I’ve been reading Sarah Water’s gothic tale The Little Stranger.  It is classified as a ‘literary ghost story’ and that describes it well.  A slow but absorbing read, with layers of meaning.  Not a quick book to read on the plane, but instead one you can enjoy once you are on your holiday and have time to linger over it.

There is a breakup in the book and Waters describes the feelings and thoughts you go through straight after perfectly:

My mind, sober, felt as though it would burst.  The simple loss of Caroline was hard enough to bear, but the loss of her was the loss of so much more.  Everything Id planned and hoped for, I could see it – I could see it, melting away from me!  I was like a thirsty man reaching after a mirage of water – putting out my hands to the vision and watching it turn to dust.  And there was all the stab and humiliation of having supposed it to be mine.  I thought of people who must now be told:  Seeley , Graham, the Desmonds, the Rossiters – everyone.  I saw their sympathetic or pitying faces, and I imagined the sympathy and pity turning, behind my back, to scandal and satisfaction…I couldn’t bear it.

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I have had a few emails this week from a lovely young woman who is dealing with an ex who just won’t leave her alone.  They broke up a while ago and she has already had to change her cellphone number as he wouldn’t stop calling her.  Now he is calling her at work, harassing her to get back together with him.

What can you do if your ex won’t leave you alone?

Firstly make sure you’re not sending mixed messages – the old song goes ‘you’ve got to be cruel to be kind’ and in this situation it is true.  You might feel like a heartless bitch when you tell him you are really not into him, and there is no way you are getting back together.  It might make you feel uncomfortable to be so blunt, but in the long run you will save yourself a lot of hassle later on.  If you’re not completely honest, he might believe that he still has a chance with you.

Dragging things out can have the same result as well – if you spend a lot of time together, your ex may believe that there is hope for you as a couple.  You can be friends, but usually you need some time apart to change from lovers to friends.  The distance helps you to break your couple habits.

If you’ve been blunt and he still isn’t getting the message, and it is starting to annoy you, you could ask one of his friends to intervene.  Your not asking them to take your side, you are asking them to look after your ex, help him see that he is wasting his time on you.

Finally sometimes you just have to ignore him.  If talking is not working – in fact any communication seems to encourage him – it’s time to stop taking his calls.  You are not that special person in his life any more who is there to make his problems better, he needs to find other support to get him through this tough time.

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Ever thought about revenge after breaking up?  Did your ex do something so bad that you want to kick his arse?  Check out this article about two women finding out that they had been seeing the same guy at the same time.

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The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.

Stephen King

Don’t you love this quote – it sums up lying and deceit so well.  I think I would rather be a trusting person, and be lied to sometimes, than be suspicious of everyone just in case I catch someone out.  Mind you after being cheated on I think my ‘deceit radar’ is a bit more attuned.  Perhaps it is more about listening more carefully to and trusting the funny feelings and hunches I get.

Check out the Breakup Bitch Quote Site, if you are interested in reading more quotes about liars and cheaters and breakups. And check this out if you are worried your partner is lying to you and you want to do something about it.

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I just found out a friend of mine is breaking up with her adorable boyfriend.  They moved in together about three months ago and everything was going so well.  Until something got in their romance’s way…it’s made me think of the tragic breakup.

Not all breakups are arguments and recriminations – sometimes our timing is out, or our situations don’t match, and this creates a tragic breakup.  You still love each other, and want to be together but it is not possible.  No one’s fault, it just isn’t meant to be.

For my friend, her boyfriend is from another country and after a romantic trip to the homeland to introduce her to friends and family, he realized that he belonged there.  He loves her, but can’t see living in our country permanently, speaking a different language, eating different food and struggling with a different system of doing things for his whole life.  It is understandable – having lived in an extremely different culture before, I relate to his situation.  The only way I could do it was to give it a time limit, to know that I would move back into an easier culture (for me) within 5 years.  Knowing that when I had children, it would be near my family.

But for my friend, it just wasn’t possible.  And she can’t leave here to be with him in his country.  She has health issues and wants to stay here close to her support and her family.  And she has always been clear about that.

So it is a tragic breakup – no blame, no fault, just sad.  I’ve never gone through a tragic breakup, so I don’t know if it is harder to get over.  Would I start to think of ‘what ifs’ afterward?  Would it be harder to let him go?  Would I find ‘no contact’ too hard to do?  How would I get through with no anger?

I hope my friend will be OK.  She is distraught and I feel for her as it’s just the beginning of the stages of breaking up for her, and that first month is so hard.  She is strong, I know she will cope, but it is tragic that she has to go through this.

Are you in the middle of a tragic breakup and need some extra support getting over that ex of yours, check out The Smart Woman’s Breakup Program – it’s based on over 100 interviews with women facing breakups just like you and includes the advice of over 25 experts.  You can download a sample chapter here.

