The same week Jody’s promotion to office manager came through, Peter dumped her.
‘I should have felt confident,’ she said. ‘A new position at work, better money and I had staff under me for the first time.’
Instead she felt dull, not full of the energy she needed to take on this challenge.
She met Peter through friends – he was sexy, dreadlocked, the perfect bad boy. They had a casual relationship for most of the first year. She never knew when she would see him and didn’t know how he felt about her, making it a high of drama and excitement. But Jody decided she needed something more. She knew she couldn’t handle another year like that, no matter how exciting it was. She gathered her courage up and asked him if he was willing to change their friends-with-benefits relationship, to something more serious. First he didn’t agree.
‘I thought you wanted this too,’ he asked.
‘I did at the beginning, but now I want something more.’
She thought it was best to be direct.
They went back to being friends (without benefits)
He wasn’t into it and so they went back to being friends (without benefits). Peter came back to her after a few weeks, telling Jody he missed her, and he was willing to give it a try. So they had a relationship where she made plans with him, knew that he was into her, and things felt settled. It lasted for six months.
‘Sorry,’ he said one night over dinner at her house. ‘I can’t do this.’
She wasn’t surprised, he had been calling less and breaking dates with her. Even their great sex life was down to a simmer.
‘I was crushed.’
‘I was crushed though,’ she said to me. ‘And it just seemed to spiral out to affect my life. I just kept saying to myself ‘You’re useless’ and ‘You shouldn’t have believed he’d want you’ to myself and couldn’t seem to stop.’
When this started to affect her work she knew she had to do something. Jody worked hard for a long time to get that promotion and she didn’t want to lose it.
‘I got really strict – every time I thought ‘you’re useless’ I’d stop, breathe and replace it with ‘You’re fine, it’s going to be fine.’ Not exactly an earth-shattering statement but it helped! Things got better at work after that.’
Like Jody you can change the habit of talking down to yourself and replace it with a positive statement. Yell your angry statement first to blow your critic out of your brain, and then sing the lyrics of the song Beautiful to yourself:
You are beautiful,
no matter what they say,
Words can’t bring you down.
You also might be interested in Going into Withdrawal: Stages of Breaking Up, and another Interview: Rachel gets Resolution
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
