Why? It’s to justify the crazy things we did that you might talk about with our mutual friends. It’s likely that we’re embarrassed by how we’ve acted. If it gets out that I’m a psycho ex-girlfriend, who will ever want to take a chance on me? The fucked up belief behind our smear campaign is if we can get everyone else to hate you for your role in the breakup, we won’t hate ourselves for our role in the breakup.

Don’t accept our invitation for friendship. Danger! We have an ulterior motive, duh. 99% of the time it’s to win you back. Seriously, after a messy break-up, who in sound mind is ready to immediately dust themselves off and pursue a friendship with the person that dumped them? No one. We’ll act like everything’s a-okay and we’re SOOOO over the break-up and we just really miss you as a friend. We’ll swear, scout’s honor. If you entertain the idea, we’ll go to great lengths to make you miss having us as your girlfriend by wearing that dress you thought was sexy, doing that cute thing that made you smile, playing up the characteristics that made you fall for us in the first place, and acting like we’ve moved on to better things. It’s an act. We want to get back together. That’s it. The best thing to do after a breakup with one of us is to cut off communication until you’re absolutely certain that we’ve moved on. Then maybe we can be friends. Maybe.

We’re sorry. It takes time, but eventually we get over it. We regret the things we said and did. If we could go back in time and react to the breakup in a healthy way, we would. Instead of leaving you fucked up voicemails, we’d talk it out with a friend. Instead of damaging your property, we’d buy something new for ourselves. Instead of trying to break your heart, we’d work on healing our own. Over time, we stop ruminating about the past and start focusing on how we can be better in the future. On behalf of all the psycho ex-girlfriends out there, I’d like to say that we’re sorry. We really are.