One is very crazy when in love.

-- Sigmund Freud

Most or all of us have been in the situation at least once or twice. Maybe you were in a relationship with someone for a long time, or maybe you two were casually hooking up for a few months. The length and seriousness of the relationship doesn’t always matter—when a guy decides to break up with you, or even “break off” communication with you (i.e. he stops texting you back and seems disinterested in your conversations), it’s as if a switch is flipped inside of your body, and the “psycho girl” comes out. Maybe not all women experience this, and maybe it’s a maturity/experience thing, but I’ve found that regardless of how many times I’ve gone through a breakup, I can’t seem to prevent my inner “psycho girl” from coming out. Actions that the “psycho girl” may engage in include but are not limited to:

• Suddenly increasing the number of texts you send to the guy (because maybe you’re not being forward enough and he’s just not getting the message?)
• Suddenly deciding to call the guy after he has refused to answer all of your (many) texts (and yet again receiving no response).
• Engaging in behavior that is actually crazy: driving by his house, breaking into his house, possibly “violent” actions against him or other women…
• Increasing your stalking behavior, both online and in real life: meticulously scouring his Facebook and Instagram accounts and then doing a full-fledged search of every girl he is pictured with or friends with, as well as all his friends and family members; memorizing his daily schedule so that you know where he will be at a certain time of the day (library at 2 p.m.).
• Having your friends aid you in the stalking, by having them stalk him too.
• Researching ways to “seduce” him so that he falls back in love with you.

Why do we act in these deranged ways? When I look back at some of the things that I have done in reaction to a guy breaking up with me, I actually wonder what planet I was on at the time. I would never act this way normally, so why did I act that way then? While sometimes the fault lies in the male’s lack of communicative skills—he is immature, and instead of dealing with the situation in an adult way, he decides to ignore you and your emotions completely—the reason behind such actions is usually quite simple: you had strong feelings for this person when you were with him, and now you have strong feelings because he is gone. When you are emotionally attached to someone, and that person decides to detach when you are not yet ready to do so, your first reaction is to hold on, with all your might. This is why our psycho girl comes out and why we behave in ways we never normally would, and this is why when your friends tell you that “you can do better” and you should “just move on,” you can’t. You’re not ready to let go yet. You were cut off too soon.

I can’t really say that there is a solution to preventing this “psycho girl” behavior. I will say that one day, the guy that caused you to behave in these crazy ways will most likely be a distant memory (if that), you’ll laugh when you think of all of the deranged things you did for him, and you’ll hopefully have found someone who appreciates your worth enough so that your inner “psycho girl” doesn’t ever need to come out.