by Natalie Lue
I truly felt like I would never get over my ex but the truth is, I’ve felt like I was dying inside over a few relationships yet I lived to tell the tale. The loss we feel is very real but the truth is, sometimes we exaggerate it and defraud ourselves of our present and future by making out like we’ve been robbed of a fairy tale even if we’ve really been involved in a Nightmare On Elm Street.
The work you do during NC and grieving your loss is about changing the meaning of these experiences, thoughts and feelings.
By acknowledging and re-acknowledging over time what has happened, how you feel, who they are etc, you will face and feel your feelings, go through the emotions and stages of grief and gradually get to acceptance. The more you try to pretend that it isn’t a loss or attempt to change a past that’s already passed, the more you will feel the loss and the more it will appear to grow.
IT’S NOT A WASTE - CHANGE THE MEANING, CHANGE THE FEELING
Acknowledging and gradually accepting that it’s a loss doesn’t mean that it’s a waste – not all of our relationships are meant to last, not every person can be the one, and while it isn’t often clear at the time when we’re hurting, the end is the beginning of something else and likely a blessing in disguise that much further down the line will become clearer to you if you do the grief work now.
It’s not a waste. Whatever your relationship is supposed to have been, it’s been, even if you would rather that it was something very different.
You’ve tried and that is not a waste. Most people don’t get their relationships right first time. Yes it is a pain that after a number of relationships that you may still be experiencing struggles but the number of further struggles and your next relationship can be greatly helped if you use this experience to process not only this loss but all of your losses and learn from these experiences. The lesson isn’t that you’re ‘not good enough’ or a ‘fuck-up’; the lesson is in learning what you can do to better support yourself and what you truly need, want and expect from your relationships. If you’ve experienced the same thing several times, it’s not your worth; it’s that you need to change your perspective and choices.
This loss does not have to mean the things that you’re thinking that it does so it’s critical to evaluate what this loss means to you.
I’m struggling with this loss because it means ____________________________ about my future.
I’m struggling with this loss because it means that I’m ____________________________.
I’m struggling with this loss because it means that I’ve got to ____________________________.
I’m struggling with this loss because it means that I’m not going to ____________________________.
I’m struggling with this loss because it reminds me of ____________________________ and I interpret this to mean ________________ about love/relationships/me.
I’m struggling with this loss because I thought that it would mean that I could ____________________________ .
I’m struggling with this loss because it means that this person was ____________________________.
Whatever it is that you’re struggling with, be honest about it and evaluate whether this is true or whether this is based on a generalisation originating from unhealthy beliefs and expectations.
-- Is it true that you have no future? How do you know? This can only be true if you decided it and just as you’ve decided it, you can un-decide it too.
-- Is it true that this person/relationship was your last chance saloon?
-- Is it true that you have little or no options? Break it down and evaluate why you don’t have options but more importantly, how you can create options? There’s your perception of no options (the path of least resistance) or there’s options (the path of change).
-- Is it true that because you’ve experienced this that you’ve got to lower your standards? Why? What has changed about you? Why do you perceive yourself as not being worthy of dating someone with your standards in tow? I get so many people telling me that because they’re in their forties and have experienced a breakup that ‘beggars can’t be choosers’. Who’s the beggar? Why is the forties or any age group beyond that synonymous with being screwed and doomed?
-- Is it true that you’re not going to be able to do something? If it is, what’s your plan B? If it isn’t and this can potentially happen now while you’re single or in a relationship with somebody else, why are you writing yourself off? How can you go about aligning your actions, thinking and choices towards your needs, expectations and desires?
-- Is it true that you’ve wasted ‘everything’ or your ‘good years’? Look at what you were doing while you were supposedly wasting these years and look at what you can do differently now, because if you sit around thinking that you’ve wasted it ‘all’, you will accumulate more regret when you could be focusing on making changes to feel happier now. When you see things in terms of ‘waste’, you tend to end up going back to or staying in an unhealthy relationship because you want to make it less of a waste by attempting to recoup the investment. Then another few months or even years go by and you kick yourself for not accepting it and moving on, or you resign yourself to remaining forever because you can’t see past the regret.
The difficulty with ending what may have come to be a very painful involvement or with trying to let go of your feelings is that you don’t know what to do or how to feel. When you lose someone you love to a bereavement and it’s been a healthy relationship, you grieve over the happy memories and even some of the tougher times, you feel mad about being robbed of this person and for whatever they’ve gone through and for the future that they didn’t get to have. When you grieve a relationship that never got off the ground or was unhealthy, you’re up against a myriad of emotions. You’re not sure how to feel and as you start to try to recall the good times they may completely cloud out the not-so-good times for a while, which may actually cause you to feel an even greater loss because your mind ends up being tricked into thinking that this person was exactly how you’re portraying them in grief.
