This article was written with a friend in mind. Hopefully
anyone else may find it helpful.
Most of us
have gone through a painful separation from someone with which we once shared a
loving relationship. Few of us have married and lived happily ever after with
our first love, or first significant other, or even our first marriage, which
means heartbreak is a very common experience. Relationships deteriorate and fail
for reasons as multiplicitous as the relationships themselves. I’m focusing
here on what to do after the end has come and how to successfully move past the
pain of the separation and achieve emotional peace and growth in the wake of a
relationship failure. I’m not a psychologist or therapist; I’m just a man that
has, like many others, suffered the arrows of love and pain of loss.
This is the
most emotionally difficult thing to ask someone to do after a break-up, but is
foundational to all the other steps that must take place in order to grow and
find peace with the conclusion of things. Accepting responsibility means owning
your actions- good or bad- and is important to all aspects of life, but seem
especially difficult at the end of a relationship, especially if things ended
as a result of betrayal or some other immutable flaw in the other partner. We
don’t wish to accept that our actions helped bring about the conclusion of
things, because that is to admit fault, to be the guilty party, and to be
humbled when we are in a state of feeling destroyed. This, however, is the most
important step for growth after the end of the relationship, and is an
opportunity you should not pass up, since it is rare that we are permitted to
grow in life for ourselves and not for the benefit of the other person in our
central relationship.
You must
own the way you operated with the other person. Perhaps your expectations were
too high for them, or you were unable or unwilling to live up to theirs. Maybe you
were over-concerned with your own life and not your partner's. You could have
failed to communicate your needs properly, or failed to understand fully the
other person’s needs and wants. You could have let the relationship go on
longer than was healthy, long after the cracks of deep incompatibility appeared,
and that is part of your responsibility, too.
Whatever
the day-to-day operation of that relationship was, take some time to reflect on
it, and understand what you did to help move things to their conclusion. If you
are on speaking terms with your ex, ask them questions about what made them
unhappy. If you’re not, do some soul searching. Even if you feel like you did
everything right, were a perfectly decent human being, and treated the other
person like a king or queen, you still may have failed on some level.
If your partner totally and
completely rejected, betrayed, or abandoned you, despite all of your actions
being moral, you should still take responsibility for your choice of partners.
If you chose a sociopath, or someone with borderline personality disorder, that
was your choice, not anyone else’s, and at the least you should take responsibility
for a bad choice of personality.
Lastly,
taking responsibility is important to give yourself a sense of agency- the
feeling that your actions matter- even if they have had poor outcomes, which
will be an invaluable feeling for all aspects of your life.
2. Seek to Know Why.
Socrates’s
first command was to “know thyself,” and the next step is to do just that. Everything
we do and every choice we make is made to serve some need we have, either
conscious or unconscious. If you do not like the outcomes of your decisions,
understanding the deep emotional reasons behind them will help you be more
self-aware and lead to healthier decisions in the future.
Look to understand why you operated
in the way you did within the relationship, why you made the choices you did
during your time with the other person, or why you were attracted to someone
who was incompatible with you. Often the answers to these questions are buried
deep down, and take a great deal of time or effort to fully uncover, and if you
choose to seek therapy, a great deal of your time may be spent uncovering the “why.”
Sometimes people make bad choices in a relationship, such as cheating,
manipulation, or dishonest behavior, but don’t seek to understand the “why”
within them, or why they chose to be with someone who makes those kinds of poor
decisions. Sometimes people are rejected, and they may need to ask why they
allowed the relationship to get bad enough that the other person had to reject
them. Often the failures we allow in our relationships serve some psychic need
within ourselves.
If you spend a lot of time with
yourself discovering the answers to why you act a certain way, you will have at
least a good chance of avoiding making the poor choices you made in the past and
therefore achieving different, if not better, outcomes in your future
relationships.
2. Forgive Yourself.
Once you
have an understanding of why, along with ownership of your actions, you can
forgive yourself. Just like going to confession, self-forgiveness requires the
admission of guilt- the ownership of outcomes. Understanding why you act the
way you do will help you to move past the guilt into a state of growth.
Tell
yourself that it’s okay that things turned out badly, that they couldn’t turn
out any other way, because both you and the other person needed the relationship
to end for growth. If you picked a bad partner, forgive yourself of that
choice, knowing that you had to learn the lesson about having high standards in
a relationship. If you were rejected, forgive yourself the things that might
have lead up to that rejection. You can change your patterns in the future, and
you can also make sure your next partner is more willing to accept your preferred
modes of operation; accept you for you.
Most often
in life, we learn lessons the hard way, through trial and error, pain and
separation. Forgive yourself for making mistakes in behavior and choice, and be
happy for the lesson which allows you to grow.
