Bouncing Back After a Bad Breakup
We’ve all had one.
We’ve all had one.
We dread ever having one again.
The bad breakup.
I think my most devastating one was finding out I was the side piece when the whole time I thought we were so in love and would get married one day. That one hurt. But why did it hurt so much? And why for so long? How do you bounce back and get over it?
My mentor, the brilliant Kara Loewentheil, explained once the concept of clean versus dirty pain.
Clean pain is the feelings we might want to have. We might want to feel grief, sadness, and loss after the end of a relationship. I mean, can you imagine being happy at the funeral of someone you love?
Personally, I want to feel sad when my dog dies or I want to be able to have empathy with someone else’s pain. The clean pain of a breakup is feeling the sadness and loss. It is the bittersweetness of the memories of the love once shared. It passes through us naturally. It may come in waves and it may return unexpectedly, but it always passes through. It does not linger forever.
When someone said time heals all wounds, I think they must have meant clean pain.
Dirty pain comes in when we form a story around what happened that is painful. This could be the story of ourselves, another person, or even reality. The dirty pain of a breakup is hating the other person, thinking what happened shouldn’t have happened, having regrets, or passing or assuming blame. These feelings do not pass. They stick and follow us into the future.
The painful story I had around this breakup was that it happened because I wasn’t good enough. I thought if I had been better somehow he would have chosen me and would not have done what he did. I made his actions mean something about me. I chose to make it mean I was deficient somehow. I wasn’t good enough. This pain never passed. It stayed stuck. I projected it onto my future. If I wasn’t good enough then, how could I ever be good enough in the future? I would be doomed to repeat the same story over and over again. I could never trust anyone’s “love”.
Time does not heal dirty pain.
Time lets it fester.
I think dirty pain is what we have when we have a “bad breakup”.
Avoiding the dirty pain comes down to managing the story you create around the breakup. It means deciding on purpose to not create suffering for yourself. It is done deliberately and with care for yourself.
The story I have now about that breakup is one that holds him accountable for his actions. He made decisions. I didn’t like those decisions. I chose not to remain with someone who makes those decisions. Those decisions had nothing to do with me. They had nothing to do with my future. I can offer myself kindness during times of loss and grief. I can promise myself that I will not punish myself for the actions of others. I will take care of myself always.
After learning the concept of clean versus dirty pain, I realized that I carried a lot of baggage from past relationships. I had so many stories of why things happened the way they did and what they meant about me. I went through an exercise with myself. I wrote down each story in detail without editing. All of the thoughts I had. Then I went back and extracted only the straight facts from each story-no opinion and no perspective. Hard facts only. The result was staggering. The facts were so neutral. They had none of the emotion that my unedited story had. My stories were optional. I created them and I could recreate them. I rewrote them all with a different perspective. Same facts-different, less painful story.
I cannot always control what happens in life. My partner might cheat on me. He might die. He might decide he doesn’t want to be in the relationship anymore. I have no control of these things. But I always have control of the story I create around it. I can decide now to always have my own back no matter what happens. I can decide that I will not create suffering for myself regardless of the circumstances. And if the day ever comes where I have to go through a break up again, I know that I am in charge of writing my own story.
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