Taking A Pause: How Choosing to Take A Break Helped Me Deal with My Destructive Tendencies
When Taylor broke up with me, I started to spend more time with Misty. Within a couple of weeks, we were in an intimate relationship. Then, as I was still with Misty, I met Melanie, and I immediately ended things with Misty to be with her. But I never really paused during that whole time to process Sam’s break up. Instead I turned to donuts (comfort food), and I focused my energy from one relationship to the next, while not really addressing the issues, in particular my commitment conflicts, that had ended things with Sam. I continued to avoid my issues as I transitioned to a relationship with Melanie where I was finally confronted and made to deal with my fears.
It was Melanie’s breakup that finally made me see that I had been repeating a series destructive patterns throughout these relationships, and, just as important, I was not giving myself a moment to pause, process my feelings or what I was doing, and to fully mourn one relationship before moving onto another.
The beginning of the end of those patterns happened one night at a friend’s birthday party. It had only been three days after Melanie had broken up with me. I was feeling despondent, and I almost decided not to go. But I felt God encouraging me to attend.
This was also the night I was working the box office and concessions at a local theatre company. I was alone because originally Melanie was supposed to volunteer with me, but after our break-up, she obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
I felt low, the main reason being my falling-out with Melanie, but also seeing everyone at the Theatre so happy. At one side of the theatre, a party was going on, and I could hear laughter. At the other side, a play was being performed to a full audience.
I have always dreamed of acting, and to be so close to something I want to do, yet so far made me feel like I was at an impossible distance away.
It felt like that scene from Gattaca when Vincent, the protagonist, is working as a janitor at a space center where rockets fly up into space. His dream is to be an astronaut, but at that moment, he narrates, “I was never more certain of how far away I was from my goal than when I was standing right beside it.” I understood what Vincent felt.
Towards the end of the performance, I sat on the floor in the hallway while the play reached its conclusion on one side and a party filled with gaggles and shouts happened on the other. I remember sitting there in that darken hallway, only being able to see the silhouette of objects in the bathroom because of a small candle lit inside. The coarse texture of the wall made from recycled wood caught on my back. The cold smooth concrete of the floor began putting my legs to sleep. I could hear the joy come from the party, people in their twenties and thirties, nicely dressed, holding plastic cups, their voices rising in excitement, enjoying classic rock. I stood up, peaked between the gap of the double doors to let audiences in and out, and eavesdropped on the actor who gave his final monologue every night, and I imagined the audience listening with anticipation for the climax to be either shocked, to try and make sense of what the story meant, or to just to finally get a chance to pee.
It was in that hallway that I heard a voice in my mind repeating one thought: Remember this time when no one believed in you. Over and over again the thought kept coming. Not incessantly, It was more like a gentle rising and receding of the tide. It was calming. The words repeating in my mind so naturally made me feel like this was something that I just had to experience; it felt like something as natural as everyone’s first disappointment, first heartbreak, or first moment of guilt. I secretly felt hope. It felt like a challenge and call to find myself in a future where one day people would believe in me again, where I could believe in myself again. It was one of those I’m-at-my-lowest-point-now-but-just-wait-and-see moments.
When someone is in despair and confused about his or her life, these moments come as a pivotal blessing.
So I found myself at this party, feeling awkward because I was alone. Allison, whose birthday it was, asked me as soon as I saw her where Melanie was. I told her a quick summary of the truth. I expected judgment, but she was sympathetic and encouraged me to enjoy myself as much as possible.
I had only planned to make myself a drink and then leave shortly after. But as I was sipping my Gin and Ginger beer in the corner, Amber-Lynn came up to me. She liked my hair. We ended up talking most of the night. She told me about her recent breakup; I opened up about my more recent separation. Then it started getting late, and I didn’t want to make a move on a new person only three days after things had ended with someone else.