3. Forgive the Other Person.
After
betrayal or rejection this step is most difficult, as we often have a psychic
need to externalize conflict, to make the locus of responsibility rest in the
other person. If you have owned your actions in the relationship, you will be
able to correctly assign other responsibilities in the other member of your
partnership. They may have made much worse decisions than you in the
relationship, or failed in more ways, or more profound ways. As you reflect,
you can also begin to understand the “why” in all the other person’s actions,
good or bad.
From there,
you can begin to finally forgive the other person, for ending the relationship,
breaking trust, treating you poorly, manipulating you, or choosing a person
that was deeply incompatible with them. They too make decisions intended to
serve some need, and they may not be aware of it. Moreover, you should forgive
them for their faults because you know how bad continuing the relationship
might have been for both of you, and that through their faults you have learned
lessons about dealing with other imperfect people in imperfect relationships.
4. Allow Yourself to Grieve
The end of
a relationship is a lot like a death. You are losing a person, either someone
you loved or still love, who has had a deeply intimate knowledge of you, and
that is painful. I need not go through the seven stages of grief here, but will
say that you should allow yourself to feel them. It’s alright to feel sad,
angry, or desperate. You don’t need to put those emotions to the side or “just
get over it.” If you don’t take the time to resolve your feelings now, they
will return to haunt you.
We grieve
not just the loss of the other person, but all that the relationship
represented to us: the promise of family, future plans and happiness,
companionship, stability, and intimacy. A relationship takes a large emotional
investment and its termination represents a total loss of that investment. It’s
okay to feel like you’ve lost something, because you have. Ultimately nothing
but time, work and growth will help you resolve your feelings of loss, so don’t
expect to ever find a magic bullet to end your pain. Drugs, even those
prescribed by a psychiatrist, will not help you resolve your pain, only time
and effort will.
5. Let Your Rational Mind Take Over.
Most of the
fallout from the end of a relationship is emotional, but there might be plenty
of practical considerations to take into account. Finances, living
arrangements, and property division are all parts of many break-ups,
particularly divorce. It’s important to be able to settle your emotions
quickly, or learn to put them to the side temporarily. When you need to make
practical decisions about your life’s directions, your reasoning skills are
vital.
Beyond
that, is important to let your rational mind take over to avoid making the same
emotional mistakes twice, or to become emotionally vulnerable too quickly after
ending the relationship. Make a list of the changes you want to make in your
life, preferably based on personal outcomes and real arrangements rather than
intangible ideas such as “be happy.” Decide on your personal and career goals. Decide
how you want to organize your time and personal life in the absence of the relationship.
Now might be a good time to make the big change you always wanted to, but be
careful not to make big changes because you are trying to escape the
limitations of your current reality. Make changes that you know will serve your
goals, not serve your current emotional state.
Plan the
steps between where you are and the life arrangements you have imagined,
including work, housing, and other expenses. You can also begin thinking about
your next relationship: how it will begin, how it will progress, what your
goals are (family, adventure, etc.) and what qualities you will look for in the
other person before you begin a relationship, as well as what warning signs to
look for. This will put in your mind a different sort of plan, one which will
present itself next time you are attracted to another or are thinking of
beginning a relationship, allowing you to avoid the bad outcomes of your last
relationship. If you know yourself and have thought about such particulars in
advance, it will be easier to resist the pull of emotion in a relationship that
is not healthy for you.
6. Enjoy the Present.
Your life
may not be put together the way you want it following a break-up or divorce,
but is important to enjoy the particulars of the present. Absent the
relationship you are now able to do things that might not have been possible
before, such as enjoy activities in which your partner was uninterested, or eat
things your partner disliked. Maybe you can finally have a weekend to sit
around and play videogames, or go drinking with your friends. Whatever it is,
take the time to enjoy it. Revel in it.
The focus
on the present, or on a series of steps that take you from the present to the
future, will help you to keep your mind form focusing on the pain brought on by
the past, and help you to realize the resolution of your painful feelings. Be
sure to take time for self-examination, but don’t spend all your time in
contemplation. Part of getting on with your life is getting out of bed every day
and walking out the front door.
7. Conclusion
All of this
is just advice, given by a man who has had a little bit of experience, but is
by no means an expert. Avoid doing things during the grieving process that you
will regret later. One-night stands and drug habits will not help you get over
the break-up. Time and patience will. You should also feel good about yourself
if you choose to seek out therapy from a professional (which I am not). They may
help guide you to self-understanding, show you the path to healing, and equip
you with tools for making your choices have the outcomes you desire.
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