After a breakup you can feel stressed – how stressed are you really?  Take the  Holmes-Rahe Stress Test to see where you are on the scale.  You might be surprised to discover that in addition to your breakup there are a whole lot of other things that affect your stress levels – moving homes, your money situation changes, and ever the number of arguments changes!  All these things affect your stress levels.

After I broke up with Toshi my ex husband, I scored off the chart – there were so many changes in my life!  And stress for me shows in different ways:

• I get sick
• I have accidents!
• I can’t sleep
• or I sleep too much
• I eat far too much
• or I lose interest in food
• I party
• I get obsessive about something – creating a new look, buying a house, a crush, finding a new job, starting a new business – anything to keep my mind busy!

Not of these things are great for me, and so it’s good to be aware of the reasons why I am obsessing or drinking or not sleeping so I can at least minimize the damage.  I can be sure I take a taxi, I can understand that the cute guy in accounts may not be my next true love just because he looked at me, I can take some action to help my insomnia.

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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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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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For me, when going alone, one of the things I miss the most is touch.  I don’t just mean erotic touch (although I miss that!), I mean any physical touch.  When you hug someone your oxytocin levels increase, and with that your feeling of relaxation and connectedness.   I missed that – some weeks I would notice that, except for handshakes and handing over money when shopping, I might not have been touched for days.  It is no wonder some of us search out casual sex.

For those of you with young children, you are lucky to have the little people giving you hugs and climbing all over you (although it doesn’t always feel like luck).  Other ideas you might think about to increase touch in your life:

• We can ask our friends and family for hugs.
• We can play with the children in our lives.
• Schedule a massage if you can afford it.
• If you have a massage school in your city you may be able to get a discount massage there.
• Offer to exchange massages with a friend.

Look for other ways in your life to up your touch quota.  A pet could also be a cuddly companion, although it is also a long-term commitment – you need to be sure that your cat or dog would fit into your life in five or ten years time.  You could always befriend the neighbor’s cat, take a friend’s dog for a walk, or volunteer at your local animal shelter.

What other things do you do to get touch into your life?  It is something that can make us feel so much better in our singleness.  We don’t want to waste away like the honeybee…

Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it’s social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die.
Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

And for another kind of touch – don’t forget our MyPleasure giveaway competition we’re running!

If you need extra support getting over that ex of yours, and finding some excellent diversions along the way – 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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So you’re newly single and looking for ways to keep healthy and happy.  You could head off to the gym – or you could think about heading off to bed with the new vibrator you might win in my latest giveaway…

Besides burning calories, boosting your metabolism and helping you sleep, having orgasms can help you ward off your depressive feelings:

• The ‘romance hormone’ phenylethylamine (PEA) is a natural form of amphetamine that peaks with orgasm.  Low PEA is associated with depression whereas high levels are associated with excitement.
• You can also replicate that natural high that you get in the honeymoon stage of a relationship by having orgasms.  This comes from the ‘bonding hormone’ oxytocin, which again peaks with your orgasm, leaving you feel connected and relaxed.  It contributes to the post-orgasm afterglow that we feel.  You can also get this through touch and eating chocolate (as the fats make the stomach signal the brain to release oxytocin).

• When you orgasm, endorphins (which are a bit like natural morphine) are released into your bloodstream which make you feel good and block pain, and again are related to eating chocolate as well.

So having orgasms, eating chocolate and being touched can help you feel better – you can see that you might be drawn toward having sex (especially with a man or vibrator offering chocolates).

That’s an age-old question – which do you prefer more – sex or chocolate?

For extra extra support getting over that ex of yours – and finding some excellent diversions like sex and chocolate – 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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We’ve been looking at how your body can give you signals that all is not right in your relationship.  Becoming more absent minded or clumsier is a common side-effect of stress.  Or you might be like Alicia, my beauty therapist with her explosion of curly hair, more accident-prone.  Her face lit up when she heard I was writing a book about breakups and she launched into her breakup story:

‘I got together with Clint when he was still with his girlfriend,’ she said in her lilting English accent. ‘Now close your eyes,’ she said and she applied tint to my eyelashes.  ‘We’d been together for about seven months, and something was up.  But I was busy…I didn’t want to work out what was bugging me.’

Alicia barely took a breath between sentences, talking quickly as she worked on my eyes.

