I'll start this at the beginning- When I was 18, I started dating this girl who was in the "alternative" crowd in my high school- she was pretty attractive,kind of weird, did drugs, and fucked a lot of guys. She skipped classes all the time, and although she almost failed out of school, she was very charismatic.

I was the complete opposite- I was basically a nerd who hung out with the "cool crowd" from being good friends with a few of the right people. I had very little real world experience, but ended up going out with this girl after she broke up with one of my friends.

Things started off horribly. The first week after we started going out, she somehow ended up stranded on the Jersey shore for a weekend and fucked the guy who she ended up staying with. Me, this being my first relationship, hamstered this away as "well, we weren't really going out, its only been a week". As you can probably tell, this was a big red flag for things to come.

Things went well for a while, we got along, were having sex pretty regularly... and then I found out that one day, when I had shit to do after school, she went over to this kids house who was in her social circle and fucked him. She gave the whole "I didn't want to do it, he basically forced me to speech", cried, and once again, like an idiot, I took her back. I didn't know better at the time.

Things went on like that for 7 months, she would do something incredibly stupid- fuck a guy, get sent to a mental hospital for 10 days (she was bi polar), start doing drugs again, and somehow convince me that I was the bad guy for not ding x, y, or z. At the time I thought I was going crazy, I thought I was doing something wrong and if I just did something different, than things would work out. I didn't realize that something was just broken in her, that neither I nor anyone else could fix.

Anyway, after 7 months of dating, she broke up with me. Why? I got a dui. After that, I had no money, no license, no free time (I worked non stop to try to get some money back). Within 3 weeks of all this she started hanging out with a drug dealer, and left me for him. I felt like shit for a couple weeks after that, but slowly started realizing that that this was one of the very few cases where a dui actually helped me out of an even worse situation.

I'm 25 now. Just bought my second house (started buying investment properties), am engaged to a great girl ( I know, AWALT, but she really is the complete opposite of my ex in many ways), and make 75k a year with upward potential (self employed).

My fiancee takes the train home from center city philly everyday. She had been friends with my ex in high school, but neither I nor her had seen my ex since graduating. Imagine how shocked she was when she saw her- holding a sign that said "homeless and hungry" and collecting change from strangers. I never did anything to try to get back at my ex, but the differences in our two lives now felt good, I can't deny that.

Lesson- No matter how bad of a breakup your going through, or how bad you feel about being dumped by a girl, remember that in 5 years, you won't even be thinking about her, and things will be completely different in both of your lives. And keep some spare change on you, your ex might need it.