How to stop being jealous of the former?
ALL WE HAVE GROWN THE MASS OF QUESTIONS TO THEMSELVES AND THE WORLDwith which there seems to be no time or need to go to a psychologist. But convincing answers are not born when you talk to yourself, or to your friends, or to your parents. Therefore, we asked a professional psychotherapist Olga Miloradova to answer pressing questions once a week. By the way, if you have them, send to [email protected].
How to stop experiencing a sense of possessiveness towards the former?
If you have recently experienced the separation, it is quite understandable that when you see the former with a new girlfriend your heart aches painfully. But what if time has passed, the wounds are strained and you seem to be even friends, but as soon as someone appears on its horizon, that unpleasant painful sensation returns again? Why we can not let go of the former for so long and what to do with it?
OLGA MILORADOVA
psychotherapist
The simplest explanation for what is happening is the fact that no matter how much time passes, you actually did not emotionally end this relationship and secretly expect them to be reborn. There may be several reasons for this. For example, it was your first and brightest relationship. Despite the fact that you consciously seem to understand that everything is long past, subconsciously you continue to think that this is the same person you are destined to live life with, just the place and time did not coincide. Because of this, you are sort of immersed in an endless standby mode, and everything that happens besides seems like trivial love.
It is very important to get out of the world of fairy tales, really accept for yourself the fact that everything is over, and only then your subconscious can adapt to the existing reality and you can move on. Even if this is the only one, you must let it go in the past to meet at a new point in the future, because for really mature love you must become an independent person, not someone’s "half."
Another cause of incompleteness may be the very immature relationships in which people tend to exhibit possessive feelings and give something only in return. In such relationships, love is a transaction that saves from loneliness, exploitation. It is very difficult to get out of such relationships because they give rise to infinite codependency. Even getting out of them, a person very long feels his emptiness and inferiority, he learns how to live separately. Accordingly, a possessive instinct has been burning for a long time after them. He may be dulled for a while, but at the sight of a threat he orders to grab what is running away from you. Moreover, at this moment the mythical feeling of repeated loss can create the illusion of a flash of love.
In addition to feelings of guilt and incompleteness, treating the attention of the former may cause a feeling of insecurity
Incompleteness can also give rise to a traumatic experience. Let's say it was in these relationships that you were truly involved in intimacy, completely opened, but for some reason the relationship ended in an extremely painful way. After this, a prerequisite is created for establishing unconscious blocks against intimacy with anyone else, a person cannot fully enjoy what he has. But at a deep level, this experience exists, and it concerns a traumatized person. As a result, possessive feelings can arise in some sense as revenge: you have deprived me of the possibility of being involved in a relationship - and now I will interfere with you too.
But the opposite situation is also possible, when you yourself, in your opinion, have done the ugly thing with your former partner and are now suffering from feelings of guilt. Oddly enough, in this situation, you can prevent him from arranging his personal life, since the very feeling of guilt, as it were, places some responsibility, makes you take care of the former, and be practically his mother. And, as you know, any mother wants a better future for her son and will actively prevent him from joining his fate with an unsuitable lady.
In addition to feelings of guilt and incompleteness, cherishing the attention of the former can cause a feeling of insecurity. In this case, even if you are already in a relationship, or even married, the former will still not have peace - the unfortunate husband cannot alone support your self-esteem. But the former, if he is also a friend now, is most welcome - he also remembers you thinner, younger and more beautiful. And in general (since everything bad in such a situation is quickly forgotten), you have the illusion that it was he who loved you as no one else in the present likes. Naturally, the new girlfriend of the former in this situation is a hindrance, because she will overshadow your primacy and you will lose your imaginary, but still an admirer.
If it's all about it, then it is imperative to put your self-esteem in order in any way. It is necessary to learn something new or change jobs, perhaps at least run. While self-esteem suffers, all those in the aggregate will not save you from loneliness. And, most importantly, remember that the former became the former for a reason. Perhaps, sometimes it is still worth remembering those things that annoyed you, and the reason why you broke up. After all, even if you once again went into the same relationship, everything would immediately cease to be so beautiful. Those former are good, because "we are not bound by obligations towards them, and therefore they do not restrict our freedom."