When you say, “I do,” there’s a lot packed into those two words.
There are your vows, of course, whether they’re the traditional “to have and to hold,” or you wrote your own, or they come from a different lineage. You usually make a whole lot of promises in wedding vows.
And (hopefully) you mean them when you say them.
You go into any committed relationship — not just marriage — with so many hopes, dreams and expectations.
For many people, those might be hopes of building a family together, with biological or adopted children. Dreams of the home you’ll create, the life you’ll live together, the memories you’ll make. Expectations of fidelity (unless you have another agreement between you), of how you’ll financially provide for your life, of health and well-being.
Your hopes, dreams and expectations may differ from another couple’s, but it’s entirely reasonable and normal to have them, whatever they are.
When a relationship ends — even if you never got married — so do your hopes and dreams. The expectations weren’t met. It wasn’t what you expected or anticipated. Your heart is broken.
This is grief.
It’s normal. It’s natural. Some would say it’s necessary.
Unfortunately, many of us get stuck in the loss. We get stuck in the unresolved emotions about what we wish had been different. How we wish it had been better. How we’d wanted it to be more than it was. Because then we’d still be together.
Because our society teaches us unhelpful (and often pretty useless) tools to deal with loss, we often jump into the next relationship before we’ve healed from the last one. Replacing the loss is one of those. Ever heard, “There are plenty of fish in the sea?”
But it doesn’t work.
You bring all your past pain into your new relationship. You hope it’ll be better, be different. That it will be enough to meet your needs and heal your wounds. It’s a lot to ask. And it usually doesn’t work.
There’s no shortcut or replacement for doing your own inner healing work.
When you don’t there are typically some things that happen, whether you’re in a new relationship or not.
Here are some of the signs that you may not be emotionally over your last relationship.
- When you think about the past relationship, you feel pain or anger, no matter how long ago it was.
- You’re unable to think about the past relationship, or you won’t let yourself think about it.
- If you had children together, you experience difficulties co-parenting and have tense interactions.
- You’re afraid of being hurt again.
- You have difficulty trusting new romantic partners.
- It’s hard for you to attain emotional intimacy.
- You don’t trust your own judgment.
- You still have feelings for your past partner and hope the relationship could be rekindled.
It’s OK if you’re feeling this way.
It means there are things that are emotionally incomplete or unresolved for you. And there’s something you can do about it.
Recovering from loss is possible. You need to take a series of small steps to look at the relationship in its entirety, discover what’s still painful, and take the right actions to resolve that pain. You need to take ownership of the things that you could have done differently or better, and hold the other person accountable for the things they could have done differently — and then forgive them so you can let go of the pain and move forward in your life.
That might sound like a lot of ask. That’s what I’m here for. I can guide you through these steps, teach you the tools you need to move beyond loss and learn to have happy, healthy, lasting relationships.
Click here to schedule a free discovery call to talk about whether the Grief Recovery Method is a good fit for you.