Breakup Advice from a relationship therapist

[Deliverance]

Hello all. Hopefully all of you have been doing well. Unfortunately, although im not clinically experienced in therapy myself(as you guys may have hoped), I have visited a relationship therapist who was a friend of my relatives back when I wanted to become a therapist myself back in 11th grade 4 years ago. After some general talks about this possible future career, I out of curiosity asked what the best breakup advice would be regarding if I had to encounter a future breakup if I were to enter a relationship with someone. He said that the first thing one should acknowledge is that love is an overwhelming emotion that defies rationality and logic. A breakup would bring even the emotionally strongest people on their knees, despite how many emotional struggles they have endured in the past with seemingly little effort. It brings even the most logical people into a great state of confusion. They may act on emotions rather than their own rationality, serving as proof that emotions can overpower logic. Not only do people struggle emotionally, but also physically. People suffer from a lack of appetite, breathing would be like inhaling toxic gas for them, and many patients of his would report body cramps all over. He told me that emotional strength is determined by how quickly one would strive to rebuild himself and focus on healing from a breakup. As much as time is needed in order to heal, effort, new experiences and most importantly emotional growth are major components that heals one from any emotionally devastating experience, whether if it’s a breakup or loss of a loved one!

Here comes my own advice: The first thing to do to cope with a breakup is to accept that it happened and you can’t change it. You may be thinking how you could have been better, what you could have done to change it. Chances are probably that you already tried your best throughout the relationship. You invested your entire heart yet the inevitable happened, which was the breakup. You need to accept that you are only human, not God. You do not have the ability to change time and reality in any way you want. In reality, you placed so much effort into this relationship unlike anything else yet it ended. It is a tough pill to swallow, but the breakup was inevitable and changing anything to bring your ex back would be beyond your limits. Anything is possible. Yes, I agree. However, that does not mean that it will be within our capabilities that we could fix it. Even if there is a chance even now that we can change it, you got to embrace the reality. In many situations, the chances of getting back together and solving things through is only 1/100 at best. It is not worth tearing apart your physical and emotional health into bringing back something that is not necessary in order to be happy again. Acknowledge and build the time to accept that hardships like a breakup will help you grow in the future. Block your ex, go immediate NC(No Contact) and gradually pick yourself up back together. Even if you do manage to get back together, chances are high that you just restacking pieces of a broken vase with weak glue. Eventually the pieces will go falling apart at some point down the track. It isnt going to work out.

Rather than trying to distract yourself in the toughest stages of a breakup, just grieve it out. Cry if you want. Grieve if you want. Smash everything you see if that is what helps you. Acknowledge that it requires time and effort to regain a positive and healthy mindset. Thinking about your ex often is normal. Feelings of anger and regret are normal. Having desire to stalk his or her social media is normal. Whenever you face even the slightest urge to break NC, then ask yourself: "If I cannot overcome the temptations to not text your ex-partner, then how will I prepare myself for potentially bigger situations that should arise to my life?" See overcoming the temptations to break NC or stalk your ex's social media as an opportunity to grow. Talk to a friend or family. Mental force alone does not overpower love. Therefore trying to force yourself to believe that the “past is just the past” will never work. We are humans, not androids or computers that can delete unwanted data from our memories. We need to stick and become one with our emotions and evolve with them. Apart from exercise and daily goals, focus on releasing oxytocin and serotonin. These activities can include a warm bath, hot coffee, writing a sad poem, etc(research this if you wish). A particular advice tho, is to call a friend or family. Talk about what made you feel grateful about their presence. Talk about any particular moments you and your friends and family had together. Try to establish the most heart-warming conversation you can attempt. Read books on character building. Grab sunlight and fresh air too. Practice tidiness and organization. Perhaps stop wearing shoes in the house if you are wearing them (I feel so much better not wearing shoes in the house lmao). What I would recommend for you guys is to start doing daily goals. Every morning when you wake up, the first thing I want you to do is to try and plan out how you will spend your day. Try to make it as productive as possible without making it too overbearing or inadequate. The key here is to gradually uplift your motivation and spirit without overstraining yourself. As you heal, gradually challenge yourself more and more. Push to your limits, but do not go beyond them. At the end of the day, I want you to reflect on how it was. How could you improve it? Was it helpful? Was it worth it? Additionally, prepare a list of daily triggers on a separate piece of paper. It is always helpful to write down your emotions as it can help process your thoughts better. A diary isn't too shabby either!

