Healing Love's Hangover

Without even realising it, we all have patterns that are observable in our relationship history. These patterns consist of behaviours and beliefs. Some are constructive and some are most certainly destructive. If we are not getting what we say we want in our relationships, it's time to unpack our 'love wardrobe', go through our 'stuff' and chuck out what isn't working for us anymore. And what better time to do it than Spring! 

Does this tiara make me look fat?

Like quick-dry super glue, I have never been one to easily let go of relationships and- until recently- I have forever been rendered incapable of identifying why. I would love to be one of those ‘the world is black or it’swhite,’ kinda personalities. You know the ones I mean. You might even be one yourself. The kind of person is able to call it quits, mean it, and move on. Me, I’m all shades and tones of beige and gray.

The pattern is borderline pathological. The love begins, the fights set in gradually over time. The bitching to friends and family starts. But when it’s finally over, I can’t cope. It’s like I turn into some needy, broken little lost girl. To illustrate, I spent a year with a man who was a raging alcoholic and had neglected to tell me this useful tidbit of information when we moved in together. The night I found out, although every fibre in my being told me to bail, I stayed. I got very fat and depressed being dragged into his morbid world and found myself feeling so low and unattractive that even when my whole life started to fail- including my much loved career, I still couldn’t leave. When he finally moved interstate, back to our home town, I left the city I was living in and returned home too, a completely broken woman.

And still, the drama played on and on and on for another year. I supported him through rehab for seven months to find him drunk again within 48 hours of getting out. He destroyed my laundry, pissed himself twice and I still stayed. Unable to walk away and stand alone (destructive behaviour number 1). It wasn’t until I lost 15kg and met someone else that I was able to let go. I needed the safety net of another person (destructive behavior number 2).

Now the next guy was a fairly decent, hardworking kind of man. He was from the country, 33 years old with no assets to his name and what seemed a never-ending supply of Winfield Blues. I took a while to warm up to him but then it got hot very quickly. But in the back of my mind, the whole time I was thinking that he wasn’t ‘good enough for me.’ And yet again I didn’t listen to myself. Now may I pause for a moment and say that I don’t inherently ever believe that one person is ‘better’ than another. In this instance I was referring to the fact that he had chosen not to accumulate assets or work towards something and instead lived fortnight to fortnight in a very cliché bachelor lifestyle. (At that stage in my development I ranked people as ‘less than’ or ‘better than’ according to these arbitrarily chosen societal indicators. I have hence learned to think very differently…)

Despite the endless arguing, fights and obvious differences in what we wanted for our futures, we got engaged. Yes, I was rapidly approaching 31 and knew that being in my relationship was better than being single, despite its problems and our clear lack of any coherent communal vision. I suspect he felt the same way.

Immediately things went from bad to worse and although the wedding had been set for October, he moved out- in a very dramatic fashion- in late January. Despite the hideous break up, I still couldn’t let go. Ten more weeks of back and forth and back and forth. On again, off again. And the whole time I couldn’t shake the dark feeling that it wasn’t right. So I asked for a break. And he decided- with my encouragement- to move to Queensland.

You’d think I’d be happy, right? I could finally move on from this one too! But no, the little behavioural demons who agonise over being alone and being rejected and abandoned reared their ugly heads again and I found myself aching for him stay. I catalogued everything in the relationship that I did to contribute to it going sour. I tried text messages. Tears. I even promised to stop eating and lose weight (I mean, honestly!!!). Nothing worked. He was leaving.  And I behaved this way for what? To hang on to a man I couldn’t live with and never thought was good enough for me from the beginning! These insidious, dysfunctional and pathetic behaviours were literally dripping from me. From a woman who owned her own home, had 3 degrees, tones of friends and was respected in her profession. The very things I had learned to judge others as ‘better than’ or ‘less than’ by. And yet the ‘less than’ was moving up North to begin a new life and the ‘better than’ was crying, begging and bargaining.

