I have been emailing a friend, Alice, about her breakup and how she managed to finally accept her breakup. It is an important stage of breaking up – I have written a post about her process for finding acceptance after breaking up with her husband, over at my hubpage. She has moved on now – feeling fabulous and single, but she has some tips that I have shared with you, along with the summary of acceptance.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who has done landmark research to do with grief and loss, explains in her book On Grief and Grieving that acceptance is when we learn to live with our loss - it doesn’t mean that we necessarily are OK with it.
She goes on to gives some other signs that acceptance is starting to come into your life:
- You start to accept things when you become aware of the practical reasons for the loss – even if you don’t understand the reasons
- Slowly you withdraw your energy from your loss and begin to invest it in life again.
There are some other things you could try to help you progress with your acceptance. You need to work out what you need to do to convince yourself that this has happened.
- Like Alice, you need to take time to feel that reality.
- You need to tell your story, although be wary of seeing your ex through a soft-focus lens (this is called splitting), so get that good friend over and talk about the breakup (make her some fabulous most delicious brownies from my recipe as well).
- Do something that helps you convince yourself that you have broken up, maybe go with a friend or alone to one of your ‘couple places’. Go to a movie you might have gone to together, alone. Create a ritual to farewell your relationship – I have a friend who throws an annual ju-ju party where people throw mementos of past loves or jobs on the fire, and then go on to celebrate the new. Other people have told me that as part of their breakup process they planned to do the things they couldn’t do while in their relationship – go on month-long hikes, travel to countries that their partner didn’t want to go to.
Ask yourself: Who or what would convince me of what has happened? And then spend some energy on finding the answer to that question.
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