5 Things I've Learned About Breakups

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.” — Ben Okri

I decided to go with a more personal topic in regard to relationships. My goal in writing is to be able to pen subjects that are not only most valuable and intriguing to me but to help shed light to someone reading who may have experienced topics like these and may not have had someone to talk to or may be embarrassed to ask for advice in situations like these.

No matter how the stars align or how the magic flows, there is no solid blueprint manual to prepare a heart for the ending script of their relationship.

Love is like a two-way highway, and no matter how defensive of a driver you may be, you don’t have control of the other drivers traveling nor will you always be able to maneuver past the obstacles ahead — no matter how well-equipped your vehicle is.

Here are the five things that I’ve learned from and reflected upon after experiencing breakups in my past:

• Not everyone will “match” or “equally give you the love you feel you desire”.

“All the people in the world are only yourself pushed out”. — Neville Goddard

Many times, we expect the other party in our relationship to love us with the same magnitude. We feel that because we express our emotions a certain way, or don’t do things that we feel may trigger responses that we don’t want to experience — that our partner SHOULD reciprocate what we chose to give them.

We can’t have healthy relationships with others if we don’t have a healthy relationship with ourselves first. Every person that you meet is simply a reflection of you in some way. Have you created a safe space to love yourself? Have you really pondered over how you have or have not poured love into yourself?

The biggest takeaway from this point is that love is and also is not transactional. This means that everything you do is done by choice. When you decide to exchange your energy and engrain your essence into your relationship, those are things that you can’t tangibly get a refund for. Spend your energy wisely. Your partner has free will to love you at the level they are willing and able to. It’s up to you to decide if that’s healthy or tolerable for you.

Here’s a video clip from Iyanla about setting healthy boundaries with yourself to break free from bad relationship patterns:

https://youtu.be/IXzQRXN0_i8

• Each relationship is an experience that equips you for multifaceted situations to occur in your life.

Without the experiences you’ve had or roles you’ve played in each scenario of your relationships —who would you be? It’s those intricate workings in those situations that made you the person you are today. When I changed my view of breakups from “doomsday heart palpitations that never end”, to viewing them as aiding me in my universal experience that was predesignated for my ultimate growth; healing began.

The depth of any relationship staggers if neither party is willing to be honest and transparent about who they are, who they were, and what they need. For some reason, there tends to be an unrealistic approach to relationships as if neither of you will change throughout the course of what happens. Things happen individually and then things intermingle at a certain level.

• I don’t place “ideals” or “goals” on anyone’s relationship.

“You never know what someone is dealing with behind closed doors. You only know what you see or what you think you see”. — Mackenzie Phillips

Society has programmed many of us to create what an “ideal” relationship looks like based on celebrities and social media influencers in the public’s eye. The only relationships that you truly get a “behind the scenes” peak of are the ones you have with yourself and the others you choose to participate in.

I no longer want anything that isn’t in divine harmony with my life. So, trying to overcompensate within myself or attempting to have my partner do so, just because I want what “they” have is surely a quick way to start a fire in a slow-burning room.

When I did this, I lost sight of who I was at that moment in time and I was overly consumed in the relationship beyond repair.

• The ending of a thing is the beginning of something else.

It’s okay to say goodbye. Goodbye, today is a new hello in the same breath. Nothing new can be created if things never end. Sure endings hurt, but sooner than later a beautiful, new you is on the horizon.

• It’s okay to feel your feelings.

Lying to yourself about your feelings and masking your emotions only does more damage in the long run. You can only do so much eating, sexing, deflecting, and re-orchestrating the pain of the loss you’re experiencing for so long before you crash like the Little Red Corvette Prince sang about in 1982.

It’s okay to sit with yourself and feel your feelings. Scream if you have to. Journal, sing, join the gym, start a new hobby or whatever gets you back into your element.

Breakups suck, but we all have or will experience them someday.

Besides, you know the old saying:

“Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all”. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

What’s your take on this subject?