A good friend broke up with his girlfriend this past week after months of living with an uneasy feeling in his stomach. His girlfriend loved him, he moved from his hometown to be with her in a large city, and he basically started over with her being the centerpiece in his new life.

My friend isn’t the type who works his 9 to 5 job, comes home, watches an episode of House, gets ready for bed, and then sleeps his way to another day in the grind. He lived a life with a band for ten years. He played shows, drank, partied, and took home woman after woman night after night.

After running into someone he knew in high school at a wedding a few years back, they started their romance.

It started off as a long-distance relationship. It got serious and she wanted him to move in and away with her. He didn’t know if that was for him. It meant leaving friends, family, and a life. They broke up. A month later, he was packing up to go live with her.

“It’s just time to grow up,” he said as he drove out of town.

The girl was top-notch. She was following a determined path, she had a house, and generally had things figured out. It just wasn’t a fit for him and he knew it.

He wasn’t happy. He didn’t know if this life with her was the best for him. This went on for months.

He needed a break and he needed a new place to go in his life. As much as he cared for this person, he knew that not being together would be better for everyone involved.

I was not surprised when he told me they broke up.

After years of trying to be the one who settled down, he shook up the snow globe and scattered all the neatly piled pieces of his life.

What surprised me was the tremendous amount of doubt he felt.

“But what if in a month, six months I want to go back?” His voice was tired and worn out.

When he was finished, I took a second to craft my reply:

“Then you will have learned something from all of this. What if you do? And what if she tells you it isn’t happening. Maybe that backtracking and heartbreak is what you need to jumpstart your brain in to following that new path in life. Maybe that is what all this is about. Of course, you need to realize in your moments of self-doubt that, in your own words, you haven’t been happy in a long time and you, with the gigantic personality, was living in some sort of depression. What you need to do during these periods is remember how you felt and the feelings that solidified your resolve to move on and make a positive change in your life.”