I share these very private things with you not because I am proud or in any way trying to negate responsibility for my actions and choices. Merely because it was this amazing experience that woke me up. I was suddenly and acutely aware of my own patterns. My own ‘stuff’ that made this roller coaster operate each time I was saying goodbye to someone. The behaviours that rendered me unable to say goodbye when I knew things weren’t right and instead kept me engaging in destructive relationships.





We all have at least one of these photos...with the 'ex' head cut out!

I have come to realize that the ‘stuff’ that comes up for us when we go through a breakup is the stuff that is the most damaged within us. And the pendulum swings both ways. If a person feels nothing through a break up or blames the other person entirely, that is also a clear indication of some damaged and broken pieces, which stem from fear. Fear of opening up a big ol’ barrel of pain that, like a fizzy drink once its been shaken, won’t stop pouring out when you open the lid. The frightening thing here is that this type of personality does not look within and can remain stuck with the broken pieces. I know a lady who, until late in her life, was a classic case of this type of personality. If things went sour in any form of relationship, it was always the other person’s fault. This used to grieve me greatly until I realized it because she was so afraid of her own brokenness that she was literally rendered incapable of personal insight.

Conversely, a rapid demise into self hatred, blame, unadulterated fear and panic also highlights many a broken piece, but the very nature of this kind of reaction is ripe ground for healing to take place. Picture this, if a person breaks an arm and acknowledges it through the awareness of pain, that person can seek help to heal it. With advice, rest, a cast and following rehabilitation directives, the person can heal their arm. If on the other hand a person doesn’t acknowledge the break and just downs a whole bunch of pain killers continually, the arm might try to fix itself but will never heal properly and never be fully functional again. It might also have knock-on effects to other areas of the body. The latter is where my natural gravitational pull directs me and historically I would do almost anything I could to rid myself of feeling the pain. Once I was on the ‘self blame- it’s my fault because I am terrible person and I will never be able to make a relationship work’ rollercoaster, the emotions would become so overwhelming that the coping mechanisms- and yes I use the term loosely- I developed didn’t allow any growth to occur. Instead they fostered patterns of behavior which in turn, kept me trapped in the patterns of behavior! I was a malfunctioning circuit!

To avoid pain, people may engage in any or a combination of the following behaviours:

·       Binge eat

·       Stop eating or crash diet

·       Grab whatever man is nearby and flirt to get approval needs met

·       Grab whatever man was nearby and begin a relationship without giving any time to recover from the last one

·       Go back to any men rejected in the past for some attention and recognition of desirability

·       Drink and be reckless

·       Stay at home and sob

·       Not ask for help from friends and family and then resent them when they didn’t offer any

·       Swear off men entirely and reinforce the belief that ‘all men are bastards’

·       Not admit any pain to others by talking about the ex as ‘the bastard who I am glad to be rid of’

I did any number of these things to mask the angst or pain because I believed I couldn’t cope with it. Because we are trained to see that pain is bad and we should fix it, stop it or mask it as soon as we feel it. What do most people do if they get a headache? Think about why the headache came about and how to fix it or prevent future ones? Nope. The general response is to grab a pain killer. Our society is built on the premise that pain = bad.

The irony in this situation is that often, the avoidance of feeling the initial pain creates more pain. We end up with memories we don’t want, kilos we don’t want, relationships we don’t want, or much much worse by engaging in activities that are unhealthy in order to stop ourselves from thinking about the perceived loss in our lives. God, I know men and women who have even gotten married to other people while in a shame spiral after a break up and have bought babies into the world only to face the inevitable demise of the rebound relationship too! But this time with children, divorce, mortgages, etc.

Even though it doesn’t feel like it, a break up gives us the perfect opportunity to clean up our ‘stuff’. I mean, it’s all laid out, right there for us to see if we can bear to look. It’s like our emotional suitcases that we carry with us all of a sudden burst open and our 'stuff' flies everywhere. We can quickly chuck all our stuff back in the suitcases, tape them closed and keep going, or we can actually take the time to go through the stuff we have been keeping in our suitcases and carrying around with us every day. We can throw some things out. Replace some items. Heck, we may even decide we want to chuck the whole lot out and start again! And the more we look, the more we find things we didn’t even know we were carrying!

