41: Episode 41: Getting Over Someone

This is a podcast about getting over someone and that can be, um, a trivial relationship or a long-term relationship. This is one of those podcasts that answers questions I've been given.

Question number one, what does getting over someone even mean? So when we end a relationship, there are inevitable feelings of loss. There'll be regret, sadness, likely be hurt and anger, and quite often unfinished business. Getting over someone means completing that unfinished business for yourself, even if you're not able to complete it with them. One of Freud's well-known phrases was What you don't resolve, you repeat. None of us wants to waste our lives going over the same old ground in one relationship after another, not getting what we want or what we need.

We need it and want it to be better next time. So at the end of a relationship, it's important to evaluate what was good, what was bad for you, what was indifferent. So when you have a next relationship, you are even clearer about what you're looking for and what you want to avoid.

You might ask yourself these questions, what was attractive to me about this relationship and the other person?
What was I hoping for that I did get?
What was I hoping for that I didn't?
How was I in that relationship?
Could I be fully myself? Could I be relaxed?
Was I making too many sacrifices?
Were my feelings and needs respected and honored?
Was there enough respect, support, love and affection for me in the way that I want to be loved?
Was my former partner willing and able to show me enough love in that way?

So those are really important questions, but I think the key one is, what was my 3%? What did I do in that relationship that made it less fruitful, less enjoyable, less long? You know, what did I do that cut it short, that created disconnection. How did I contribute? We want to really be homing in on ourselves to identify what were our feelings and needs that were not being acknowledged or truly expressed in the relationship.

Did we speak up enough about our feelings and needs?
Was there a disconnection?
Were they not heard?
Were they not understood?
Were they not valued?
Was there a mismatch there in feelings and needs that they create a conflict?
Were you dimming down your own light in order to be acceptable in the relationship?
Were you tolerating bad behaviour or behaving in ways that you didn't like for yourself?

Get a really clear, honest devaluation and that will help you to grow in maturity and develop new relationship skills so that you don't just repeat but evolve. So let's look at what getting over a relationship means. It's slightly different with each one. And if you have children together, it may be that your goal would be working through what went wrong between you so you can have enough of a civil relationship to take care of your children and co-parent. Well, conscious uncoupling can really help this. Even if only one of you takes the program, the results can be astounding. Read the book. Read the book if nothing else. Conscious uncoupling by Catherine Woodward, Thomas. Sometimes couples even get back together as a consequence of the increased communication and honesty that comes through in doing the program.

If trust and respect between you have completely gone or you feel unsafe, your goal may be to completely separate from your former partner, never see them again. In this case, healing and growing and making sure you never make the same mistakes again is your goal. You can use the conscious uncoupling process for yourself. Really explore and free yourself from those old underlying patterns that made you think it was okay to enter into a relationship with someone who was less safe. And it will help you own your skills at discerning who is safe and who isn't. 'cause quite often if we've had issues in our childhood, those skills of discernment are reduced.

And the next question was, should getting over someone be the goal after a relationship? And I think it's part of the goal. Often when we part from someone we still love or did love, it opens up deep feelings that go way back to our attachment styles we formed in childhood. This is often something that we're unaware of on a conscious level, but we'll be living in and acting out of unconsciously. We need to separate out from the other person and do that healing to evolve from those early childlike patterns of dependency and demand and move into more adult healthy interdependence.

A breakup is a real opportunity to grow and change. And if we don't get over the other person, we're likely to be stuck in a very young pattern of relating that will not be healthy for us going forwards and block us from having more future healthy love. It's more like a parent-child relationship with you being the child, having very little power or agency. You'll need to grow and rise up through this for healthy future love. So what other ways can we move on from relationship?

There's a running joke that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else <laugh>. The chances are we'll likely repeat the same pattern as the previous relationship, do the same or do the opposite. It's still both sides of the same pattern. Rebound relationships are fraught because we don't give ourselves time to process what happened with the past, past relationship and grow from it. And at the same time, we are not looking at the new person with great clarity and discernment. We are just jumping in and hope they can catch us. Is it okay to never get over somebody? No, definitely not.

You may have regrets and you may need to make amends possibly to them and most likely to you. But it's a waste of your life looking back and not living into your future. It means you're stuck in the past and a victim to those old patterns and ways of being that way lies, depression and misery, even self-hatred. Please don't get bogged down in the past. Look to the light and the better future consciously uncouple or call in a completely different kind of one with love, as always.