Feed: End Your Break Up - AggScore: 50.1

 

It hurts. I know it hurts. I was where you are now not so long ago.

This split is official. You are on the receiving end of the ending of the relationship. If the relationship was long-term, your identity seems lost. You are wondering what the other person is doing right now. Who are they with? Why don't they love me anymore?

This feeling and this mindset are normal, but they are also your biggest obstacle in getting back together with your ex. The truth is that when you love someone for a long time, you always will have a place in your heart for them. If the breakup is recent, that bond will still be strong and they are literally waiting for a reason to come back.

Amazingly, the solution is counterintuitive. You are tempted to confront and communicate and push your ex into giving you the answers to why it has ended. If you've already made the mistakes I made, you're calling them, texting them, talking to their parents, accusing them, and committing endless other reconciliation crimes. The more your trying is an action whose energy is projected outward, the more you will push the person you want away.

In fact, it is a very good idea to write your ex a hand-written note that says you apologize for the texting and endless calling and whatever other stalker-like activities you have been involved in. Write that you are totally okay with the break up and that it was a good idea. Tell them you have had a lot of ideas on the back burner for a while and now you have the freedom to act on those ideas without the need for negotiation. The idea is to sound as sincerely positive as possible.

The trick is to learn to be okay, regardless of what is happening around you. You have to find your center. You need to get to know yourself as an individual and really celebrate the existence that you are. Nobody is attracted to someone who is out of balance except for someone else who is out of balance. This is one of the reasons why rebound relationships never work. Two imbalanced people do not make a balanced relationship. Quite the opposite is true.

To get yourself back in touch with who you are or to create a new self that you have wanted to be for some time, you need to address the task like a manager or CEO would address a list of items that need to get done. The difference is that you are going to be doing very little delegating. You are going to be the boss and the laborer.

Here are some ideas:

1. Exercise. When I was rejected by the one I loved and I was rediscovering myself, the first thing I worked on was my body. In my opinion, there is no better way to feel good about yourself than to make yourself look great naked. As a man, it is easy to let myself go. For some reason, looking like a beast seems okay until you are thrown from your comfort zone. I then realized that I was not feeling the greatest love for myself. I adopted Shaun T's Insanity as my physical therapy and soul-kicking strategy. After I had lost about 45 pounds and had boundless energy, I felt so much better. I started caring about what I was wearing and felt much more bold than I had since my 20's. A good idea while you are training is to not let anyone know about it. We have a tendency as people to feel good when we tell people our goals. In essence, we are giving ourselves a rewards for simply having a goal, when nothing yet has been accomplished. Keep your goals as your own and if someone mentions how good you are looking, just thank them and tell them you have been exercising and eating well.

2. Eat Right. I was a member of Gold's Gym for some time. The best advice I heard from my trainer was that no matter how much you exercise, if you eat like garbage, you will look and feel like garbage. Conversely, if you do no exercise, but eat perfectly, you will look and feel great. Food is the source of our health. Exercise strengthens our joints and tendons and fills the void of our own natural vanity. Eating right means inducing good carbohydrates and good fats and plenty of protein. There are extensive knowledge bases on good and proper nutrition. (If you get Shaun T's Insanity, you will also get a nutrition guide.) Buy some protein powder and implement it into your daily diet.

3. Write. There is plenty of information on how the brain works. One interesting way the brain works is how it separates certain activities from emotions. Writing is one of those activities. For one reason or the other, the brain can not both regulate the release of your hormones during emotional periods and allow you to concentrate on something mechanical at the same time. So, the next time your emotions hit a level that seem unbearable, start writing down exactly how you feel and do not stop until the surge of emotion has dulled to where you can no longer concentrate on it. This practice does two important things. First, it gets your mind off of the pain. Second, the practice teaches you subconsciously that you have the ability to deal with this without begging, groveling, and demeaning yourself in any way.

4. Buy Some New Clothes. The idea is to trick your subconscious into believing that you are moving on. You must be prepared to move on. So, go shopping and get yourself something to wear. Women should have no problem with this because they typically stay up on the latest fashions. Men, on the other hand, are usually as up to date as when their ex bought them some new clothes. Men should get an issue of GQ or Men's Health to pick up on what is fashionable.

You must be able to thrive as an individual. I have never had as many women want to be with me as when I was perfectly okay by myself. I actually had to make a conscious decision on whether I wanted to mess up the comfortable rhythm of being single. When you get to that point, it seems that the universe takes on the sole responsibility of knocking you out of balance.

Now, stop texting and calling. Go silent. Go off the grid. Disappear from your ex's life. It is the best thing you can do.

Best of wishes to you

I have recently been through a break up. In fact, I am currently separated from my wife and we will be divorced within the next year. Since I was the one who was ultimately rejected in the relationship, I went through the worst of the grieving process.

Here is how it all went down:

1.) Denial. Once you have been with someone in an intimate relationship for an extended period of time, your identity becomes one with that person. When that relationship is severed, it triggers the desperate feelings that come with a loss of identity. No longer does your life's state match up with what you assumed would be your life's path. This feeling in turn triggers denial. First comes the denial that the break up could have happened in the first place ("This can't be happening!"). Often, we will find ourselves in denial that the relationship was unhealthy. ("We were so perfect so each other. How did this happen?") My relationship was not healthy, but when I was rejected, I idealized the relationship. I could only think of the things that I loved and missed about her. I definitely suffered both ends of the denial spectrum.

2.) Anger. This stage can be particularly scary and destructive when expressed through someone who was emotionally unstable in the first place. After I went through my denial stage, I ran head-first into anger. I accused my ex of being a bad mom, of being selfish and irresponsible. I felt absolutely insane. One minute I wanted her back and next I absolutely hated her. I wanted fight and then I wanted to run and disappear. The full range of emotions was incredibly difficult to handle. This is the stage where most people do their worst damage and destroy any chance of reconciliation with their ex.

3.) Bargaining. In many ways, this is the continuation of the insanity spawned in the anger stage. We start thinking that if we give more, we will get what we want. That voice in your head will continue to repeat, "If I do this, he/she will see that I love her/him and love me again". While giving is a practice we should all have in our daily lives, giving up more of what identity you have left and laying your self-esteem out to be trampled on is not going to help in the recovery process. However, each one of these stages is perfectly natural and part of the healing process. The wonderful aspect of being human is that we have the ability to step in between a stimulus and a response and observe ourselves responding to the stimulus. We can observe it from a second point of view, which is amazing considering there is only one of each of us.

4.) Depression. This stage becomes a demonstration on the power of the human mind to convince itself that it is less than miraculous. We reach very, very dark places and wrap ourselves in feelings of doom and despair. We pity ourselves and truly feel unworthy of love. Of course, this is all nonsense. Every one of us is worthy of love, care, and friendship. While we are programmed to be monogamous, we have to realize that anybody could be the perfect one for us right now. We tend to forget that we all change as life goes on. The people we harmonize with when we are in our late teens and early twenties are not necessarily going to be very close to us when we reach our thirties and beyond. Consider every relationship as an opportunity to learn more about yourself.

5.) Acceptance. This stage is usually reached much quicker for women than for men. The reason for this is that women generally have a very comforting, nurturing support group. Also, let's face it, women are getting approached by men constantly. They do not have nearly the size ego that men have, yet their egos get stroked many more times per day than mens do. Men tend to brood and mope until another girl finally comes along and openly admires him on some level. I know my willing acceptance came when an old friend chatted with me for a while and was a little flirtatious. There was nothing major in the flirtation, but it was enough to remind me that I was as viable of a person as anyone else and that my life had not abruptly ended because I was in a failed relationship.