After a decent healing, consider doing long-term goals. Conquer any fears and insecurities you may have. Stand up to your enemies and become the bigger person. Overcoming other issues in life helps us rebuild our self-worth as we recover from a breakup. Perhaps consider taking martial arts. A breakup can cause our emotions to run like the electrons in an atom. Activities such as meditation. yoga, and martial arts can help you bring rational thinking back into place gradually. Try new things in life. Hobbies are fine, but the problem is for hobbies is that you are repeating the same lesson you learned over and over. For many people, finding new ways to cope by building new skills and experiences does not only help one recover from a breakup, but also score points in life in general. Scoring points in life is not just about building new experiences and skills. It refers to emotional growth as a whole. Emotional growth is how we evolve as people. We become better at handling issues as well as developing good moments as we mature. Imo, everyone should strive to learn new things. This is because we share a planet with nearly 8 billion people who have went through different experiences. Therefore, there is always something we can learn from each other. Not only that, we then have the solar system which is outside earth. Then we have the galaxy, and then the universe, and lastly, a realm of space which humankind is completely unfamiliar with. Therefore, logic is infinite. It is impossible to learn everything. No matter how much we learn humankind will never be able to learn everything. This is why we take advantage of every opportunity to learn!

Finally see the breakup as an opportunity to grow stronger and wiser. As you heal, your heart grows stronger and stronger. Your outlook will improve! Look forward to seeing the evolved version of yourself! Hopefully this doesn’t trigger any of you, but a breakup might just be a blessing in disguise. Yes it is painful, but no one else was hurt. All that happened was that your heart was shattered into pieces. All that needs to be done is to recollect the shattered pieces of your heart and re-glue them. A recovery from a breakup will help you deal with other emotional challenges, whether if they are lighter or heavier. The thing that will score you the most amount of points is the recovery from the breakup!

Another piece of advice i forgot to include is to let go of grudges against your ex, even towards anyone. Im not suggesting to let go because its wrong, but because it is unhealthy to a person as a whole. It can affect your relationships with others and overall all it will do is prevent you from having a positive outlook towards life. Build the time and effort to gradually let go of your grudges. I BELIEVE that one reason why people struggle on accepting and moving on is because they hold resentment towards their ex. Part of accepting and moving on is to let go of hatred. Hatred is never healthy at all. Try to see yourself as the bigger person and pity them for what they are if you were in the right.

New paragraph: Sometimes whenever we are stuck in a position of grief or depression, helping ourselves may not be enough. It is at these very moments do we forget who we really are. We are the kindest people that ever walked this planet. Our ability to love and care for one another is what lead us into entering a relationship. The reality is this: we gain true happiness by making another person smile. Whenever we please ourselves, the most we gain is satisfaction. The reason why we should spend a certain time in our periods of darkness helping and pleasing others is because we place others before ourselves. We are selfless and loving people. Do something nice for your friends, family, and even strangers. Offer to bake them a cake. Get your dogs some new pet clothes, offer change to the homeless and wish him a good day, offer to look after your neighbor's pets or children for free or even volunteer to help starving children through a local charity as a long-term goal in the future. Remember this: While our friends and family may be gaining a temporary benefit from our assistance and love, ultimately we are helping ourselves the most. What follows after assistance and sacrifices is emotional growth. Therefore, helping and pleasing others is also part of working on ourselves as well. Practice gratitude towards others when they offer to help you. Become more open to listening to other issues from your friends and family. Listening, comforting and offering advice to friends and family is how trust and deeper relationship is built. Dwelling deeper into the fact that we still have friends and family who trust and love us is also a good way to help ourselves as well. If you are bottling up your emotions by any chance, then I suggest that you start opening up to others around you. Bottling your emotions is not healthy. All it will do is bite you harder. Imo, one of the reasons why I believe women outlive men in a regular basis we because women are better at opening up towards their friends and family rather than us men(including myself lol). Us men can be prideful at times. We need to acknowledge that tears are in fact no sign of emotional weakness. All it is is a natural biological response to emotional pain. There is nothing weak about it.

