It's Over! Dealing With The End Of A Relationship

When a relationship ends sooner than expected, we go through a period of adjustment and uncertainty. The loss of a love relationship is one of the most grueling emotional experiences a person can go through. /node/153410 It's especially grueling when the decision is made by someone else. When that happens, we go over and over in our heads what we could have done differently; we feel sub-standard and grapple with the overwhelming feelings of loss and rejection . There is really no graceful way to deal with this type of emotional pain, but there are several things to do, all of which can help immensely. People in relationships share a lifestyle with each other. Each couple shares a common language, a schedule of seeing each other, exercise and eating habits, beds, ideas, thoughts and life experiences. Everything about a couple's life is shared. These fused experiences range from the big to the small and everything in-between and, often, couples don't realize how much of each other's lives they share until the relationship ends. It is in this space where we feel a loss not only of them, but also of the part of us that was with them and living in that fused life. We feel the loss of the habits of talking with this person at certain times, knowing where they are and what they are doing, and of being able to share our feelings, ideas, and habits with. When they are gone we are left with ourselves in all the silence and without the life we had. Everything feels unfamiliar. More advice about moving on from YourTango: /node/60136 /node/134290 /node/54579 This is called starting over ; the beginning of starting over starts with grieving. This type of grieving can literally be maddening where we feel our emotions are beyond our comprehension to deal with and/or manage. I know when I have been in this situation of loss in my life, my grief has been completely beyond my control where I would be out in public and something small would remind me of my old life and I would start crying immediately. These are the days where one hour feels like one year and we wonder if this pain will ever end. We seem to wonder around aimlessly in our new life with no direction. At this point we tend to fantasize about the complete greatness of our partner forgetting all of the bad times that led up to the ending of the relationship and we can end up feeling like we will never find someone like that person again and doomed to either be alone or to be with someone who could never compare to the one we lost. We are officially in the land of the lost at this stage. /node/152977 What I will share with you is this: each tear we cry means we are one step out of our pain, not one step deeper into it. When we are grieving it can feel like the pain is nonproductive and never ending because it just keeps coming and coming. Our stories become redundant and repetitive as we try and adjust to being alone. So, let me shine light on the idea that when we feel loss we are not just experiencing the sadness of the current loss but rather we are experiencing every loss and rejection we have ever had all at once. This current loss just triggers all old emotions that are of similar content and feeling. All we can do at this point is let it out in all its glory. We need to get down and dirty and cry it out in all its ugliness. I have found reading books about loss, death or breaking up are immensely helpful when we are grieving. It normalizes for us that what we are feeling is the natural reaction to the loss experienced and it also takes the crazy out of it. We cannot be alone in this experience if there are books written about it; no need to further self-punish. I can also tell you this: if a relationship has ended in our life, in the big picture, we will see it was for our highest good and this perception only comes with time. This is not something we can see while grieving but if we have lost an important relationship there is some form of a new life and a new sense of self just waiting to be embraced. So read, write in a journal and get all emotions and thoughts gathered, purged, and understood. We may even discover new things about us we never would have been able to discover without this loss. When we start over and we are productively grieving by reading, writing, talking to friends and/or therapist and exercising we will start to feel successful at the end of each day that we survived alone. It is at this moment we start to have the realization that we can do life on our own and in our own way; this is a magnificent feeling. We may still be lonely but we are surviving and growing. I am certain that we have emotional pain to be used as means for growth and evolution. When one way of life ends, it is signaling us that another way, ready or not, is creating the space to begin. In this way, it is best to surrender. It does no good to chase after someone who has chosen to separate from us, as whatever we chase will run away. If we have been dropped off in life to be with ourselves then we will have to learn to be with ourselves. /node/153270 We will go from feeling by ourselves to surviving our new lives, with a large amount of discomfort, to finally settling into the new life we have and beginning to feel how we are with ourselves. In our time of discomfort we cried, got angry, were able to see where maybe we could have been better or different, and where we needed our partner to be better or different. This is all incredible knowledge in that we are learning from many differing perceptions what we like and don't like about others and ourselves. We will learn, if we are open, that at the end of the day we have to be happy and fulfilled as individuals. Why does it benefit us to be happy and fulfilled as individuals? It benefits us because a sense of individuality is the marker of confidence and attraction. If we are needy, jealous or have too high of expectations of others we will be sorely let down in all our relationships. It is possible to be in a relationship and still do life in our own ways and still feel a sense of fusion with another. Being alone and being in grief is the first step to being our own individual without someone placing limits or expectations upon us. When we can have the experience that we like who we are and that we can do life on our own we begin to emit an entirely different energy about us, and this is attractive to others. When we are happy within we are more self-sufficient. Our lives are built now around our own individual habits, schedules and desires; when we are really content with this there is no love out there that can take this from us and we are able to be in love and have the love of our own lives at the same time. This is the ultimate goal because two individuals who know who they are and who love their individual lives are two people who can stand the test of time when it comes to love. If you are in a loss the only way out is through. Little Life Message: love yourself, love your life and do things in your own way.