When a love ends there are many thoughts, questions that go around the mind. They become fixed thoughts intertwined by the difficulty of accepting that everything is over.
Why me? I continue to love him.
I didn’t deserve to be treated like this.
I got it all wrong.
Is it possible that he no longer feels anything towards me and he doesn’t like me one bit?!
I too had the same thoughts when many years ago I was told “I don’t love you anymore”.
I was still a child to understand that there are feelings that change, relationships that don’t mature and people who build stories based only on their need to love and be loved.
In all this uproar of feelings and emotions, which I really didn’t want to listen to, there was inside me the fear of being alone , of not being able to find another man. I thought I was so ugly that no one would like me anymore.
My self-esteem had completely failed me.
At that moment I was thinking only of patching up my story so as not to feel the pain, that emptiness that that man had left me.
I convinced myself that everything was normal.
A finished love is an immense pain for everyone that forces us to put aside that idea of fairytale love to make room for a different reality. It can happen slowly like a candle that goes out or it can be a cold shower of a feeling that ends suddenly. In any case, man has evolved to the point where he can face the end of a relationship.
Love is also learning to give up on the other, knowing how to say goodbye without letting your feelings get in the way of what will probably be best for those we love.
Sergio Bambaren
Our mind believes it can’t make it because the pain we feel is so strong that it wants to rip it out of the chest. The days all appear the same, dismayed by sad moments, even a little angry, which make us remember the beautiful moments and also feel the difficulty of an now uncertain future.
Why does a relationship end?
How to get over a finished love?
How to face this pain and get back to having faith in tomorrow?
Content index
- Why does a love end?
- How to get over a broken love
- Accept the pain
- Acknowledge your emotions
- Stop rumination
- Accept the present
- Write a diary
- Engage the time in activities
- Cultivate friendships
- We ask the family for help
- Coping with the sense of failure
- Taking care of the body
- Make time for exercise
Why does a love end?
There are many causes and motivations that lead to a finite love.
- Arrival of children. A delicate event within a couple is the arrival of children. A moment of strong change that shifts the focus above all of women who invest their energies only in their own child, forgetting their partner. The family is based on the couple, if the relationship between the partners is missing, everything else is missing. Unity is also built on the basis of sharing tasks relating to the child and the home. Let’s detach ourselves from the idea that children are only mothers. Balance is needed in every relationship we build.
- Enmeshment of the family of origin. When you choose to create your own family unit, it is natural to loosen ties with your family of origin. It doesn’t mean interrupting relationships but simply cutting the umbilical cord and making sure that your child grows up independently. Sometimes this is difficult, if not impossible, facing a prevarication of the parents within one’s own family. It is simply enough to delimit the borders for the good of everyone.
- Sexual problems. Many separations occur due to a lack of intimacy or sexuality. To keep a relationship alive it is necessary for this sphere to be active and fulfilling so that the partners cultivate closeness and presence to each other.
- Physical and verbal violence. Unfortunately, even today there are couples who present abuse. Abuse is power, control, manipulation towards the other who out of fear is forced to agree to anything in order not to trigger reactions in the partner.
- Difficulty communicating. Communicating is not just a verbal act because we communicate with our body, with gestures and we feel loved when we are able to interact deeply with each other. Many couples lack attention to each other because they are tired of work or angry. Over time, an unresolved quarrel leads to building a wall and keeping negative emotions alive in us that will lead to more quarrels until we have difficulty understanding each other or sharing.
- Betrayal. Discovering a double relationship is a disorienting experience that causes distrust in the other giving birth to feelings such as anger or hatred up to a deep sense of rejection. It goes without saying that infidelity has repercussions for the future if not adequately overcome.
- End of physical attraction. The lack of desire towards the partner can also cause the end of a feeling. Two people who don’t look for each other, who don’t like being with each other only increase the distance between them. Slowly love dies, it shuts down because it’s not nourished by what’s really important.
- Disagreement about the future. The different vision of the future is often the cause of breakup of the couple especially between engaged couples when one does not feel he wants to live together or get married, or have children. There is no right or wrong between the partner who imagines a certain future with respect to the other, there is only a different vision that must be taken into consideration and never underestimated.
The ones described above are the most common causes.
Obviously, each story is in itself, for this reason many other causes could be added that lead to the termination of the relationship. Sometimes we also tend not to see in order to stay close to the person we love or we don’t really know if our relationship has come to an end .
What makes the difference is how everyone reacts to it. Different motivations constitute different emotional responses.
Also, getting stuck with thinking about the past by realizing yourself doesn’t help looking at the real reason it ended up learning something from it.
This way of approaching the situation leads to developing a deep understanding of the role that both partners have assumed in generating the breakup. The couple is made up of two active individuals who, with their actions or behavior, favor the growth or, on the contrary, the end of a love affair.