Conclusion: Yes it is a hard and difficult road with many roadblocks and obstacles. A breakup will be like a rollercoaster. Some days are easier. Other days it may be a challenge getting out of bed! Remember that as you go through this you will grow. You will mature. You are in the process of overcoming one of life's most emotional challenges. You will grow stronger. You will be able to lead other people as well. See your breakup as a physical illness/injury that requires time and judicious effort to bring yourself up for recovery. Finally, I want you to scream at the sky. Scream and yell at the top of your lungs saying that you will not let the past cling onto you and you will be mighty and work on yourself to recover. To give you some motivation, think about the low economic status the poor residents of Africa suffer from. They go through so many fears. They lack housing, food, access to medical care, as well as lack of access to clean water. They have to go through the fear of losing someone dear to them and may have even lost so many loved ones from disease or poor living conditions. Despite these emotional challenges they struggle from, they are always up on their feet, working for survival, staying positive and happy. They are some of the mightiest people on Earth. If these people were able to achieve such emotional strength from these hardships, then why can’t you? I encourage you to stop relying on simple everyday comforts such as Wifi and technology and strive to improve. Becoming stronger means extending your comfort zone. Everyday challenges was how the people of poor economic status stand mightier. I am not trying to compare your sorrow with other people who are suffering more as in “you should be grateful that the only thing that happened was a breakup. You still have all these things with you like family and friends that are healthy.” What I am trying to say is that people from poor and developing nations are one of the mightiest people ever because they learned to live their lives to their fullest despite all these emotional struggles. They became strong because these hardships helped them grow. Make use of your pain and grief by becoming one with your emotions. Gradually recollect the fragments of your broken heart and you will become mightier than you ever were. If people from poor and developing nations managed to utilize their greatest struggles into emotional evolution, then I am sure you can do this too. My overall summarizing advice is to not try and simply “move on.” In fact, the second most important advice I can ever offer to someone which is indeed more important than moving on from the breakup is to see the breakup as an opportunity to grow with it. Every emotion serves its purpose in our hearts. Happiness brings us energy and motivation, but negative emotions such as anger and grief grant us exceptional emotional growth once we recover from them. We were never meant to simply toss away negative emotions. We are meant to apply it to ourselves and evolve with it. Life itself is a rollercoaster, just like grief itself. It will have its ups and downs. Chances are that your breakup may just be the beginning of your struggles that should arise in your life. See every struggle you face following the breakup as an opportunity to grow and rise mightier! Therefore it is at times of hardship, no matter how big it is, should be embraced. What comes after grief is emotional growth. The action of simply “moving on” itself is like eating a piece of fruit that only keeps its taste, not its nutritional value. The summary of this post is: rest. Then cradle. Then stand. Then baby steps. Then walk. Then sprint. Then sprint faster. Finally. sprint as fast as you can.

[LeojDon]

Thank you for this comprehensive post. Makes me realise that it’s not just me going through these whirlwind of emotions these last three weeks when my girlfriend who I saw living my whole future with, out of the blue, told me she fell out of love me. We were currently long distance and she’s in Germany and I’m in UK, we haven’t even been able to see each other since December which makes it even more difficult to accept that she’s come to this decision without speaking in person. 
 

She began a full time job there in November and she’s overworked/stressed/feeling miserable, it’s why I’m so surprised she wasn’t so keen to wait and meet again to explore it further. I feel it’s a huge cause of this, and it’s our relationships first “real life” test.

At first I was heartbroken but now, as well as this, I feel really angry and disappointed. Angry that she said she lost willingness to fight when she always told me ‘let’s control what we can control, 6 months apart doesn’t matter if we’re forever’

Disappointed that she just gave up, she abandoned the relationship when I warned her to keep communicating and tend to the relationship or we’ll feel distant. I saw it in January as she barely had any time. So disappointed that she could ever make me feel this way. She even said “I never thought I’d be the one to hurt you and I know I’ll regret this” yet here we are. 

It’s a pain like no other as alongside this, my hands are completely tied as I can’t go visit her to clear the air and in a sense seek closure due to covid. The timing couldn’t have been any worse, now I’m left to pick up the pieces. I know she’s hurting too but it’s never the same when you’re on the receiving end. 

I really want to meet up again to see her face-to-face and truly understand for my own peace but it could be month(s) until I’ll be allowed to, and by that time she may have totally detached herself which destroy me inside, my hands are totally tied. 

I just don’t know how to feel. I feel everything; disappointed, hurt, still in love, angry, lost, heartbroken. I just can’t believe it, it all feels like a dream. And to add to the wounds, although an end goal to close distance wasn’t necessarily why she ended it (she said bottom line is that her feelings changed, but of course they were factors), I just got a job interview in Milan, where she wanted to move next so she could be closer to family. It just makes me wonder why I have to have the tide constantly pushing against us, as when we’re together in person it’s just beautiful. 

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