When it’s time to move on after a breakup there are a few things that must end before you can have a new beginning. For one thing, it’s really difficult to still be intimate with them. When you have sex with that person you’re dragging through a divorce, it makes the process super confusing.
Even trying to be kind or peaceful or ugh, conscious, makes it tough. When we love we want intimacy. Usually, a breakup like a divorce is the furthest thing from intimacy one can get. So that moment of weakness when you think, ‘Oh why not, just a quickie,’ starts to feel really awkward and unkind and dirty once you find yourself back in mediation, or worse yet, the courtroom.
You’ve got to end doing it with them when you’re ready to move on after a breakup.
The stuff. Like really, are you going to fight over the who gets the TV or the antique clock or the piece of art you bought on your honeymoon…crap really? Stuff you have to pay someone to cart away and pay someone else to dust. Or then plead with someone new to love but they won’t because it was never theirs, to begin with. It’s simply not worth it. Let the stuff go and move on after a breakup. It reeks of bad memories even if it’s full of good memories and brings with it the energy of unhappiness. Let your ex-partner deal with this stuff.
Let go of the stuff so you can move on after a breakup.
Who you were. Yep, that image you have of yourself: the self-righteous, holier-than-thou impression you have of your victimhood. Poor you… you who stayed in unhappiness, you who did your damnedest to make it work. Even the you who paid for everything and who did everything. Or the you who gave birth and cooked, and cleaned. The you who never got to see the kids. Holding onto the image we have of ourselves keeps us stuck in the past, unable to imagine a future. Unable to move on after the breakup. It keeps us untethered to the reality of the situation. That person you were in a relationship with the person you’re divorcing doesn’t get to go into your future with you whether you want it to or not. It can’t.
Holding onto the image we have of ourselves keeps us stuck in the past.
Let go of the shared future. It’s not shared anymore. Your future is different than your past. It’s yours. You get a chance to remake it, redefine it, and grab a hold to what you find meaningful. Finally, you get to create a separate future for yourself and change. This is what I call a re-do halfway through—halfway is how I felt when I divorced in my forties. Halfway meant I had a chance to do it all differently—on my terms, with my rules and my values, and my new found boundaries. I grew a spine and used it… that future once dreamt of stays in the shoebox in the closet behind a closed door.
You’re not in a shared future anymore. Let it go to move on after a breakup.
The way you view change. Meaning, if you’re afraid of change (like most reptilian animal brains we have) you’re going to have to seriously get over it. The month everything inside me completely changed, and I realized there wasn’t a single cell in my body that had had sex with my ex-husband was the beginning of a brand new life for me.
We change.
We’re allowed to change and no one, including our interior thoughts and feelings and fears, can stop the changes that a breakup will thrust upon you. The other way to look at this is, “life happens.” It does, and while going through a divorce it’s best to look at each morning as a chance to do it better. To feel better, believe better, and create a better future.