Having the opportunity to explore our past relationships is key to creating new ones that more closely fit the bill for what we want for ourselves. I have a very good friend of mine who admitted that her dream man is someone who takes her to dinner, opens the car door for her, pays the bill, kisses her gently goodnight…a traditional gentleman in short. And yet she keeps attracting dipshits who behave in the opposite way because that is what feels comfortable for her. Truthfully, if she met the man she had always dreamed of who treated her the way she hoped he would, she would probably push him away because his actions would feel so foreign to her that she would immediately retreat from the situation. Tough to hear but I promise you it’s true. In order for my friend to find this man and actually want to keep him, she has to dissect her old relationships, examine her patterns and make conscious decisions about what she wants and does not want for her future. She has to concentrate on how it will feel for a man to do those things for her and become comfortable with it. She has to identify and consciously release patterns and behavior that are not getting her the results she wants. We all do. And break ups are the perfect time because all our stuff is right there, raw and exposed.

For this healing to take place, we need to be really kind to ourselves and get ourselves to a place where we feel safe enough to actually go through our ‘stuff,’ whatever that may be. We need to stay alert to our ‘stuff’ as it comes up, almost as scientific observers. “Gee, I feel like throwing a brick through his windscreen, that’s interesting” kind of thing, not actually responding to our whims by going and doing something disastrous! Or, ‘gee, I feel totally and utterly useless right now’. Knowing how our thoughts work is key to achieving this ‘observable state’ which then means we get the chance to go through our stuff because we are not so caught up in it. This will be dissected in the next blog to come shortly….

Until then, if you aren’t getting what you want out of your relationships, it’s time to ask yourself why. And answer it-HONESTLY! You might want to ask your family or friends if they notice any behavior patterns or types of men you choose. Be warned, their answers could be painful but will likely provide valuable insights. Draw, dot point or journal (whatever helps you to think best) the type of relationship you crave. Looking at your patterns, what changes or behaviours do you need to get rid of to have it or make it work?

These discoveries can be life changing and depending on how far we go inward our revelations about ourselves can be mind blowing. On this journey I discovered I had an innate hatred of men which I developed growing up in a house with a mother who was very bitter over twenty years of marriage and a bad divorce. I had to consciously take gender out of all my comments and instead of saying things unconsciously such as ‘all men are bastards’ when commiserating with a friend, I am now conscious to say something like ‘yes, some people can be capable of some very bad behavior.’ Sounds like a little thing, but this belief permeated every encounter I had with men! Similarly, I had to release my belief that relationships equal drama, having grown up watching my parents engage in big, dramatic fights and realise that I actually wanted an easy-going relationship without the massive highs and lows.

Becoming conscious of beliefs like the ones I mentioned above and many, many ingrained behavioural patterns which were no longer working for me (putting their needs over my own, for example), I was able to make conscious choices to change those things and subsequently attracted a man who is more aligned with the characteristics I crave for my future. I am not saying it didn’t feel a bit strange at first, but I know I never would have been able to try things with him had I not sorted out my ‘stuff’ beforehand because it would have felt very abnormal being with a grounded and centered person if I was still functioning from my old belief and behavior system which craved drama and tumultuousness.



My emotional mantra! It's from the movie Whip It! "Why don't you be your own hero?"

Break ups allow us to go through this process and decide where our actions and choices are misaligned with what we say we want for ourselves. And the results are surprising. If we are not getting what we say we want, it is because- I promise- there are old patterns or destructive beliefs in the way. Give yourself time. Give yourself honesty. Go through your stuff and release what is no longer working for you. You wouldn’t hang on to an old dress you no longer wore or no longer suited you, you’d get rid of it to make room for the clothes you love. Do the same with your relationship ‘stuff.’ It’s an investment that really will change your life.

Til next we speak, butterfly kisses!

Wyld.