‘Then I had three car accidents in two weeks.  I was driving my old Escort, came to an intersection and another car didn’t give way and plowed into me.  The driver was one of those builder guys, handle-bar mustache, builder’s crack…you know the kind of guy.  ‘Jeezus lady, you were flying,’ he said.  He was in the wrong though so I got his details and raced off.  Then I had another one!’ She said, taking a break from shaping my eyebrows.  ‘I was on the way to work in the morning, came up a hill and just went straight through a give-way sign without stopping.  I hit another car.  So I bought a new car, a little black Mazda hatchback. This time I was pulling out from a parking space, when I heard this almighty crunch,’ she emphasized her point by leaning in and plucking an errant crop of eyebrow hairs.

‘I couldn’t see anything – you know those low hatchbacks have a blindspot.  The driver’s door was stuck so I had to climb out the passenger door to see what had happened.  I’d hit a big lamppost, right there in the middle of the back of my car.  A bloody big lamppost.  There were bits of my car on the ground, I picked up the tail light and jumped back in and took off.  I was having all these accidents.  Something was up.’

She stopped speaking to check the evenness of my eyebrows and wiped the dye off my stinging eyes. I looked at her blurrily and she smiled.

‘You look good.’

‘So, what happened?’

‘Something was up all right,’ she said as she bustled around cleaning up.  ‘Clint was cheating on me – with his ex-girlfriend that he left for me!  Can you believe it?  I should have known he was no good.  Long story but after those accidents I started to pay attention and eventually tracked him down at her place one afternoon when he said he was at the gym.  What a bastard!’

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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Ending a relationship can be tough.  Whether you have a red flag like infidelity waved in your face, or things are dying a lingering death, you can have doubts and second thoughts about finishing things.  How do you make up your mind finally?

One thing you can do is to pay attention to your body and what it is telling you.  You might think you are up for one more round of trying in your relationship, but your body might not be.  It might be madly waving at you to make you notice that all is not right in your world – that the stress is affecting you greatly.  I am always amazed (and thankful) at how my body is skilled at sabotaging my efforts to stay in a bad situations.

There are all sorts of signals.  You might be:

• not sleeping
• losing or gaining weight
• getting sick
• having stomach problems, neck or back pain
• having headaches
• having other stress-related problems such as eczema or hives (you literally might become allergic to him!

Or it might be less physical and more a mental reaction like:

• becoming more forgetful
• becoming depressed
• becoming accident prone
• crying more often
• losing motivation in other areas of your life.

Yes, it is good to try with your relationship, but at some stage you need to think about yourself.  One way to be respectful of yourself is to pay attention to what your body is telling you.

If you are having a tough time deciding whether to breakup or not, help is at hand.  There is a section dedicated to strategies to working out what your best move is in The Smart Woman’s Breakup Program. The book and coaching program are based on over 100 interviews with women facing breakups just like you and includes the advice of over 25 experts.  You can also download a sample chapter here.

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There can be a lot of stress during the stages of breaking up.  I’ve posted advice on not sleeping, well what about if your mind just goes crazy and won’t stop thinking when you are trying to sleep.  In fact sometimes you just can’t stop thinking those thoughts all day.  Stress causes this – your mind just won’t shut down.  Thoughts of what you could have done differently, worries about anything from never finding the right guy to having enough money.  All of these stress factors can swim around and around your mind.  Your heart rate goes up, your shoulders stiffen, and you feel stressed. It can be very unhealthy to be very stressed – check your stress levels out with the breakup stress scale test.

One exercise you can try is imagery training.  This is when you train your mind to think about something soothing and let those stressful thoughts go.  You might have a particular thought that is soothing for you – a fantasy about a holiday abroad, remembering a wonderful beach you have stayed at before, or just a nice place you can escape to in your mind.  It shouldn’t be stimulating, it should be relaxing.  I went through my breakup with T fantasizing about houses I wanted to buy – it was a dream, I couldn’t actually handle the real stress of buying a house, instead I would imagine how I would decorate my dream house.  It was the thing I returned to, especially at night when I wanted to sleep.

The stressful thoughts though, can be addictive, so we need to train ourselves to let them go.  So how do we do this?

1.  Think of your pleasant thought or scene

2.  Concentrate on using all of your senses

- the smell (in my case: fresh paint)

- the touch (newly polished floor boards)

- the sound (the sound of hammering as I did my renovations)

- the taste (dinner as I invite my guests to a dinner party for a house-warming)

If you have stressed out thoughts try to invade your wonderful fantasy, don’t involve yourself, just let them enter and leave.  Patience is important at the beginning – you will improve your focus over time.

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