Don't Become Another Divorce Statistic! You can save your relationship. Learn how!

Losing a relationship can be gut-wrenching — the emotional pain is some of the most difficult feelings people experience in their lives. It takes time - break-ups are a small death. The death of what you once saw as your future. Just like when loved-one passes away, we grieve when a relationship comes to an end.

I’m not an expert, but have had my own break-ups to deal with (including divorce), as well as witnessing many friends go through similar circumstances and hope the following tips and advice will help you with your grieving process:

Use a Journal for Reflection

Write down as many of your thoughts, feelings and ideas as possible. Be honest…don’t bother editing yourself. Learn something about yourself. Specifically, learn something bad about yourself. If you think a break-up and your heartache is only the other person’s fault — your logic is flawed. It always takes two.

Some Questions to Ask Yourself:

Why did you get involved with this person in the first place?
Did the relationship help or hinder your personal development and life goals?
Where you in a co-dependent relationship? A toxic relationship? A parent-child relationship, etc.
What qualities / values did your other half have that were positive and negative?
What did you learn from this relationship?

No Blame

Get out of blame as soon as you can. Blame is for 5 year olds (and emo teens). Aim for responsibility and understanding rather than blame. Personal responsibility is the key to many areas of life, and your future love-interests will appreciate the maturity. He/she may have been a manipulative control freak, but you failed to recognize that quality before getting involved with them in the first place.

Exercise & Diet

Exercise and good food for the body. Break-ups are depressing, and the psychological pain is sure to have psychical manifestations…so help yourself out by picking up a new sport (we suggest juggling) to get some of those endorphins going (and that is much cheaper and safer than pharmaceuticals).
It’s easy to start poor eating habits when you are feeling down about lost love — so watch what you eat and try to keep it healthy.

Friends are Your…Friends

Get out and re-connect with friends and acquaintances: couples often rely on each other for emotional support (un-healthy couples rely solely on each other). When a couple splits — they are no longer able to give this emotional support. This is a huge factor in the loneliness equation. Make sure you keep up with friends and family and don’t let yourself retreat too much into yourself.

Rebounds

Breaking up with someone to pursue another person is a dead-give-away of your lack of relationship skills and worse yet — it shows a serious deficiency of self-knowledge. Falling in love hard enough to crack teeth only to have those feelings slip away almost just as fast…and then starting that cycle all over again is serial monogamy — do yourself a favor and take a break from pursuing “love” for a while. Keep relationships casual while you work on your own issues and grief.

Time

I’ve heard that the general guideline for the time it takes to get over a relationship after a break-up is 1 month for every year of the relationship. Although some folks swear by this formula and offer it as hope to those newly heartbroken — remember that everyone is different and the time it takes for you to heal fully is subjective.

Remember — time will make things better, and the only person responsible for your happiness is you.

If all works out (which things generally do) you will come out of your break-up as a stronger and wiser individual that is able to have healthier future relationships thanks to lessons learned. Smile.

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