We learn to take responsibility without judgment.
The goal is to build a supportive attitude towards ourselves by sending the internal judge on vacation.
Let’s start by asking ourselves:
What behaviors led to the end of the relationship?
What role have I played to bring about all this?
What role did the ex play?
What or how will I behave in a future reaction?
These are answers that we could also write in our notebook, promoting understanding and awareness of what happened.
How to get over a broken love
The end of a love is still a mourning .
Everyone would like to give us suggestions, advice as if the end of a relationship were a simple walk. There are no pre-packaged recipes or schemes, there is only time to process this finished love in order to find our serenity and continue along the path of life.
Accept the pain
Impossible to accept pain because it would be like asking a cat to live with a mouse without eating it. Instead, it is absolutely doable.
We’re used to fleeing pain, finding a billion tricks so we don’t feel loneliness , lack and all the emotions associated with a finished love.
The solution is not to escape but to welcome the present moment and the pain associated with it.
Constantly telling ourselves that it’s our fault, that we could have done more or screwed it up won’t make us rewind the tape back to when everything was good between us and our ex.
Suffering cannot be avoided. The solution lies in learning to manage it by giving a name to the emotions we feel.
Acknowledge your emotions
Recognizing emotions leads to welcoming the suffering we are experiencing now.
Emotions are quick reactions of our body to external or internal events. They are useful because they help us understand what we like or dislike, to defend ourselves, to establish bonds with others. We are so used to them that we forget to listen, acknowledge and accept them.
Being aware of our emotions leads us to lower their degree of intensity especially when we are in the throes of unpleasant emotions.
Emotions are many, they have various nuances as well as a name. Anxiety, sadness, disgust, displeasure, anger, annoyance, etc… There is a beautiful atlas of emotions that can help us identify perfectly what we feel.
Let’s ask ourselves in which part of the body we feel that emotion.
What intensity does it have on a scale of 1 to 10.
Then we place our hand on the part where we feel the emotion, thinking of transmitting warmth, love and hospitality. Day after day it will change its intensity leaving room for inner well-being .
Stop rumination
Constantly thinking and rethinking the past is an involuntary act but it blocks us in everyday life. The mind is so busy brooding that it becomes difficult to focus on other areas such as home, hobbies, work. Initially they are very present thoughts that begin to decrease towards the second month of the end of the relationship. Fighting them or distracting yourself to keep them away can have the opposite effect.
We accept that these thoughts are within us but we learn to deal with them.
When our ex occupies our minds, we stop such thoughts by postponing this precise moment until later. No more than 10 minutes.
Stopping this whirlwind of thoughts is one of the first steps in decreasing suffering.
If the questions that come to mind don’t help us feel better, we can tell ourselves that we have done everything possible to maintain our relationship, but now is the time to focus on what makes us feel good.
Accept the present
The here and now is the only sure thing we have available.
We can’t change the past while we don’t know how the future will go. We can only act on the present to direct our tomorrow.
A practice that helps to live today is mindfulness . English name that comes from the word sati which translated from the Pali language means awareness, attention to the present moment.
Mindfulness is living with awareness every moment of life, from when we get up to when we go to bed .
We are so caught up in the hectic everyday life that we happen to eat, write, cook and, at the same time, think about something else.
Thanks to mindfulness we will be aware of what we do by disabling the autopilot. The present is not only made up of negative states also of the whole environment that surrounds us. We pay attention to colors, objects, conversations. So our mind will be engaged in that precise moment without wandering in the myriad of thoughts.
Write a diary
Let’s cut out some time to dedicate to writing in order to focus attention on ourselves. The diary will be our faithful travel companion.
Let’s get a notebook with a particular cover or a simple notebook, an agenda to always carry together. I don’t recommend writing on your mobile phone because through handwriting we reach greater intimacy, we enter into a deep connection with ourselves.
During the day we dedicate a time space in which to dedicate ourselves to this practice.
Let’s make it a habit. A few lines will suffice.
Let’s start by considering how we feel, what emotions we are feeling, what are the positive things that have happened to us, what actions we promise to do to overcome our finite love.
Engage the time in activities
When a love affair is over you usually tend to withdraw into yourself. It goes without saying that it is not the right move to recover, rather we dedicate our time to activities that can regenerate us. It often happens that we no longer go to the gym, spend more time at home, distance our friends and close ties with the world.
Instead, we really need all of this.
We need to raise our vibration by tuning it into the wave of positivity.
The list of things to do or situations to experience to receive positive reinforcement is long. I give some examples.
We can buy new items for the home, take a nice shower, walk by the sea, cook… We organize our time with the aim of finding a new balance in life.
