Why that breakup might have been the best thing ever.

Breakups suck. We can all collectively agree on that fact, yes?

Here's the part when people might start disagreeing with me.

Maybe that one breakup (yeah, you know the one) was really the best thing that happened to you. I know! Madness! Just hear me out though.

I know that the last guy I dated, I thought the world of, and I truly believe that I loved him. Which I mean, may or may not have been true. That isn't the point. We didn't work out.

And no, this isn't an opportunity to drag his name through the mud or anything. In fact, this isn't really about that guy.

He broke up with me, for reasons that I didn't understand and weren't really explained to me at the time. Which was awful. I was a hot mess, for a long time.

On the upside, that breakup helped be learn how to rebuild myself. That breakup helped me define myself in ways that didn't involve someone else.

I fully admit it. in my whole dating experience, up until this relationship I am in now, I was a "relationship chameleon". ( Fans of The League, please see the episode when Andre is called the same.)

I completely intertwine my life with my significant other, from the getgo. I make decisions based on him, instead of myself. I start doing the things he likes to do, instead of what I like to do. I start hanging out with his friends instead of my own. It's so stupid.

I never realized that was a problem until I got dumped for it.

I didn't start learning how to be myself until I was 25. I'm still working on figuring out who exactly I am, which is okay.

What wasn't okay is that I allowed myself to disappear in someone else and his life. I did it with the idea in my head that I wanted to be part of his life, but really I was just trying to make his life my life, in some weird way.

Either way, it wasn't healthy.

I built our relationship in such a way that I didn't know who I was without it. (Which I clearly didn't learn after I was married - yeah it takes me a couple times to learn some lessons.)

The person I was when I dated this guy was someone I would be so annoyed by otherwise: simpering, clingy.

I never had been that person before - the stereotypical "crazy" girlfriend. It was something I tried so hard to avoid that I ended up becoming it. Self-fulfilling prophesy, mayhaps?

After the fallout from that breakup and the mess that came afterwards, I learned a lot about myself. I didn't learn so much about who I wanted to be, but I did learn who I didn't want to be, which to me, was just as important.

The list of who I wanted to be was too long. The list of what I didn't want to be was much shorter and easier to determine at the time.

I'm sure that myself and that guy could never be friends. That's okay. I have no issue with that. I think it for the best, in all reality. There's no coming back from the way I acted, and no coming back from the way he left.

"It is what it is," as they say.

But I guess, looking back on it, I would probably have to thank that guy for what happened. If he hadn't had broken up with me, and I hadn't been so broken hearted over it, I wouldn't be where I am now, which is much stronger, much happier, and a more genuine version of myself than I have been in a long time.

I might still be trying to figure out who I am, but I know a lot of what I'm not. And the girl I was when I dated him is one of those things.