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Learn to fight without hostility and derision, but if staying married means constantly fighting, from the point of view of your health, you’re better off out of it.

Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, clinical psychologist

I stumbled upon this article about myths and marriage – if you are in an unhappy marriage or relationship, this research may make think twice about sticking together at all costs.  You’ve probably read articles about research that shows that  marriage may make you happier, healthier and richer.  But it seems it isn’t quite that simple – a happy marriage may give you those benefits but staying in an unhappy marriage may be bad for your health.

Firstly the benefits of marriage are skewed towards men:

• ‘married men live longer than single men; married men accumulate more wealth than single men; married men are far less likely to die a violent death than single men; married men report themselves to be much happier than single men, and married men suffer less alcoholism, drug addiction and depression than single men.’
• BUT ‘ For women, however, marriage means more depression, less career success and less good health and, until recently, a greater chance of dying a violent death – usually at the hands of the men they love.’

Next, research shows that unhappy marriages can be very bad for your health.  Clinical trials have shown that for both men and women bad marriages or marriages with high relationship stress affect your health.

• Blood tests in women in unhappy marriages show that their immune systems are weakened (and this applied to women still hung up on ex-husbands – so do the work you need to do to purge that ex from your life!).
• After stressful arguments, couples were shown to have lowered immunity, with the body taking longer to heal.

So how you fight and how often you fight is important to your health – and if you have already broken up, you can focus on the stress you are not putting your body through now.  It is a relief to let the arguments go.

You might be considering giving up your relationship -  The Smart Woman’s Breakup Program includes a section about deciding on staying or going, giving you 4 strategies to work through, as well as good decision-making techniques.  The program is based on over 100 interviews with women facing breakups just like you and includes the advice of over 25 experts.  You can download a sample chapter here.

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I know how hard it is to go from thinking you are with the person you are happily in love with – to finding out they betrayed you. On my 38th birthday I saw the first signs my partner was cheating. It took me days to find solid proof of the affair, and within another week I had made a decision about the future of the relationship.

It starts with a feeling something was wrong. Then you begin to see signs of their cheating – but you don’t want to believe it. Once you become suspicious though, you see the signs of infidelity clearly and wonder how you didn’t notice before.

What about you – what stage are you at in uncovering the affair? Click on the button that best describes your situation and let’s look what you are facing on my new website dedicated to busting affairs and dealing with the aftermath:

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I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

President Bill Clinton

If you are interested in sad breakup quotes – check out The Breakup Bitch Quote site.

Are you worried your partner is cheating on you?  Find out the signs, and download a free chapter from my eBook – Infidelity: Catch Them Cheating… And Survive.

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One of the hard things about the sudden ending of a relationship – especially when it involves a third person with an affair – is learning to accept that it has actually happened!  To accept that your partner, who last week seemed so wonderful, has been lying and cheating behind your back is hard to come to terms with.  In a normal breakup we might have seen the signs that the end of the relationship was coming, but with infidelity, the end of the relationship can come as a shock.

It can also be a shock to discover your darling partner is a cheater and a liar – the relationship was not what you thought it was at all.   After finding out about their cheating, to be able to accept it, many of us rewrite our history.  We find we need to know what happened – in detail.  To others this may seem masochistic but instead it is us trying to find a way to accept our new reality.  Don’t be hard on yourself if you find you have this driving need to know, but also understand that you may never know everything.  Your cheater is an adept liar and will protect himself and his affair – he will think he is protecting you too by hiding details even now.

A friend wrote to me with advice about accepting a breakup – it is worth reading as well.

If you are worried your partner or spouse is lying and cheating on you – then check out The Breakup Bitch’s latest site about Catching Them Cheating. You don’t have to put up with lies anymore.

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If you decide to breakup after finding out your partner has been cheating on you, it is easy to slip into feeling like a failure.  I know those feelings crept into my heart, in between the rage I felt at Brian for cheating on me.  Somehow I managed to blame myself for his idiotic behaviour.  I guess if we blame ourselves we give ourselves some control over the situation – if we take some of the blame, we could have done something to change things…even if this isn’t true.

The anger leaves us for a moment, an hour or a day, and easily we fill that void with feeling like a failure.  Is it possible to control these feelings that creep up on us in the long hours of sleepless nights.  Haven’t we been punished enough by our partner’s behaviour?  Do we need to punish ourselves some more with our feelings of failure at weak moments?

Take a look at my earlier post on How To Get Past Feeling Like A Failure and start to recognize that your feelings of failure are just an interpretation of an event (the affair and the breakup).  Get past these feelings and move on to growth and being the person you really are, the person your cheating ex does not deserve!

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