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Feeling Disappointed In Love After A Break Up?

Coping with break ups

By Elaine SiheraPublished 9 months ago 4 min read
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Feeling Disappointed In Love After A Break Up?
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

It is very easy to feel disappointed in anything when it doesn't go as we expect, especially when we love someone else and it doesn't work out for them. It is also tempting after the first break up we experience to regard the whole concept of Love as something we cannot trust, or to be avoided. But that approach is actually treating Love as a static, unchanging thing that we've tried, that hasn't gone well, and now we don’t like it, instead of accepting that we’re all different as people in our actions and reactions and not everything will work out first time.

That singular view of life, that judges everything on one disappointing event stems from a desire for perfection. When Love doesn’t work according to our expectation, we blanket the whole idea of it, instead of accepting that it didn’t work with just ONE person, and we probably have a few more relationships to go before we discover what makes us really happy and how to get it, assuming we learn from the negative experiences.

There are no guarantees in life: no 'forever' for anything, no perfection, or magic wand for making things work. We are the ones who, by our attitude, either succeed or fail at them. If you are still disappointed, hurt and resentful long after a break up, you are clearly inexperienced in relationships, or you are not using them as learning tools about your own needs. You really need to dust yourself off, put it down to experience, remind yourself that what happened involved only one person, not the whole world, and move forward with a positive attitude to see what the next person brings; one who might find you much more amenable and could even be the right soulmate for you.

Many people have this idealistic view of love that anyone they fancy will be their true love, regardless of how the other person might feel about it. But relationships don’t work like that when we are dealing with strangers who have different needs, expectations, and objectives to us. In fact, people come into our lives for one or more of four different reasons:

  1. To teach us something, or for us to teach them in turn - and the lesson could be either positive or a negative wake-up call; AND/OR
  2. To guide us out of a bad patch or depression in our lives;AND/OR
  3. To build up our confidence to deal with the next person in line - who could even be the big one for us - AND/OR
  4. To be the genuine article: our long-term soulmates or partners.

Notice, that finding the right person for us has only about a 25% chance of occurring whenever we meet anyone! Hankering after lost loves in resentment, anger or vengeful hostility is the worse thing you could do to yourself. They have served their purpose and moved on. It has to be accepted with love and forgiveness, where necessary, for your life to progress, too.

Me with current partner after marriage break-up!

For example, before all this knowledge on relationships, I thought a guy I met once was the real thing because of the intensity and length of the relationship. But, he was type No.1 and 2 - there to teach me about real, unselfish love, and guide me out of my personal crisis, while I taught him an alternative view of life. And boy, did we both learn! Through him I learnt precisely what makes me happy in a relationship and thank him so much. I am a different, much better, person now than when I first met him, as demonstrated now with my current partner

If you're wondering what to do next in some confusion, it could be because you are just focusing on the break-up and not on the lesson it is teaching you about yourself and your interaction with others. Yet the first thing you should do next is to start the process of self-love before you seek anyone else, simply because people who tend to focus on others to give them what they could be missing don't love themselves very much. However, if you depend on the love of others to compensate for the lack of your own self-love, your relationships are likely to fail every time, because you would be be TAKING from the other person, not giving much back in return, and they’ll soon get tired of that.

Time to work on yourself, your fears and your expectation of others. It means the next friendship that doesn’t work out won't trouble you too much, because you would accept that your self-love will support you in times like these. You will also accept that just as you can fall in love easily, the law of life says it can end easily, too. It’s just that many people, in their desire for perfection, refuse to accept the simple logic of beginnings always having endings, no matter how long they take!

RELATED BOOK: 7 Steps to Finding, and Keeping, 'The One'! (ebook & print)

RELATED PODCAST: When Attraction Goes In A Relationship

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About the Creator

Elaine Sihera

British Empowerment Coach/Public speaker/DEI Consultant. Author: The New Theory of Confidence and 7 Steps To Finding And Keeping 'The One'!. Graduate/Doctor of Open Univ; Postgrad Cambridge Univ. Keen on motivation, relationships and books.

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