What Lingers After a Breakup
I get a lot of calls from clients who want to know why they keep thinking about a past love after the breakup. They miss them and they want to know if the ex misses them too. The feelings tear at them day and night and they hate being alone. It’s a horrible feeling in the gut that we have all had at least once in our lives and it feels like it will never go away.
When you miss someone, does it feel like their soul is pulling you through space and time? I know part of you wants to give in because it’s easier than dealing with the pain you’re feeling being apart from them, but I’m telling you, giving in isn’t an option. They’re gone and gone they will stay.
Most of the pain we feel surrounding a breakup comes from this belief: There is only one special person for each of us. When you break up, you often feel like there is no one who will be as wonderful, as beautiful, as charming or as interesting as the person who just left you. Somewhere in your psyche you have made up your mind that this person is the end-all, be-all of love. You can’t imagine anyone else making you feel as good or as loved as they did. This feeling can go on for months or even years after the breakup. Sometimes there are good days and sometimes there are bad days. You consider reaching out and making contact to see if there is a chance that you two could patch things up, but you’re afraid that your ex has already moved on and is happy without you. If you are lonely, you hope they feel too.
Just because you miss someone, that doesn’t mean they have to be back in your life. Because you think about them, because you miss them, because you desire them, does not mean you need them back in your life. The emotions of disconnecting from a relationship are usually very raw and intense. Missing someone, especially if you were highly emotionally entangled with shared energy and intensity will be painful, rough and charged with grief, pain and loss. The solution lies within experiencing these very human emotions as they occur, not in trying to bring the person back into your life.
Honor the process of loss, grief and healing. If you’re missing someone right now, stop and imagine being in a group with five other people. Each person has a quality you admire and has it in spades compared to the one you’re missing. He’s more handsome. She’s more intelligent. He speaks lovingly. She makes you laugh. And they’re all interested in you! Remind yourself of this scene whenever you start feeling yourself dwelling on your past relationship and partner. There are other people out there, but you need to believe they exist. And when you truly believe it, that’s when they start to appear.
