Breakups with significant others suck. I have been through this and I am sure you have too! If you haven’t experienced this – well – get ready for some real life lessons here.
We breakup from girlfriends and boyfriends. Some friendships – both long and short – wane and die. We run away from the family nest. We resign from work and some of the relationships we develop in our career. Friends circle get big and small.
It’s difficult to say what the reason is for splitting up but what we don’t realize is that the destruction of a relationship is actually the creation of a new one. This could be new relationship, for example, you develop with yourself, a co-worker, another friend or a complete stranger.
One thing that our curious minds try to dissect is how a long-term relationship can wither and wane. I mean how do madly “in-love” couples get divorced? Why does a long-term friendship just end? Why do family members drift apart?
What we need to be cognizant here is what is most obvious: what we are most attached to will disappear one day. We can be attached to material objects such as cars and homes, and non-material objects such as emotions of anger and hatred, as well as physical beings such as animals and people.
The disappearance of relationship can be due to many reasons some which are a lack of interest in the material or non-material object, boredom, lack of diversity, lack of continuous excitement, past events, and habitual behaviors.
What we don’t realize is that one day, whether you like it or not, whatever object (material, non-material, physical, etc.) you have in your possession will need to be let go.
It’s interesting to observe individuals who are so madly in love and have experienced long married relationships, lose their partner to death, and still be so happy. I wonder why this is the case. I mean – shouldn’t they be sad to lose their life partner?
I am not a psychologist but the only thing I could think of as a reason why is that they as a person were always special – it was only having that significant other in their life that continued to make their life special – but this never impacted their perfection to begin with.
Get my point? Let me summarize another way: You are perfect as you are whether you are in a relationship with someone or not. When someone comes into your life they are not “adding” to anything to your life other than what is always within you that is intended to be realized. When the other person leaves, all it does it bring you back to whole again. But get this – you were always whole to begin with, so what did you lose when they left? Nothing!
It’s an illusion that we are experiencing that someone is bringing something new to our character. We think this person is giving us self-realizations but is not true – self-realizations are intrinsic to ourselves that were always meant to be discovered by us.
So it’s not surprising when we say “I never danced like that until he came into my life” or “I never cooked until she came into my life” or “I thought I would never could run a marathon until she motivated me.”
My point is that our innate quality are realized by the relationships we have with others. It actually takes life experiences with others to realize what we really are.
Taking from the examples above – the ability to cook was always within us waiting to be realized. The ability to dance was always within us waiting to be realized. The ability to run a marathon was always within us waiting to be realized. All it took was another person to turn the switch on and for us to discover what we thought we didn’t know but was always intended to be discovered by us.
The mistake we make when we breakup is we leach on the idea that when the person leaves our life will be missing something. We will become dull and boring. But this is a false illusion.
We are actually focusing on the destruction part of the relationship, instead of the construction part of the relationship which are the new qualities – that we were always destined to discover whether in the presence of this person or by our self. This is life’s little mysterious truth – and it is a continuous cycle of discover based on new and old relationships.
My conclusion – your relationship will end at some point with death being the ultimate means to the end. If it ends for some reason before that, stop looking at the reason why it ended and look at the discovery within you that was created from the relationship.
The easiest way to overcome a breakup is not to focus on the person you are breaking up with and be angry, but being thankful toward the person who allowed you to discover and learn new things about yourself.
The person, by leaving, doesn’t take your discoveries away – what they actually do is open the door for someone else to come in (in many cases this person is you!) for the cycle of discovery to continue.
The sine curve of emotions such as anger, stress, anxiety which move up and down is your way of thinking that things just can’t get better since this person is not around. This curve may be in existence for several hours, days or even months – and continues to thrive anytime you think of this person.
The happiest people in this world cherish the person for who they are and what they have made their life to be – even more special – and thank them for it. This is the only way to shrink the sine curve to a straight line and overcome your negative emotions.
So, don’t fret if people go away or friends wane or people die. Destruction of relationship is the creation of self-discovery. What are you really holding on to? The person who is no longer with you or the treasures this person has allowed you to discover.
Focusing more on the treasures will give you reason to keep a person’s memory close at hand and forgive any ill-doings quickly, as a treasure of good found within is no reason to be angry at anyone who may have done you wrong or for which a relationship is not meant to last.
At the end, it is you who needs to stand alone and recognize all the people in life around you are those who give you the ability to see beyond what you don’t know and discover what is truly buried underneath – and you should be respectfully thankful toward others for this.