If you’re upset, you owe him no apologies. “I’m not doing this to make you look bad. I’m doing it because I’m really upset. I’m sorry if you don’t like it–it’s not my first choice, either. Frankly, you might stop and think why you’re more worried about how other people think than you are about how I feel, and exactly why I should make some false pretense my top priority. If this is what you mean by staying friends, I’m not sure I’m too wild about your idea of what a friend is. So far, I’m not terribly impressed.”
Yes, I mean that if he wants to be friends, he needs to act like a friend, and you do have room to point that out. So far, he’s failing, and that is not the fault of your lack of trust in God. He needs to be a bit more sensitive to how difficult this if for you. If he wants to be a model for his youth group, maybe he needs to think about that. The way he blew up at you isn’t anything I’d want another young man to imitate, how about you?
You’re going to feel a lot less worthless if you stop letting what he says dictate your worth. Your worth doesn’t depend on what comes out of his mouth. In that sense, try to lean on God a bit more. God made you his daughter, and that is why you are amazing. Try to lean on that. Still, being a good Christian does not mean letting your sisters and brothers treat you badly. “Love your neighbor as yourself” means that you should not let him treat you in a way that you’d not let him treat someone else that he broke up with. Yes, sometimes being a good Christian means graciously passing over the mistakes of others, but you also have room to admonish him to do the right thing by you. When he’s not being decent, you can insist that he be decent towards you; that is entirely in keeping with being a good Christian model to the other young women in your group. In fact, if you guide yourself as you would guide one of them through the same thing, I think you’ll do well. You’d get them through this without them having to leave the group, right? You wouldn’t let a young woman’s ex-boyfriend try to intimidate her into acting in a way a way that spares him any embarrassment, would you? Try to give yourself the same thing, and you will give it to those who watch you. Try to go through this as you’d hope they will when it happens to them, because some day it will. Your successes and failures will give you a particular sort of strength and compassion (both for your ex-boyfriend and for other couples going through this) that you’ll not gain in any other way. You can trust me on that one.
(Did I just say successes and failures? Yes, I did. Nobody gets a perfect “10” when it comes to breaking up. Do your best, hope he’ll do his best, and be ready to lay on a thick layer of compassion and forgiveness when it is all over. You’ll need it, but you’ll be fine in the end. Really. Your heart may not have nine lives, but like a cat it is a lot tougher than its delicate appearance would make you think!)
It’s just still so hard because I’m not just losing him I am losing his sister…We were also bestfriends