Heartache

Falling In Love: How To Get Over A Breakup When You’re Still Love

August 8, 2017

The stories of people falling in love are way better than the tales of breakups. But we all know stories of lovers who’ve had to part ways. Usually, it’s because of career moves, college, and often, timing. I’m sure you’ve had that experience yourself! There’s that climatic movie moment when the music swells and everyone reaches for a tissue. But having to get over your own breakup when you still love someone else is way harder than any movie or book. Because falling in love is what we all want. Here are 3 reminders for how to get over a breakup when you still love each other.

When you’re falling in love, know going forward, you’ll never forget them.

The pain will get easier to bear and over time you’ll be left with happy memories. Yes, Virginia, there will be the ones who get away and you will miss them. Missing them colors who you become. Sometimes, you’ll have a deep friendship going forward. There’ll always be this little secret the two of you share and it makes it kind of fun. No one can ever take away the memories of what you’ve shared.

I still remember falling in love with him and I will never forget him.

My friend D means the world to me, we share many happy moments and have for years now. He’s been married, divorced, and married; I’ve been married and divorced since we were a couple. We never quite had a chance to make our love for one another grow into more than a deep friendship. I had to go to NYC to pursue an acting career, he had to stay put and develop his career. It was more circumstantial than anything else. I adore his wife, he loves my kids. When I see D, our conversation picks up where we left off. The best part, no one has separated our love for one another. Luckily for us, we allowed it to change over the years but let it always be present.

Life isn’t fair! Remember that the heart doesn’t understand exams, deadlines, movers or miles. We often fall in love when it becomes safe enough to feel the good stuff. But not at the right time to commit to the work all relationships put us through.

Falling in love is so much fun.

It hurts when a relationship in its prime gets pulled apart because of timing. I found one of the most discouraging things about my life as an actor was falling in love with co-stars. Only to have the show close or the job end and for them to move to LA without me. It didn’t matter that they were moving on for them. My heart was stuck imagining them next to me waiting for texts and phone calls. Which of course never materialized!

God laughs when we make plans to be in a relationship. Enough said! I especially notice that when there are big life plans in the works… a current lover steps it up a bit. They work extra hard to show you a good time and then poof, you’re off!

The hardest thing about love is that it creeps in on us, takes a hold and then way too often gets ripped away.

Public commitments and legal vows exacerbate the pain of a divorce. There are children, retirement accounts, and past vacations to wrap up. When you’re the one who’s spouse walks out while you still love each other, it leaves a broken heart. Along with tons of confusion and anger no matter what the reasons.

This is where life’s lessons come into play.

Too often, the fight has more to do with trying to hang onto something familiar, than it has to do with the actual fight. Whether it be the person in your life, your home, your children or the fight for your self-esteem. Be brave! When you’re ready to let go, trust life is doing you a favor. Life is not causing you pain. Eventually, you will see that letting them go is the right decision for you no matter how much it hurts.

Sometimes God laughs while we’re falling in love and making new plans.

You may wonder if they still love you while they’re in the arms of another. Or you may be fighting because you want them back no matter what they did. You might also have to let them go because of what they did even though a part of you still loves them. To each of these possibilities is the truth that it will hurt and you will still have to let go.

You move on. You open your hands and your heart.

So you do. You move on. You open your hands and your heart. You forgive yourself for holding onto someone who can’t be there anymore. Even if they once filled you completely and now must get on with their life without you. It will hurt. And you will survive. You have had so much practice in your life already.

Those memories of falling in love and being in love are yours to hold onto.

You alone know who they were when they were with you. No one else makes love to your ex-spouse or ex-lover the way you two did. No one else shared those tears. Or saw your children being born. You were the ones who counted stars and kept each other warm on a cold, early autumn night. Those are your cherished memories. No new lover, no new child, no new spouse can ever take those away from what you’ve shared together.

You’ll never forget falling in love as you step into wisdom.

Over time you will step into the inherent wisdom of life. You know that love always comes on the strongest at the end. Many couples make love a lot before asking for a divorce. Some even try to seduce the other into bed during litigation. They’re opening up sexually just as they’re becoming less emotionally available. Because they are unwilling to do the work that all relationships make us do.

It’s easier to have sex than to dig in and build intimacy in a relationship.

Many people believe the institution of marriage is supposed to be for forever. The fighting and the divorce and the accompanying heartache you’re going through aren’t fair! Sometimes, it also isn’t always up to you and for that, you have to let go and trust.

You trust that your life will expand again. That you’ll heal and love another person. By holding onto the hope that your heart will mend, you make yourself available. To do the work a future relationship will need of you. And one day you’ll look back on those memories you once shared with joy and fondness. (Not during the fighting, not during litigation but waaaaaay down the road…)

After falling in and out of love, you learn to trust you’re being protected.

Remember when your parents told you not to follow a lover across the country? But you did so anyway? only to return home sometime later a bit more humbled when the relationship fell apart. As your heart healed, did you regret the adventure? Were you more appreciative of the experience and in awe of your parent’s wisdom? You were being protected. First by your parents with the warning and then by the universe when the relationship fell apart.

You were not meant to be with them no matter what you felt or what you thought.

