I couldn’t decide whether this was going to be an Adele or an Alanis Morissette breakup. Turns out it’s a Supergrass Alright breakup. Which is a little unexpected, but here we are.

For context, a relationship of mine recently ended. I obviously made a social media post about it, and then The Algorithm latched on and served up Appropriate Content. And honestly, the content annoyed me more than the details that led up to the breakup.

I’ve always hated the whole “old ball and chain” thing. The jokes about escaping the wife for a few hours, the husband who can’t be trusted to do anything right, the idea that spending time with your partner is somehow a terrible burden to be endured. This is someone you’re supposed to LOVE. Someone you’ve actively chosen to share your time with. Presumably because you like them. Hopefully because you enjoy their company. Yes, things go up and down, but on the whole, being with someone means being on the same team. You’ve got to actually want the teamwork.

Yet there’s this whole cultural tradition of treating the person you’re in a relationship with as the enemy. Someone to be tolerated, complained about, occasionally escaped from. I don’t get it. I never have. I love them, why would I want to insult them? I mean, yes, I’ve complained about people I love. I’ve been upset with them, frustrated by them, occasionally absolutely furious with them. But that’s not a joke.

And I do love a joke. I’ll make jokes about my trauma, my coffee addiction, and how growing up with 90s diet culture left me preferring to eat dust rather than bananas. I’ll absolutely take the piss out of someone I love, too. The fact that they’re bullied by their own cat, have absolutely no sense of direction, or can spend five minutes passionately ranting about grown men wearing shorts? All excellent material. But the joke is that they’re a ridiculous human being I happen to adore. Not that loving them is something I have to endure.

And it turns out I’m equally irritated by the narrative we’re supposed to adopt when those relationships end. Because apparently, once you’ve broken up with someone, you’re required to embark on an elaborate programme of psychological warfare disguised as personal development.

Go no contact. It’ll make them miss you. Go to the gym. Get your revenge body. Make them regret what they’ve lost. Get your hair done. Buy new clothes. Post photographs of yourself looking fabulous. Become the person they never deserved. The best revenge is living well…

But why the fuck is revenge involved at all?

Why does every perfectly ordinary thing I might want to do with my life have to be reframed as a message to someone I’m no longer in a relationship with? And why, when you really look at it, does the ex get all the credit?

I’ve been going to CrossFit for six weeks. I’ve been working towards attending three sessions a week. I’m getting stronger, I’m learning things, and sometimes I’m standing in the gym wondering what series of poor decisions led me to voluntarily pay someone to make me do burpees. But it’s not breakup motivation. It’s progression. I was doing it before. I’m doing it now. I imagine I’ll still be doing it in six months, assuming my knees agree.

I haven’t suddenly developed a desire to become a better version of myself because a relationship ended. And no, it hasn’t always been this way. I was on the floor the last time I had a breakup. It’s been a long road, getting from there to here. But I’ve spent the last 24 months in therapy, making changes, building friendships, trying things, learning things, making art, going on adventures and generally putting some effort into the business of being alive.

Some of it has been difficult. Some of it has been ridiculous. Some of it has involved quite a lot of crying in the park near the therapist’s office. And none of it was undertaken with the intention of eventually making somebody regret something. I just wanted to enjoy being alive a bit more. Aggressively experience joy after a long time of feeling like shit.

I’ve always had this vague philosophy that you’ve only got a finite amount of energy to spend in your life, so why spend it being miserable? Which isn’t to say that you should never be miserable. Sometimes things are shit. Sometimes people disappoint you. Sometimes you make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are expensive.

I made a mistake at work recently. It cost the company £114.

My bosses laughed, told me that £114 wasn’t nearly expensive enough to count as a proper mistake, acknowledged that the communication had been shit, and essentially told me to “get gud at making mistakes, scrub.” And we carried on.

Nobody demanded that I spend six months reflecting on my professional worth. Nobody suggested that I use the experience to become the sort of event manager who would make everyone regret ever doubting me. It was a mistake. We learned something. There was work to do.

I’ve made mistakes with people too.

I’ve made decisions that, with hindsight, I probably wouldn’t make again. I’ve stayed in situations longer than I should have. I’ve put effort into things that didn’t work out. And I worked really fucking hard at some of those things. I used to be much more inclined to look at all that effort and wonder how I should have spent it better. All that time. All that emotional energy. Every decision felt like another Kobayashi Maru.

The sunk cost fallacy, but make it romantic.

These days I’m a little more inclined to think, well, I made some choices with the information I had at the time. Would I make the same choices again, knowing what I know now? Probably not. But I didn’t know then what I know now. That’s rather the point of learning things. The linear progression of time is frustrating to both the Prophets of Bajor and me.

And sometimes the things you learn from a relationship are surprisingly mundane. This last relationship taught me that a supermarket meal deal is a perfectly acceptable evening meal when you’ve run out of capacity for the day. I have spent years being a bit of a food snob about things like that. Proper meals. Proper cooking. The invisible rule is that the evening meal must be cooked and slaved over. But sometimes looking after yourself means acknowledging that you’ve got precisely enough energy left to unwrap a sandwich, eat some crisps and go to bed.

That’s not failure. That’s tea.

I think what has surprised me most recently is how ordinary everything feels. Not that I haven’t had feelings about things. I’ve had plenty of feelings. Some of them have been quite emotional. But life has this persistent habit of continuing, and I haven’t had to join Spock to go through the rite of Kolinahr just so I can do the dishes.

There are bills to pay. There are people I want to see. There are notebooks to fill, lino blocks to carve, weights to lift, things to make, things to learn and a frankly unreasonable amount of laundry to do. And I’m enjoying doing them. Not defiantly. Not triumphantly. Not because someone might notice. Just because I like my life. I liked it before, I liked it during the relationship, and I like it now.

Which brings me back to the breakup narrative, and the faintly ridiculous position of being so irritated by breakup content that I’ve sat down and written an entire essay about it. I’m aware of the irony. And there’s a little voice in the back of my head asking whether I’m doing this breakup thing wrong. Am I supposed to be more upset? Is feeling alright just some elaborate form of denial? Am I going to publish this, have an absolutely spectacular emotional breakdown next Thursday, and quietly delete the whole thing?

Maybe. Who fucking knows? But I’m feeling alright today. I’m thinking these things today. And I want to write about them today. If I feel differently next Thursday, I can write about that too. The linear progression of time is still being deeply uncooperative.

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t talk about relationships ending. They can be painful, complicated, significant experiences. Sometimes we need to talk about them a great deal. But I do wonder why we’re so determined to turn the aftermath into a performance. Why does being alright have to be evidence of something? Why does being happy have to be a victory? Why does improving your life have to be revenge? And why are we so reluctant to allow people to simply get on with things? Why must I perform “break up” simply because I post on Insta a lot?

Perhaps it’s because ordinary life doesn’t make a particularly compelling social media narrative. Nobody’s going viral with a video about gradually increasing their CrossFit attendance over six weeks, remembering to buy frozen peas and agreeing that supermarket sandwiches for tea are fine, actually.

There’s no dramatic transformation. No villain watching from the sidelines. No final scene where somebody realises what they’ve lost. The relationship is exactly where we left it. There’s no winner or loser.

There’s just Tuesday, followed by Wednesday.

So, yes. I thought it might be an Adele breakup. Possibly Alanis, depending on how the week went. But apparently it’s Supergrass.

See our friends, see the sights.

Feel alright.