Being truthful about your experiences, how you’ve felt, what you and they have been and done can, when you tot it up, seem so big that to now have no relationship and to need to cut contact can seem like an enormous waste. It can mean so many things whether it’s about them or what you’ve got to sort out in your own life that you may attribute all sorts of negative meanings, which in turn may make you feel like avoiding the loss and going back to make it all mean something else entirely.
You want everything you’ve felt, been and done to mean something but it’s going to mean something entirely different if you continue to engage with this person and end up hurting further.
Yes it’s a loss but it’s not a waste. It isn’t. Some people don’t even try; you tried. This isn’t about ‘mistakes’ because it’s not a waste if you learn from what was good and bad about your involvement, which can only pave the way to success. We don’t get to learn without cutting our teeth on the trial and error of life and its experiences. A mistake really only takes on greater meaning if you won’t acknowledge it and that’s when you may start to experience regret and feel like you’ve wasted your life because you persisted with a course of action. But you’re trying to do something now and if you see this through and grow out of this experience, what has happened could end up being the best thing that ever happened to you because it paves the way to you ascending into being your best you and living a better life.
Change the meaning of this loss and in fact all of your losses and you change the feeling and also change your mentality and actions, which means that you change your present and future. Loss becomes gain. Life is ever changing, ever evolving and renewing. I’ve seen people triumph out of adversity and loss to dramatically change their lives and experience happiness in a new direction. This can and could be you.
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE NC
BUCKLE IN
The angst you’re experiencing is not unusual – you
’ve experienced a loss, so you have to grieve. That means to experience the myriad of emotions that coming to terms with that loss will cause so that you can heal and move on. You can go up, down, round, sideways about it but the only way to grieve is to go through it. You have to experience the feelings, you have to face your thoughts, you have to face the changes brought about by breaking up, and you have to face yourself. You’ve also got to reconcile any illusions with reality and ultimately you’ve got to let go and accept that what you thought would happen isn’t going to, so live your life.
When you avoid, you will invite more pain and stunt your growth because you won’t be learning from the insights that you stand to gain.
The next few chapters are about letting you know what to expect when you’re expecting pain from a breakup, doing NC and also trying to come to terms with what’s happened to move forward. I remember opening up What To Expect When You’re Expecting, the pregnancy bible by Arlene Eisenberg, Heidi E. Murkoff and Sandee E. Hathaway, and while it had a hell of a lot of detail that went right over my head, the overview of each month and stage and typical questions at that time was very useful. Think of the following chapters as a rough guide for up to one year of NC.
Note that every person is different so you may stay in a stage longer than someone else or you may sail through it sooner. It’s not a competition and ultimately giving you a sense of what to expect is actually there to help you identify and understand what you might be feeling or going through at a particular point in time. I get so many people asking me, “Natalie, is it normal to be feeling vengeful?” or “Is it normal to be doing really well, to realise it and then go into a slump?” and so use this section to internalise that you’re entirely normal and definitely not alone. One day you’re no longer NC – you’re just living your life. You end up moving so far ahead that it doesn’t matter whether they do or don’t make contact or whether they attempt to get back together, because you’re strong enough to deal with whatever comes along.
BUT SERIOUSLY, HOW LONG IS THIS GOING TO TAKE?
They say that time heals all wounds and while yes it does take time, it’s actually what you do and think during that time that affects the healing process. Trust me, if you think that you can break up now and that by default in a year’s time this will be a distant memory without you having to put some concerted effort into the initial cutting contact and then the grief work, you will only set yourself up for pain. There’s no hard and fast rule and grief in itself isn’t linear, so your grieving isn’t an identikit version of someone else’s. Plus you’re going to take steps forwards and then go back a little or even a lot and then make gains again. The biggest influencers of how long it’s going to take are as follows:
Your self-esteem. Have an honest conversation with yourself about whether you’re neglecting or nurturing yourself. If you have low self-esteem at the start of NC, it’s going to take time especially if you don’t take on board that you’re going to have to nurture yourself during this time by treating yourself with love, care, trust and respect while talking and supporting yourself through some of the difficult decisions you make along the way. Remember that it takes more than going through the motions of life to take care of yourself - if your head is polluted with negative thoughts, this directly affects your recovery time.
Your resilience for disappointment and rejection. Take it badly, keep revisiting it, judge yourself harshly, persecute yourself, or do things to counter the sense of rejection and disappointment that only end up causing you even more pain, and this is going to take you longer than it would have done.