That goes the same for marriages and relationships. You have to let go sometimes because when they end, they end. And when they end, you turn your focus back onto you and open up, trusting what’s next for your life. No matter how hard it is or how much it hurts. Your movie is just beginning again!

Can I Survive Infidelity? Yes, And Here’s How You Heal Your Broken Heart

June 27, 2017

At first, you don’t think you could ever survive infidelity. When you first learn about betrayal, your entire world order is rocked and your trust barometer gets severely messed up. You may find yourself incredibly present to the here and now – changing the locks on the doors, throwing their stuff into a dumpster. But you may also find fear creeping into every aspect of your life. You may not recognize yourself amidst the jitteriness and the innate, almost primal need, to be on guard. The weird thing is, you may logically understand that you can survive the infidelity.

You just might not realize how deep the lies cut until the feelings overwhelm.

Friends, those you like and trust, may have seemingly glib responses like, “Just dump them already.” Or your friends may rush to your defense and smoother you with their over-protectiveness. (Which is thoroughly needed in the moment of discovery!) This sort of in-the-moment reaction helps you feel as if you’re not so alone.

Usually, however, those who love you simply don’t understand why the pain cuts so deep.

Your family may suggest you “get over it” and I bet, you want to scream. But adding guilt to hurt to shame to confusion doesn’t help. It will instead, make you want to pull in when you may have to face a divorce or a trial. It may also feel as if your wounds show. Infidelity is utterly embarrassing.

Surviving infidelity takes a strong mind and a solid heart.

The hard part is, a broken heart isn’t solid. While a mind twisted from pain can’t think clearly, and friends and family really don’t get what it feels like to be hurt by the person who made you soar with love. Infidelity is the kind of pain that puts you on your knees.

The problem for you may now be, whom and what do you trust?

How can you talk to someone about the betrayal when they’re full of their own opinions and advice? They may know your lover, your boyfriend or your spouse. When that occurs, you’ll be unsure of whom to confide in and question just how much your children’s teachers know. Lonely, aching, you don’t know where to turn.

It’s your heart to mend after all.

Your marriage and your relationship. Who are the friends to tell you what to do? It’d be great if you could turn back time and just pretend yesterday didn’t occur. Or last week, last month or last year. Your marriage would still be fantastic if “they hadn’t taken that job” or “sold that business” or if you’d “just had had a little more sex in your relationship.” Or they hadn’t lied to you for your entire relationship. Life would be perfect. But life isn’t perfect and we don’t get to turn back time or change our past, unfortunately.

It is tough to survive infidelity by thinking your way toward healing.

You can’t think your way toward feeling better. This is a feeling life. There are two options that I know of – it’s your choice – go deeper inside than you’ve ever experienced or become bigger than you’ve ever had been before.

1) I suggest you find strength from deep within-deeper than the love they had for you or the agreements you made with them. Possibly deeper than agreements you’ve made to anyone really. In fact, you’ve probably never made such a deep commitment to yourself before now. It’s an inner core strength that’s always been there just for you.

2) And find strength from something way bigger than you and where you are in your life right now. In order to rise above the pain and hurt, to come out the other side of this kind of betrayal, you may have to go bigger than you’ve ever imagined believing. I’m talking about things like hope, faith, God even.

Imagine being able to trust yourself completely.

What would it be like to have a man or a woman fall so deeply in love with you that you trusted them enough to let them in? While you also knew when it was time to let them go? Without pain. Free from becoming someone whom you didn’t want to become?

How about being so in tune with your own needs – your gut – that you know whom to trust even before they do. You can tell. You just know. That would be amazing wouldn’t it?

That’s what survival offers. That’s what getting healed is all about. No more pain. No more fear. Total confidence, love, intimacy, and trust. Bliss really. And you can do it.

That’s the kind of healing required to overcome betrayal.

Unfortunately, that kind of thinking doesn’t come from the level of thinking where you are today. This normal, everyday level got you into trouble, to begin with. You can’t stay here and survive. When you decide to go bigger or you go deeper, you find strength and hope outside the way you normally perceive the world. You make the decision to grow through this pain, not hide. In fact, you make a pact with yourself, above and beyond the lover who hurt you.

You are the one who is doing the healing to survive infidelity. Not them.

This is more your soul’s journey than your head’s, really. No amount of logic (from those dear friends) truly helps. Know that you’ll survive infidelity in your marriage or in your relationship if you choose to stay together or not.

Caveat: your partner also has to make the same sort of commitment. (If you’re in a couple and they want to stay together.) Unfortunately, you can’t do their work for them. The couples who survive infidelity choose to work on themselves individually and then work on their relationship together. Agreements need rewriting. Their hearts, time to mend. And new thoughts and perspective added to the mix.

That broken heart, the buckled knee are the keys to your healing and surviving. In their own way, they’re broken, unguarded, and vulnerable. They’ve been cracked wide open and your knees, unable to hold you up on their own. This is the moment to ask for help. To reach out to someone you trust.

Laura Bonarrigo is a Certified Life Coach and a Certified Divorce Coach. Laura’s a writer, public speaker and the founder of The Better Divorce and doingDivorce™ School – online coaching programs for those ready to shed the pain of breakups. For empowering and practical ways to lose the identity of your past, visit www.doingDivorceSchool.com.

How To Move On After A Breakup-5 Things That Must End

June 21, 2016

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.