Wednesday, June 2, 2010

My To-Do and Not-To-Do Lists After A Painful Break Up/Divorce - Part II

Go to Part I

Go to Part III

3. It is all about YOU now.

Now it is really the time to think about yourself, not him/her. As I mentioned in the previous post, do not contact your ex partner. The reason is not only to set him/her free, but it is really also to set yourself free. You need to free yourself and find the ability to love again. And this time, you want to love the right one. To be able to do so, there are a few steps that we need to do. First and foremost, we need to take care of ourselves in this critical period of time. It is not easy and I think I know how hard and hurt it feels.

You may keep using your time to analyse your former partner:

Is he/she still love me?
Has he/she ever love me?
Does he/she loves me more or the third party? (if there's a third party)
What can I do to make him/her loves me again?
Is there a second chance? Can I turn back the clock?
I wish this is just a dream, a nightmare that never happen in real life...

You may also blame your partner or self blame:

How could he/she treat me like this? I love him/her so much...
I wish I never did this, it's all my fault. I deserved to treated like this. I am such a loser...
I am such an idiot, how could I fall in love with this J*rk/B*tch! And yet I still cannot let go/feeling sad for him/her while he/she does not even care!

These thoughts are all normal. Imagine you reconcile with your former partner with these feelings: guilty, anger, sadness, hurtful, insecure, resentment, jealousy... How good do you think it is going to contribute to the "friendship" between the two of you? Thus, it is really time for you to pull the focus back on yourself. It is really time to LOVE yourself more.

In the process of starting over, there are times we feel ok and good, and there are times we feel miserably lost. Again, it is completely normal when we feel that we want to go back to be together with our ex partner so badly, to the extent that you feel it is impossible to feel happy and joy again in your life without him/her. Even though there might be chance for reconcilement, it is definitely not now. At this time, you need time and space and certain essential steps to heal your broken heart. Sadly, we never taught how to do it in school. Therefore so many people struggling so hard and they either deny the feelings, never trust love again and fool around, or they lost their ability to open their hearts to love again.

How to redirect your attention from focusing on him/her back to yourself? I wrote a "sample of feeling letter" on January 2010 under the title "Single vs. Couple". Writing the letter to your former partner or to an angel (or your own spiritual believe) is definitely one good way to release all the negative feelings. One thing that I want to emphasize here, the purpose of writing the letter is to help you find the forgiveness. People said time is the best medicine in healing the pain. However, Time itself cannot fully heal the pain and make your heart healthy and be able to love again.

When I said write the letter to your former partner, please, please, please, DO NOT SEND the letter to him/her. You may think, "Why not? I want to let him/her know my true feelings and this is a good way of 'communication'." Starting over is different from when you have a fight with your current partner. The word starting over means, you really have lost your partner and love. Therefore sending the letter to him/her seems like, you still have the intention to patch back. I do not see the benefit of sending the feelings letter to your ex partner. In addition, the intention of writing the letter is to help ourselves to find forgiveness and let go, not to make our ex partners feelling guilty or upset, or come back to you. When you still holding on to the hope that you and your ex partner has chance to get back together, you are losing the chance to feel the emotion of fear and fully let go.

--to be continued

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