Many of us twentysomethings have that ex. You know, the one that when you say "my ex" to your friends, they immediately know who you're talking about. That's not to say that you don't have other…uh..."interesting" people in your background, only that this specific situation left such a lasting impression on you that when you're waxing poetic about the woes of romantic entanglements, this is the person who taught you the most.

And there it is, the reason why you can't let someone's crap behavior make you bitter: that person taught you the most about relationships.

Or at least, he or she should have.

The thing about it is, sometimes people come into your life for a season. Tyler Perry (cleverly disguised as Madea) in the play version of Madea Goes to Jail said it the absolute best to a heartbroken Sonny: "That was a person that was only supposed to teach you one thing." And that's where, after a particularly bad breakup, this can all go wrong because in the end, after the shock and sting wear off, you have a choice to make:

1. You can pout, eschew all things of the heart, embittering yourself and learning absolutely nothing, OR

2. You can follow Medea's advice: “Get up and go on with your life. It’s all right to sit around and be depressed for a minute. Cry about it. Do whatever you have to do, but don’t stay there too long. Get up and go on with your life.”

In my case, my “ex” had a nasty habit of sitting on a high horse and my mother’s gene’s gave me the nasty habit of digging my heels in and being ornery on principle in situations where I perceived he was trying to act like my father.

You see, the issue was this: I believed him. I believed him when he told me I was nothing. I took it to heart when he packed all my things, put it in the SUV his father paid for, and told me to drive home simply because I told him I didn’t want him to see some other girl anymore (and you know what I mean by “see”). I thought I deserved it when he made me walk 2.7 miles home in the dark (it took me an hour) just because he was pitching a fit over who even knows what anymore. Even more importantly, I believed him when he said how much he wanted to hit me.

When he finally left to join the military, my immediate reaction wasn't sadness, but rather joy. I was free. I was free to live the way I wanted to.

Of my two choices, I decided I would look at this person from the viewpoint that this person came into my life to teach me something, to get me through a specific period of my life. In fact, everything I am now is because of him. He was a jerk who refused to be helpful in the way a nicer human being would have, so I learned to be independent in ways that my barely there mother never got around to teaching me. He helped me leave my hometown where I would otherwise have languished much longer than I did. I became mobile because he taught me to drive even if he was rather crude about it.

Best of all, though, is he taught me how to appreciate a good relationship when I found one. See, when my new boyfriend -- now husband -- cleaned my kitchen for no reason at all, I was more appreciative than I would have been had I not previously been living with someone who could sit at home all day (no job, you see) and not clean the kitchen because I didn't put something back in the spot he'd told me to put it.

So, you see, I had a bad relationship and it just made me all the more appreciative of the good one that followed it -- I didn't let all the horrible things he'd said make me bitter. Why let someone who probably has forgotten all about me continue to hold that power over me? I refuse. You should, too.