How to survive the separation?
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. We started a new regular section where professional psychotherapist Olga Miloradova will answer pressing questions. By the way, if you have them, send to [email protected].
How to survive the separation?
Everyone at least once remained heartbroken after a break in relationships. It doesn't matter who initiated it - the heart hurts as if the parting happened for the first time, you want to lie on the bed, look at the ceiling and shut yourself off from public life, like Shia LaBeouf in the hardest times. So what to do if you do not want to do anything, and how to survive the loss of a once-loved person?
OLGA MILORADOVA psychotherapist
Someone considers himself a one-lover and for him separation is the loss of the only possible happiness, the endless opportunity to live your life in the past and go backwards. Most of us have repeatedly been in a relationship, which, despite the seeming sophistication, does not make another parting less tragic. Each new love at the moment seems more real than the previous one, the endless “I can't live without it” is spinning in my head, and it seems absolutely impossible to get out of bed and stop sobbing. If a lover somewhere around is packing things, and maybe even trying to support and comfort you, it is even more difficult to reanimate your self-esteem in order to interrupt the humiliating attempts to “preserve” your relationship in any way.
But if it did happen, then what to do? First, however difficult it may be, allow yourself to live through your feelings. This is not only about sobbing and self-pity - let yourself think about the collapse of a relationship. Allow yourself to feel anger, contempt, and perhaps hate. We are often afraid to feel something, because we do not know how to share feelings and actions, sometimes it seems to us that anger is associated with a real attempt to put it physically on someone, but in fact we can separate emotions and live them separately. Do not allow yourself to crush them, sweep them into a dark corner. The main thing is to understand that you are independent and self-valuable. And without him you can, whatever you think now.
No matter how good the idea may seem to you, the support and constant contact offered by your former partner or the support you requested is not at all what you need right now. Perhaps some time later you will become best friends, but right now you need to keep a distance from each other. For him, an offer of such support to you is a chance to prove to yourself that he is not a scoundrel, despite the fact that he initiated a break (if he was the initiator, of course), for you this is no use hope for a moment to try and get everything back. The maximum that such attempts can end with is another farewell sex, accompanied by new sufferings. Take it seriously - do you need it? In the future, despite the first advice, sooner or later, try to return to life, stir up yourself. Take care of business, go to drawing courses or go cross-fun, most importantly, do not look for a replacement for your partner immediately.
Often we love not man, but our illusion that we have created
If even flirting, and maybe casual sex helps you to come to your senses, remember that now you are very vulnerable, be aware that this is not the beginning of a new relationship and do not place too many hopes on objects that have accidentally turned up. Otherwise, you can harm both yourself and innocent people. Try to communicate with your friends, even if at first you don’t really want to do this, you have every right to ask them for moral support, perhaps once again. In the end, friends are those people who saw your relationship from the outside, perhaps they will remind you that before you were "abandoned," you yourself already began to boil more than once due to dissatisfaction with one or another quality or the act of your partner - maybe you just took away the palm in making this decision?
Despite the fact that at the moment, the first place for you is a feeling of pain and sadness, and possibly emptiness, I would like to pay some attention not only to coping with them, but also to some processing of what happened. It is the experience that you accumulate in relationships that will help you to avoid the endless committing of the same series of mistakes, but for this you need to transform the relationship into a conscious experience. Often we love not the person, but the illusion we created. Try to evaluate what you loved in a person and whether he really possesses these qualities? What would you honestly want from a relationship?
Despite the endless conversations on this topic, it is necessary to repeat it again - often we reproduce something according to the scenario of the parents or for the sake of the parents. Maybe you wanted to prove to your mother that you are a serious person, and not the same rake as your father? Or prove to dad that you are not a bore, like mom. Who are you really for yourself? What do you want from your relationship? When you survive the main grief and become able to analyze again, look at the whole picture again, listen, take a look at what you are experiencing now. Gather all these new emotions together, try to separate the real experience from the object imaginary. Do not let the abyss of a part of the lived in vain, you just did not just suffer in the end.