Going through a romantic break up can be a very hard and painful experiment. We feel rejected and abandoned. We are not sure how worthy we are and why our love decided against us. We can feel lost and normally we go through the hardship of grieving; grieving the loss of our partner, our hope, our happiness.
Maybe someone came up to you and said that you might benefit from this experience. I am rather impatient with these warriors of anti-empathy – though I see their truth. It sounds like: “I do not share your sorrow, but as a higher intelligence I show you the good way of handling pain!”
Being depressed, withdrawn, uncertain and sad is normal and even necessary for going forward. You don’t have to be ashamed by that! In order to fully experience happiness we need to know sorrow as well. We compare the best times of our life to those worst times – and break ups are definitely one of the worst.
But over the pain, you do have a lot to discover – as smart people can learn from everything.
First of all you will see how you handle the bad news. As you strive to learn how to get over a break up, investigate your feelings and reactions. I know you feel hurt, rejected and maybe ashamed. You might feel yourself unworthy and you might believe that no one in the world would love you anymore. There might be some self pity involved. They are valid and understandable feelings – though the best if you don’t dwell too long in them.
Be honest with yourself, because recovery and the answer to how to get over a break up comes through experiencing those feelings.
Then you can investigate how you react: What do you do with this pain? Will you distract yourself? Will you ruminate alone? Will you share it with a confidential friend or with everyone? – You might learn new stress handling skills.
How will you rebuild your self-esteem? How soon and which way can you feel your strength again? You can strengthen yourself by achievement, friendship, or other activities – or you can stick in the position of being depressed. You might learn a new way of connecting to the world: new activities, new friends, or the new independent you who can conquer the world all alone!
Following a break up most people want to understand what happened and why. For example, if you realize that your partner simply was not reliable, you might be cautious about those signs next time. If you found you were way ahead in the commitment process, you can let the relationship deepen a bit slower next time.
There are millions of reasons why people split up from the personality differences to the different expectations and needs, from poor communication habits to being in different life stages and having different life assignments connected to it. While you give some time for this investigation, your self-knowledge and the knowledge about your partner and your relationship deepens. You might gain some noteworthy insight.
When you find out the reason of your separation, you can consider how you prevent it happening next time. You might come to the realization, that you behaved a certain way which caused problem – and you can decide to keep it or eliminate it. It is especially useful to uncover certain patterns that you have; for instance, if you come to the conclusion that “I always end up with liars”, ask yourself, what do you do that attracts liars? How come you did not discover their lies in earlier days?
In addition you might realize what was problematic in your partner’s behavior, and accordingly decide your values and preferences; for example, “I don’t like too adventurous (boring, self-centered, etc…) guys.”
At the end, when you are over on the worst days of sorrow, you will be aware of lots of connections which were not so obvious before. This experience might even change your opinion, world view and attitude towards relationships or towards yourself.
I know: this is sometimes a very difficult and painful process and you would rather choose the relationship instead. But if you don’t, at least have a chance to use the experience for expanding your own wisdom!
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