Why? What did I do wrong? Regardless of who initiated the breakup, breaking up a relationship is always hard. How can you help yourself?
It is comparatively rare that people part by mutual calm agreement and then are able to maintain friendly and supportive relations. More often, the trauma of a breakup puts a couple on the warpath, drawing in children, relatives, friends and burning everything around cleaner than the latest volley fire systems.
“It has long been clear that we are not a couple. Relations were not that conflicting or cold, they were none and all the more painful. But when he announced that he was leaving, it was like a butt on the head ”- Maryana, 36 years old.
“How can he get into bed with someone else and do what he once did to me?! Well, yes, I said that we have not slept together for a long time, but what does it matter? — Sonya, 28 years old.
“She left when her father and brother died one after the other. Even today I am disgusted with shame that her departure hit me more painfully than their deaths ”- Sergey, 43 years old.
“I don’t understand what I did that she can’t live with me?!” — Dmitry, 39 years old.
No science has a formula for parting that is correct for everyone. But there are some things a reminder of which can help to abandon the scorched-earth tactic and tap into the resources of a relationship crisis.
“Now I am even grateful to her. Yes, it hurt. But if it weren’t for this opening of the abscess, life would probably drag on as a debilitating burden, like a chronic infection ”- Sergey.
“I almost killed myself then. I look back and think what a fool I was. We recently accidentally crossed paths in the same company: he and his wife and I and my husband. No stress. I thought that we are both good, we just don’t need to be in the same bouquet, like lilies with poppies ”- Maryana.
Is it possible to cooperate in parting? It starts with cooperation with yourself.
It is easy to see: usually parting takes place in the same vein as the relationship itself developed. In general, this seems to be understandable and it cannot be otherwise, but … if relations in this vein have reached an impasse, what is the point of building a separation in the same vein, will it not reach a dead end? The relationship was one way or another cooperation, being, though painful, but together.
Parting is a break «together», self-determination, self-sufficiency. Is it possible to cooperate in parting? It begins with cooperation with oneself, with attempts to ask oneself ordinary ridiculous questions and find (one’s own) answers to them.
The most unproductive question: why? Each feels right, and, rest assured, both will find a heap of reasons to remake each other, when one and the other will defend their innocence, resisting the remake. Or «Ah! Do you have someone turned on?!» with aggression towards the «thief». Past: not relationships are broken because someone is turned on, but someone is wound up because they are already broken.
For the departing person, the important question is why, for what he leaves, and the most specific answer from himself. Without this, leaving is an attempt to escape from the trap with a very high probability of immediately falling into the next one: “I can’t take it anymore under her heel” — and then yurk under another one.
Parting is a crisis, having emerged from which everyone will now go their own way.
The one who was left is more difficult because the gap is unexpected for him and the steering wheel slips out of his hands. The indignant mind boils on the fire of emotions. An attempt to figure out what exactly frightens, strains, causes protest can somewhat reduce the intensity of passions. This will not solve all problems, but at least it will indicate real goals and ways of behavior. Protecting your love or property and money acquired together are “two big differences.”
Absolutely destructive attempts to «read the thoughts» of another. During the period of falling in love, honeymoon, they were a sign of intimacy, love, care, but now they are a sign of danger, they are taken with hostility and interfere with already difficult negotiations.
Let’s say you managed not to let go, chained to the home stove, wearing a chastity belt … Will you be satisfied with life with this unfortunate pet?
Sometimes a couple can neither part nor be together. A family psychologist is not a priest, not a party committee secretary — he does not have ready-made solutions. But with it you can clarify yourself, “ring out” the blocks that interfere with making a decision. Parting is a crisis, having emerged from which everyone will now go their own way. Do not break the legs of yourself and another — that’s what we can do. And this is a lot.