Archive for February 25th, 2011
You know you’re ready to get over someone-but something’s blocking you. Either you’re too angry to let it go, or your mind brings you back to “the good times” and you use the long-gone happy memories to keep you in the relationship. Either way, you’re still not letting go.
To move on, take everything into account- the good, the bad, the ugly and use it as motivation to learn from your relationship and move on.
Get a piece of paper- whatever size you like. Take up the whole page and write “The Good,” then “The Bad,” and finally, “THE UGLY.”
In “The Good” category: This is where all of your happy memories and reasons for loving your partner can go. It can be very vague, or perhaps if a particular memory (like how you met, or an intimate moment) is on your mind- put it down. Perhaps your partner evokes feelings of comfort that you’re afraid to go without, or perhaps you just love having someone to share the holidays with. Be honest, what made you love them, what made you stay in the relationship this long?
In “The Bad” category: This is where the little pet peeves go. Plus anything that has been eating at you, or the less-than-romantic reasons you’ve stayed in a relationship you weren’t feeling solid about. Perhaps you worried about being “alone,” or you don’t want to deal with the scores of mutual friends you have accumulated and what discord a breakup might create. You can also relay some of the smaller things that have turned into big things- reasons that the two of you might be better off parting.
In “The Ugly” category: This is where the deal breakers go, the stuff that really hurts, makes you fume or totally changed your perspective on your partnership. Did they cheat? Did you discover that you wanted different things in the long term that cannot be worked out? Here, name the major issues that have come to light that would propel you forward in ending a relationship and help you justify the need to let go and move on.
Getting over someone is a process- it’s okay to be conflicted in how you feel after a relationship has ended- no matter who made the decision that it was over. Confronting those various emotions- the love and the hate, can give you the tools you need to look at the relationship with a new set of eyes and some sense of balance.
No relationship is all good or all bad- but sometimes it’s easy to glorify or demonize what’s happened, but that might not help us move on. Having it on paper and being able to analyze your experience without polarizing it could be the next step in healing.
Frugal Beautiful 