Your lifestyle. If you occupy your life as in you reside in it, value it, fill it up with things that meet your needs, expectations and wishes, you will feel happy and that will help your recovery. If your life comes to a standstill, you become a recluse, or you do things that basically detract from yourself like hanging out with a bad crowd, ditching work, sacking off friends and family, it will take longer.
Your experiences during the relationship. If it was particularly traumatic, you may need more time simply because you need to do some healing work to recover from the trauma.
The length of the relationship. There’s no hard and fast rule. I’ve heard from people who after two years, are still trying to recover from a relationship that never happened and people who it took several months to a year or so to get over a much longer relationship. Note that if it ends up taking you more than year to get over a relationship that didn’t start or was only a few months, it means that too much of yourself was invested in what you thought might happen or in this person’s perception of you.
Your beliefs. The fact that it may take longer for someone who never even had a relationship to recover tells you that it’s how you judge yourself and your options after the breakup that means a great deal. Every single person I’ve heard from who cannot let go even when the amount of time not letting go significantly outweighs the involvement, is struggling with beliefs and possibly shame.
Previous losses. Tying into the resilience for disappointment and rejection, it may take you longer to get over a breakup if it resurrects a previous loss.
Unforeseen circumstances. Unfortunately even when we’re hurting, life goes on and sometimes that means that we can feel kicked when we’re down. If you lose your job, or you have a big fall out with a close friend or family member, there’s a bereavement, you lose confidence in your appearance, you experience a trauma, or even try to move on and experience a setback, this can affect your recovery time. You will have to put in more effort to take care of yourself and you may need to draw on your support base.
Being avoidant. If your typical response to uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and situations is to do something to limit, distract from, or avoid these, breakups will be tricky for you as you may have delayed reactions to your experiences as you may be so used to what you do that you won’t recognise your own avoidant behaviour. If this is you, I would recommend that you check in with your feelings about this breakup each day by keeping a Feelings Diary so that you can build self-awareness.
WHAT YOU’RE LIKELY TO BE EXPERIENCING AT THE OUTSET
WATCH OUT FOR
Trying to avoid your emotions
Willpower supply issues
Reconciliation attempts
Debriefing sessions
Text and Facebook anxiety
Grief, denial, self-blame, misplaced guilt, hate, desperation, struggling with willpower, feeling bereft, obsessing, irrationality, desperate urge to call, desperate to know what they’re doing, missing the routine, missing the certainty of the uncertainty, skipping work, feigning sickness, not eating, overeating, hanging around on dating sites looking for attention, temptation to regress or you do regress, looking for excuses to see your ex, driving past their work, trying to get information from their or your friends, over analysis, attention seeking, checking their dating profiles, drama seeking, hanging up calls, most likely time to wind up in bed together, emotions being up and down, anger at one or both of you, frustration, impatience that you’re not instantly over it, on a high from feeling empowered, seized by fear, fragility that may catch you off guard, feelings and thoughts coming at you in waves, temptation to switch from this rollercoaster to the old rollercoaster with them, throwing yourself into work, soothing with inappropriate solutions including sex, drugs and alcohol.
KEY GOALS
To do everything possible from your end of things to cut contact and keep at a safe distance.
To begin to recognise your feelings along with the cues, triggers and typical responses.
To face off temptation and difficult situations that may arise but to respond differently and learn from each experience.
Some days you’ll win and others you won’t but each day you’ll learn.
The bedding-in period is where you’re going to cut your teeth on making the difficult decisions and having to react in a non-typical fashion to thoughts, feelings, and situations that pres
ent themselves. This time is for you to take the steps that you need to cut contact and to acclimatise to the change and teethe your way through the process – you’ve got to get on board with NC.
This is a good time for you to throw your heart and soul into letting your emotions come up to the surface. If ever there is a time when you have a license to wallow, this period is it so don’t be surprised if you stay in bed a bit (or a lot more), cry, beat your pillows, tell the story of the fallout numerous times, and feel sorry for yourself. It’s all normal. Try not to hold back because while keeping up a brave face has its uses in public places, trying to pretend that you’re not hurt and upset will only make the process harder, especially as you may have an even more painful delayed reaction.
Like any habit that needs to be changed, it’s during this period that you’re going to need the most willpower as you adopt different responses and restrain yourself. Depending on your situation, you may be having to rebuff their attempts at contact, or it could be that you’re restraining yourself from reaching out, or it might be that they’re not reaching out and that in itself can hurt a lot.