So I told her goodnight and began to leave. I had only gotten out the front door when Allison stopped me, asking why I was leaving Amber-Lynn alone. I told her I didn’t want to be insensitive by hooking up with someone new right after a breakup, but she stopped me from explaining. She gave me her full blessing to engage with Amber-Lynn. She even brought me back inside to Amber-Lynn and told us both to enjoy each other’s company. I remember Allison clasping both Amber-Lynn and my hands in some sort of mock wedding vow. Then she left us together. I asked Amber-Lynn what she felt. She approved. So we ending up making out in my car.
The next day I texted Amber-Lynn. And we started messaging each other. But I felt conflicted. I had to make a decision: I could move on to the next relationship, not adequately dealing with the fallout of Melanie and letting the fallout of Taylor and Misty build up as well, or I could take a pause and assess why my relationship had ended disastrously with Melanie so that I would not repeat the same mistakes again.
I chose to pause. It was difficult, but I needed it to heal me. I wish I would have been ready to have started a new relationship with Amber-Lynn (She was AMAZING!), but I realized I wasn’t. I realized that I couldn’t give Amber-Lynn my best self the way I was. And I couldn’t continue lying to myself, nor could I continue hurting other people.
It is unrealistic to believe that I could “seamlessly move in and out of another person’s life” (47). Leaving a partner for another has serious effects on that person. I was wrong to have left Misty for Melanie the way that I did. I was wrong to have gone from Taylor to Misty the way that I did.
In my pause, I started finding validation for taking a break. According to Steven Carter and Julia Sokol, “Psychologists tell us that the struggle to connect in the present is totally dependent upon and dictated by struggles with connection in the past” (54). They state that until a person makes peace with his or her past, the trauma of it will continue to haunt current relationships again and again. I wanted to de-clutter myself of all the baggage I was carrying. I didn’t want to bring a tremendous load of baggage to a new relationship.
Carter and Sokol state that most people tend to avoid working out their feelings. Instead these individuals hide from their painful emotions by immediately trying to find another partner and/or ways of reclaiming old partners, which is what I had done from Taylor to Misty to Melanie.
They go on to state that many people don’t process the end of a relationship; instead they try to quickly move on to a new partner because they have the belief that love will save them. It is alluring to believe that we are reborn in the love of someone new. In part, this is true — it is the start of a new relationship with someone who sees us in a new positive light; they are attracted to the qualities that have been neglected for so long since our last relationship spoiled.
But we delude ourselves into believing that this new love will wash away all the patterns that have soured our previous relationships. All we are really doing is covering up the internal self-destructive patterns and unresolved issues and bringing all of that into the new relationship — continuing the cycle of pain and disappointment. We all have to really take the time to process the end of our past relationships before we are ready to move to a new love.
Instead of processing my feelings and fully mourning one relationship, I ran away to the next one, or to anything or anyone who would give me comfort.
I should have dealt with my feelings before starting new relationships. I should have embraced being alone so that I could have avoided so much pain to so many innocent people.
Carter and Sokol offer some helpful suggestions for handling the end of relationships.
Take at least a month to process and come to terms with what happened before you do anything else.
Use this time to fortify the relationship that you have with yourself. Try to find things that you will enjoy. Work at building your independence. Work on strengthening your self-esteem.
If several months have passed, and you are still haunted by the grieving, recognize that new losses trigger emotional memories of old losses and they all become bundled. This can be overwhelming without the help of some professional counseling. The good news is that these times provide opportunities to heal losses, both old and new (213).
As I come to the end of this piece, I admit I am not a good person. I failed the women whom I was in a relationship with. And as for God talking to me in the way he did, I don’t understand his grace, but I accept it. I went through what I went through, and I got what I got, because I need to go through those things in that way. I don’t understand why I needed them that way, but that’s the way I could best learn and change. It was how I found my way towards repentance.
Works Cited
Carter, Steven, and Sokol, Julia. Getting to Commitment: Overcoming the 8 Greatest Obstacles to Lasting Connection (And Finding the Courage to Love). New York: M. Evans, 1998. Print.
