People Who Realise They Were Being a Dick Share Their Break-Up Stories

Let's keep it straight, you’re gonna screw up at some point in your life. Probably more than once. It’ll probably hurt other people. And it's possible that the other person is someone you’re dating – and that’s okay. 

The important thing is being able to look at yourself and realise when you’ve fallen short, or sometimes gone out of your way to hurt someone else. It can be an ugly mirror, but nothing can change if you can’t face the music. As the magnet on my nana’s fridge says, “Admitting you’re an asshole is the first step.” 

But the most important thing is learning from those faults and mistakes.

VICE spoke to Dan, from Palmerston North, and Shelly, from Wellington, about understanding where they went wrong in their relationships and how their break-ups changed them. 

A few years ago I had a thing with this guy Jordy* that I’d met on Tinder. We never put a label on it or said we were dating, but from the very first time we met onwards we were hanging out once or twice a week every week. This lasted about 3 months. We were sleeping together, I went to his flat a lot, I brought him to a drinks with my friends. Now I look back I think it would make sense to call it dating. 

But throughout this time I knew that I had no interest in it being more than casual. I didn’t find him very intelligent and politically we just weren’t on the same page. I don’t want to have to argue with someone who’s almost 30 about why they shouldn’t use racist slurs. 

What did you do? 

It took me a while to realise this but me thinking that he kinda sucked, but continuing to hang out with him and have sex with him, wasn’t okay. I’m annoyed at myself in retrospect for wasting time with someone I knew I didn’t think was a great person. But he didn’t actually do anything wrong regarding the relationship. 

He really liked me, and he’d asked me to be his girlfriend and I’d said no, but I’d still hit him up when I was bored or lonely. The second time he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said no was pretty much where it stopped. We chatted for another few days, I said I wanted to see him on the weekend, and then he ghosted. 

How did you react to that?

At the time I was like, What the fuck is wrong with you? It’s so easy in my opinion to send a message and say, I don’t wanna hang out anymore, or, this isn’t healthy for me. And because he didn’t do that I felt like he was the one who’d been a dick and I hadn’t done anything wrong.  

But even though there are things to complain about when it comes to his character, on reflection I realised that continuing to sleep with someone, and spend that much time with someone, when you don’t like them and they’ve made it very clear that they do like you is really unfair. 

Why do you feel now that it was unfair on him? 

I think at the time I was like: I’ve been honest and said I don't want him, so I’m not accountable for his feelings being hurt if we kept hanging out. But people aren’t always that good with self control and managing their own emotions, so of course he was gonna come running every time the girl he liked asked to see him. 

It wasn’t until I was in a situation where I told someone that I was seeing that I liked them and they told me that they didn’t like me that I understood what I’d done to Jordy. Because this new guy would still hit me up after telling me he didn’t wanna date me, and I’d be there immediately because I was hoping in the back of my mind that if we just kept hanging out he’d change his mind. 

I felt angry after that and was like, Why would you play around with me like that when you knew my emotions were on the line. And then I was like, Ohhh, that’s what I did to Jordy. 

Has it changed the way you date?

100%. It made me realise that people don’t always do what's right for themselves, and we have to be careful not to take advantage of that. Even if it means we don’t get what we want. 

So what was it you actually did? 

I cheated on my ex-partner. 

We were sort of just staying together because it felt easy, but it had run its course and rather than being honest about that, I held it inside and got more and more frustrated about being in the relationship. Not angry at my partner but at myself. But then I went into self-destruct mode and slept with someone else. I think part of me thought that it would be an easy way to end the relationship rather than just being a good person and being honest about it. 

When I told her, her reaction was definitely angry. The first initial thing was like, fuck you, basically. Which is totally fair. We broke up and then she just became sad.

How did you feel about the prospect of other people knowing that was why your relationship ended?

Pretty shit. it wasn't an isolated situation where I had my friends and she had her friends. It was like, all her friends were my best friends, all my friends were her friends.

Everyone was quite shocked. 

I received a lot of hate from the situation, which is totally fair. Friends in my friend group had been through similar stuff and I'd sort of been there to support them. A lot of trust was pretty broken after that, because my friends were like: How can you do the thing that caused us so much pain?

And what about family? 

My parents were pretty lovely about it, actually. They were like, You screwed up but people make mistakes and we know you're a good person. So just learn from this and be honest about how you're feeling with someone.

How did you deal with breaking-up, knowing you were in the wrong? 

Post everything going down I was hyper aware of the fact that I hurt her. I knew that giving her space and not trying to control how she reacted was important. 

And being honest was important. Because if she doesn't know exactly what's going on, then she can't make proper choices about what she wants, and how she feels about everything.

If I told her half truths or was like, Hey, I spent the night with this person and we just kissed but I'm really sorry, I hadn't told her that we’d slept together then obviously her reaction is gonna be different from what the reality is. 

And that wouldn't be fair on her considering that what happened was a big deal.

As hard as it sounds, if you did do something really bad, the more straight up you are about what happened, although hearing it maybe harder for the other person, I feel like it's easier for them to heal from because they're not going through all these questions in their mind. They don't have this like anxious, Why did this happen? How did this happen? When did this happen? 

You are giving them a better opportunity for space as well because they don't have the need to contact you as much to find out what happened.

And how did you heal from it all? 

I think there wasn’t much healing going on the first few months, because I was just angry and judging myself a lot and almost punishing myself in many ways. I drank a lot afterwards. But then I met a beautiful group of people that kind of helped me through that. I stopped dating for a few years because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to be a happy healthy partner.

But I worked through it and now feel like I can be. 

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa.