by Jamye Waxman
Make sure you have clear boundaries once you’ve put the break up in motion. As relationship coach Marcia Baczynski explained, “People are willing to take as much as you’re willing to give. Especially when there is a prior established intimacy. We all train each other on how close it’s okay to be. So resetting those boundaries means telling the other person that it’s not okay to come over and hang out like they used to.”5
That means it’s imperative to say no to things that will trap you in the relationship. It’s okay to say no to a request for one more chance. It’s okay to refuse to meet at a time you’re not comfortable meeting. It’s okay to refuse to meet in private. Creating and maintaining your boundaries helps give you a sense of freedom. It helps you avoid getting trapped into compromising yourself so the other person hurts less.
Creating boundaries allows you to maintain self-preservation, but you may want to keep a physical exit strategy in mind just in case. Choose the location of your break up discussion wisely. Unless you choose to set your break up date in the La Brea Tar Pits, there are very few places you can get physically stuck in, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find yourself in a spot that’s hard to get out of. Find a public place with an easy exit. An open space, somewhere outdoors, is always a good choice for not feeling trapped.
STEP SIX: FEEL THE BURN
There’s no sense in pretending that you’re a statue of serenity when it comes to the break up, whether you’re in the planning stages or during the actual conversation. It’s okay to feel upset, relieved, or discouraged about your situation. Just because you’re making the choice to end things doesn’t mean you should hide the fact that you’re sad, satisfied, disheartened, nervous, or all of the above. In fact, the more real you can get, the more real the impact of the break up will feel—both in the moment and after.
However, if you think that letting your emotions out is going to make it easier for the other party to take advantage of you, by all means, remain stoic. Being upset and letting them know that this hurts you too is okay, as long as the hurt doesn’t hamper the decision or the outcome.
It’s okay to cry, to get angry, to laugh at the good times you shared. It’s okay to let the person know you care about them, even if it has to be from a distance from this moment on. If you have feelings about the break up, it’s all right to feel them.
STEP SEVEN: GET A MANTRA
Okay, you may think mantras are only for praying or meditation, but they’re not. And you may think you don’t need to repeat something over and over to make yourself get past a break up, but it can really help. A mantra is a word, phrase, or slogan repeated often that expresses your beliefs or feelings.
I have used mantras to get over break ups in my own life. In 2009, I decided to break up with my favorite city in the world, New York, and venture out west to Los Angeles. I felt like I was breaking up with the longest relationship I’d ever had. I’d been in New York for fourteen years, and, when I thought about leaving the city, I felt like I was leaving the love of my life. This was the city that had given me so many great memories and had supported me throughout my twenties and half of my thirties. I was leaving it for a place that I didn’t know well, a place without winter, a place where sunshine was plentiful and people were artificially nice. It was a total culture shock. I even remember having a breakdown in a drugstore because the store was too big and I missed my cramped spaces and small aisles.
My sarcasm, my affinity for black leather boots, and my desire to walk everywhere were some of the things being lost in translation. On top of all that, I was doing this alone. I didn’t have a job waiting for me when I arrived in Los Angeles. I didn’t have a relationship I was moving across the country for. I had a few friends out west but a lot more close friends on the East Coast. And most of my family, with the exception of a few stragglers, was all in the range of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. I didn’t have a reason to go, but still I went.
I was scared. And every time I felt the fear building up inside of me, I recited a mantra. The mantra I chose was one I had heard from famed oddball and tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch. In his book Speedology, he writes, “Fear is joy paralyzed.” Hearing it in my own voice every time I was afraid of what I was about to do made me stronger and more excited about my move. Those four words provided me with comfort. I believed there would be something wonderful on the other side of my fear.
My mantra reminded me of riding a roller coaster. Heading up to that first steep drop stirred up anticipation, fear, and twisted knots in my stomach. But once I took the plunge, I could breathe freely and even laugh at the thrill of the ride. The mantra always helped me get over the drop and reminded me that the things I was most scared of were holding me back from finding things that brought me joy—the kind of joy captured in the Charles Schultz moments when he drew Snoopy dancing, head high, feet fast.
There are a whole host of other empowering mantras that you can use. You just have to find one that works for you. Think of a favorite book or movie quote or a favorite song lyric. (I think of Destiny’s Child’s “I’m a Survivor” when I need a boost these days.) Use Maya Angelou’s inspirational poem “Still I Rise” or a favorite line from a speech by a fierce leader. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s August 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech is a good source of inspiration. Use a mantra from a yoga practice or meditation. Or create your own.
You can create your own by writing out your feelings about the break up and the feelings you expect to have once it is done. Then use one of your own lines to help you get through this. You can also think about how the relationship makes you feel—angry, sad, lonely, small—and find a mantra that refutes that feeling. When you find your mantra, you can leave it here, so every time you need to, you can turn back to this page and say:
(Write your own mantra here.)
Now, doesn’t that help you feel stronger?
Baby Steps Still Move You Forward
No matter how you break up, or with whom you break up, we all have to deal with the end of the “us.” Whether it’s the us of community, the us of friendship, or the us of a former identity, what once was is no more. We have to all deal with the fact that a dream is dead. The break up is the burial. And after it’s buried, we have a choice about how we remember the relationship. How long do we mourn? Do we honor and celebrate what was? Or are we remiss about what we didn’t get to do before it was gone?
While you may not fall into the sand traps and pitfalls as you walk along the road to break up recovery, they will be there, trying hard to bring you down. After a break up, you may not feel so good. You may immediately decide you made a wrong decision. You may want to erase the last conversation and make the hurt go away. But before you text, call, or show up in the place you just left—take a breath. There’s a reason you went through with your plan, so give yourself some time to let it all sink in.
You may find that you start to revise reality. Maybe you decide that you just weren’t seeing your sister-in-law’s good intentions. Or you start to believe that your friend’s demands on all of your time meant she really liked being around you. You start to feel that you’re depriving the person you just broke up with of something really important—more time to make it right.
Or maybe you exaggerate your feelings of loss. You may think that losing this person, this job, this identity is affecting every inch of your life. While the end of a relationship has a large impact on our lives in the here and now, we tend to expand the importance of the relationship in the moment. We have to remember that the relationship and subsequent break up aren’t the only things that exist in our world.
What you can do in this instance is figure out how you’re going to stay busy. Do you find a support group? Join another church? Go to the gym? Take a class? Go on a vacation to get away from your familiar surroundings?
Who can you turn to? Turn to other friends, your partner, a therapist, or a new exercise routine for support. Turn to your journal and get you
r thoughts down on paper. Turn to school, work, or a new community. Just make sure you have someplace to go, or someone to go to.
There is no right or wrong way to feel after a break up, and only you can decide what types of activities will help you move forward. You may hit a bump, or a larger obstacle, in the road. But once you get past the break up, you will find a new sense of strength and accomplishment.
Look at each moment as just that: a moment in time. A right now, not a forever. How you feel the day after the break up may not reflect how you feel in the weeks, months, and years to come. It is only in this moment that you feel this way. Everything in life is subject to change.
Take a Break from Thinking About the Break Up
You weren’t born with a crystal ball attached to your hand, so you can’t predict exactly how your break up will play out. You may be wondering how long you’ll need to avoid all contact, or how you’ll deal with each other when you come into contact again. You may be curious about what other people are saying about the fact that you had the stones to break up with your dad. You may be wondering if you’ve done the right thing by leaving a high-paying job to start your own business or if you’ll ever find a place to practice your new religion.
The best thing you can do for yourself is stop thinking about everyone and everything else. In fact, it would be great if you could stop thinking about the break up at all. Perhaps you can put a moratorium on thinking about the relationship, the what-ifs and the what’s next, for a specific period of time—maybe three months. Then you can see how you are after that.
Yeah, that may seem easy for me to say. I’m not in your brain, but I have my own brain. And it does a lot of the same things your brain probably does too. So when I think about something that I don’t want to think about any longer, I push a new thought into my brain space. For example, when I start to get down on the end of a friendship, I think about all the great friends I currently have. When you get down about the termination of a dream, think about the new dreams you will create. Go back to your mantra, or blast your favorite song and have a dance-off with yourself. Go to a movie or listen to your favorite podcast. Most importantly, trust yourself to do the right thing in the right time. You’ll have plenty of time to figure out your next steps. So don’t worry about trying to figure it all out now.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE BROKEN UP
1.Remember that breaking up is also hard for the person ending the relationship.
2.A failed relationship does not impact your value as a person.
3.Find a support circle. Don’t be afraid to reach out.
4.Old feelings will surface, so it’s good to have someone you can talk to, like a therapist or coach.
5.Take time to heal.
6.Avoid bad habits to numb your rejection or your guilt.
7.It’s not all your fault. But it doesn’t hurt to look at what happened and examine your role in it.
THREE
Relationships Gone Bad
When a relationship stops working, it can begin to feel slightly annoying or outright harmful. Relationships vary in awfulness, ranging from plain old boring to frustrating and, when they’re at their worst, toxic. These dysfunctional relationships don’t offer us much in terms of, well, anything.
These relationships seem lackluster because they lack luster in every possible respect. This person isn’t someone you can lean on when you feel like you’re falling. They aren’t someone you can turn to when you need an ear. This person doesn’t offer much in terms of insight or activity, and yet you have felt obligated to endure the relationship. While these relationships aren’t necessarily impacting your ability to function in your life, they may be aggravating and unnecessary. They may be preventing you from moving on to find other, more beneficial relationships. Despite the fact you probably haven’t thought much about it, you do have a way out. You can break up with these people.
On the other hand, there are relationships that need to end. These are relationships that are actually bad for you. They may be causing you distress and other disturbances in your Force. Generally referred to as toxic relationships, these are the relationships that can be emotionally draining or even abusive.
When you think of the word toxic, what comes to mind? A filthy green glob of stinky garbage? The Toxic Avenger, Sloth from The Goonies, or some other cult movie monster? Or maybe even actual poison? No matter what image you conjure in your mind, odds are, it’s not good.
Healthy relationships generally include mutual respect, admiration, caring, responsibility, and open, honest, and direct communication. Toxic relationships may begin with some of these same qualities, but in the end, they spiral into a hopeless pit of despair, negativity, lack of communication, disrespect, gossip, and other ugly goblins.
When a relationship becomes toxic, it can ruin your life. You may not be able to stop thinking about what’s wrong with the relationship, or with you for being in the relationship. You may notice limited productivity and a lot more insecurity around your own beliefs. Your self-doubt may skyrocket while your self-worth plunges deep down into the depths of darkness. You will likely learn to compensate for what you’ve lost by shutting down. Toxic relationships stink, and although these relationships are really bad for us, they can also be the hardest to get out of.
The Bad Rap Around Dependency
If you think back to all you’ve accomplished, all your best moments and your greatest achievements, odds are, someone else was involved. Someone else may have been there to share in your joys, your sorrows, your successes, or your failures. In fact, you might feel like you couldn’t have done what you did, or gotten through what you went through, alone. This dependency on the “kindness of strangers” or the help of those closest to you is something that has allowed you to work on yourself and your life. Let’s face the music: we all get by with a little help from our friends.
However, relationships built on codependency or counter-dependency can quickly go south. That’s because these two types of dependence are defined by an unequal power dynamic.
Codependency is a term used to describe relationships where the balance of power is explicitly in the hands of one person.1 These relationships don’t allow the other person to be who they actually are. The term originally referred to relationships with alcoholics, but it can happen in any relationship—whether the person drinks or not.
Counter-dependency is basically the classic teenager move, when a young adult wants nothing more than to be everything her parents aren’t. It’s the “I don’t need anyone” attitude. It happens a lot in relationships where we feel so alone that we don’t want the help of others. Signs of counter-dependency can include the need to always be right, or to stay away from everyone else so you don’t feel wrong.2 From the outside, it looks like trying to assert independence, but it’s actually more of an attitude of fear of being hurt or let down.
When dependency is balanced well, it’s called interdependency. Interdependency is the sense that we all rely on one another, but not too much, to keep on keeping on.3 It is the healthiest type of dependency to have in any relationship.
Learning to Say No
No is a small word with a big punch. It’s not only an important word to practice while in a relationship; it’s also an essential word to know how to use when ending a relationship. That doesn’t make it an easy word to use, especially when we grow up learning that no is a bad word only used when we do bad things.
It’s hard to undo what you may have learned about saying no. You may say yes out of guilt, or because you have our own inner conflict about letting someone down. You may believe you can make things right by not “running away” with a hasty no. But saying no isn’t about running from something; it’s about staying in your power and standing your ground.
Saying no can be challenging, but when you think of the benefits—less stress, more opportunity, personal growth, development, and self-care—it’s worth learning how to use this little, big word. We need to be abl
e to say no in order to have more room for yes. While that may seem like a contradiction in terms, no is really a way to open the door for a big yes!
“Part of the reason I’m so big on the no is that it creates space for honest yeses. And if you can’t honestly be a no, then you’re being coerced into a yes.”
—MARCIA BACZYNSKI, WWW.ASKINGFORWHATYOUWANT.COM
Saying yes when you want to say no can leave you feeling like you’ve been forced into doing something you didn’t want to do. It doesn’t feel good. For example, you may say yes to handing out flyers for an event supporting your church, but you don’t agree with everything your church does anymore. So while it’s a nice thing to do for your religion, you’re now helping to promote an idea you don’t necessarily believe in. Whether you’ve been pressured to go with the flow or you were raised to be agreeable, if you can’t say no in your relationship, you’re not going to be able to say yes to yourself.
You can practice saying no before you ever actually use the word. In fact, you can use it in your own life by figuring out some things you’re not really into but you’re tolerating anyway. Baczynski says, “Sometimes it’s not even literally saying no, it’s just dealing with things that irritate you—like a squeaky drawer. It’s about valuing your own sense of comfort, well being, and joy.”
There are also alternatives to saying no, like “Not now” or “I’m not okay with that.” You can always say that you just can’t do something at this point in your life (start with “I’m sorry” if you want to add a little extra sympathy). You don’t owe an explanation after you say no, either. So be careful if you choose to give one anyway. An explanation opens the door for people to find ways to change your no. But no matter what you say, you need to be firm and consistent.
