Your Beloved broke up with you. So what? Now what?

 

Does this seem like a heartless comment? Well, one of my mother’s Famous Phrases goes like this: “Sometimes you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.”

 

There is heaps of good advice around about how to get over a breakup, but one of the most important things to focus on is being ruthlessly honest with yourself about the quality of the relationship that has just blown apart and your motivations for wanting to hang on to it.

 

Very occasionally the end of a relationship will take someone completely by surprise, but that’s a rare event indeed. In the majority of cases intuition will have told you something was wrong before it happened, or the relationship itself was clearly in trouble long before the break up occurred.

 

So why is it so hard to move on? There are a number of reasons for wanting to hang on to the past.

 

  1. You hate the feeling of powerlessness because the other person was the one to call it quits. If you’d been the one to pull the plug, you’d be feeling a lot better about it by now.
  2. You are grieving for all that might have happened, for the hopes and dreams that were never achieved. The truth is, those possibilities were never going to take place because the relationship was never going to last that long.
  3. You are sad for all the good qualities you saw in your ex that they are not in fact choosing to manifest. It’s great that you saw the best in them, but they don’t want to be that ideal person. You can’t change that.
  4. Your mind knows that it’s all for the best, but your emotions are yet to catch up with what your head already knows. That’s just the way it works. Listen to your head. The heart isn’t right in situations like this.
  5. You are afraid of being alone. This is particularly true if your ex has already found someone else. They are happy again and you’re facing an uncertain future. It’s natural to want to grasp on to the familiar and turn back the clock.
  6. Habit. That old rut you were stuck in might not have been great but it’s hard to step out of your comfort zone and start dating again. It would be a lot easier not to change anything.
  7. Pride. You hate the fact that they broke up with you and fear what others might be saying about it. You don’t want others pitying you or laughing at you.
  8. You feel that they are part of your personal territory and you detest the fact that someone else is eventually going to encroach on what was once “yours”.

 

When you look at that list, it isn’t very attractive, is it? But if you are truly honest with yourself, you will see that one or more of the items on it are true for you. Look the truth squarely in the eye. Acknowledge it. It will help you move on to achieve the fulfilled life you want and deserve – with someone more worthy who is a better match for you.