Cultivate friendships
Facing a separation in complete solitude is not the best for this friends come in handy .
Being in the company of the right friends activates particular types of neurons called mirror neurons that will lead to imitate, to experience that good feeling that others experience. Consequently, surrounding ourselves with friends with whom we feel that we are understood, loved will allow us to feel internally a certain security to be benevolently infected in the mood.
The people to choose must be able to listen to us without giving us too much advice.
Support us.
Let’s expand our network of friendships as much as we can, avoiding relying only on our historical friend.
Be careful also to take an interest in them!
We ask how they are, if there are situations they wish to talk about.
Everyone has their own life, their own daily struggles to face and secrets to make, therefore it is essential to also offer our listening.
We ask the family for help
Having a family that supports us in this particular moment of our lives is a great resource. Family members know how to understand us more than anyone but not all families are the same.
There are too judgmental, old-fashioned families who consider finished love an act to be ashamed of, worse if it coincides with the end of a marriage. They are too closed families in which it is not possible to express one’s emotions.
Let’s confide in those we feel more aligned with us, with those who have a good dose of empathy towards us, mainly those who have already had this experience.
Sometimes we are also faced with overly involved families who take unsolicited actions or who don’t give time to rearrange their ideas because they are taken up with too much advice. From all this we take the right distances because we could sink even further.
It goes without saying that if we are parents, the only ones we don’t have to rely on are our children, even teenagers.
The parent has your duty to protect.
It often happens to see teenage children who listen and support adults. In this specific case there is a reversal of roles in which the responsibility of taking care of us is left to them. At this stage let’s take care of ourselves to become models in their eyes.
Our children will benefit from their well-being through our well-being.
Coping with the sense of failure
Our society always puts failure on a negative note, praising only the winners. A finished love is not a defeat.
Thinking like this expands that feeling of shame, lowers your mood, and destroys your self-esteem. Criticizing ourselves will keep us in a negative state.
Our relationship is over, that doesn’t make us feel like a failure.
Let’s assume our responsibilities without whipping ourselves or punishing ourselves for how it went. There is no objective reason for a finished love only a set of gestures made by both parties.
Let’s focus on what this experience has taught us, which actions not to repeat in the future, which man we no longer want by our side and which relationship we want to build.
Taking care of the body
A healthy diet contributes to both the well-being of our body and our mind. The first thing that suffers after the end of the relationship is nutrition. This can happen in two ways.
The first with the increase in the food we ingest due to the calming process that digestion brings with it, allowing us to silence negative emotions. The consequence is large binges by ingesting many foods, even unhealthy ones, which worsen the emotional state as well as increasing the ingested calories.
The second is the opposite of the first because it occurs as a decrease in appetite. As they say “the stomach closes” by limiting the caloric intake given to our body. The consequence lies in the decrease in concentration, we are more irritable and nervous.
Be it overfeeding or underfeeding both interfere with the normal functioning of the body.
This is why it is essential to be able to control our diet even by asking for support from a nutritionist.
The guidelines to follow to avoid falling even further emotionally are:
- We maintain a balanced diet that contains cereals, dairy products, fruit, vegetables, proteins.
- We eat fresh and seasonal food.
- Let’s avoid sugars contained in sweets, sausages and so-called junk food.
- We keep portions balanced.
- We dedicate the right amount of time to chewing.
Make time for exercise
Exercise has many beneficial effects on our psychological well-being including increasing concentration, self-esteem and our positive energy . This happens thanks to the production of substances naturally produced by our body such as endorphins . Hormones intended to be natural antidepressants.
I know it’s difficult to start because we have little desire to do it or little time to do it but 30 minutes a day is enough to see the very first results.
If the mind comes to our aid with a billion excuses, we are stronger than our thoughts to fight laziness. Initially we feel a little tired, annoyed and we don’t like the idea of sacrificing ourselves, let’s ask ourselves if enduring all this is worth it. Yes, absolutely, because we will be able to improve our mood, our life and psycho-physical health.
Here are some tips that can help us get back to training.
- We start gradually, without demanding too much of ourselves. It will be enough to dedicate only 10 minutes a day.
- We think of physical activity as a time that we dedicate to ourselves.
- Let’s always reward ourselves when we achieve small results.
- Preferably let’s train in the morning because we give a positive check at the start of the day.
- Let’s sign up for a yoga or pilates class to regain awareness of our body and ourselves.
A finite love is an event that modifies the person both externally and internally as we have been able to read in this article, for this reason it is said that it needs elaboration .
Processing is a phase that requires us to redesign our lives, change habits and build new dreams. Sometimes you succeed alone, other times you get stuck, so help is suggested.
A personal journey supports the person as well as helping them deal with the end of the relationship. To learn more about my “Free Your Wayward Soul” journey, click here .
