RELATIONSHIP COACHING
Happy New Year: I’m Leaving You
This is the perfect time to leave your significant other. Here’s a fresh perspective to help you prepare for this necessary shift.
Whew! 2020 –– what a year! Am I right? The fact that you’re reading this means you made it through the old year and into the new one and first of all, let me say congratulations! Hundreds of thousands of Americans did not make it through, and even though you’ve been playing it safe and following protection protocol, it also feels like the luck of the draw a little bit. It feels as if you’ve won the life lottery, and the idea that “it could’ve been me” might have inspired you to make some pretty significant changes in 2020. By now, depending on when you made these shifts, you may be reaping the rewards of the changes you’ve made, and hopefully, those alterations were good for your overall health and well-being. If you’re anything like me, these healthy shifts include ditching one-sided and unequally-yoked relationships, leaving you to feel lighter and happier than before the pandemic began. But it’s not over yet.
Where Your Loyalties Lie
If you didn't leave your spouse or partner in 2020 but have been thinking about it for some time, you have to leave them now. You just fucking have to. By now, some of you reading this have already figured out this article isn’t for you and will continue reading for entertainment purposes only. But, at least one of you read the first line of this paragraph and felt a pang in the pit of your gut because you know –– you know you should've left a long time ago, and you know now is the time to move forward.
For a while now, maybe since the relationship began, you’ve been feeling slighted. For the majority of your time with your partner, you haven’t felt heard or understood. You have bent over backward to the point of breaking, hurting yourself while trying to make this person happy, and you’ve blamed yourself for the times they aren’t. God knows you love them, and for years, that love has been the glue that not only holds you together but adheres you to the bottom of their shoe. You’ve been kicked around, stepped over, and walked upon. You’ve been tired, and now you’re exhausted, but you promised, you committed, and you are loyal — not to your relationship but to the ideal version of it you hoped it could become.
Where Your Fear Resides
You’re afraid. What will you do, where will you go, and most terrifyingly, who will you be without this unhappiness, this settling for less to which you have become accustomed and built your entire life upon? And that’s just it. You want more and better, but you’re not even sure you’re worthy of it. You’re older now. You’ve packed on a couple of pounds, and even though you blame them on the pandemic, the truth is that food is the only comfort you have left.
You’re afraid of being alone and that no one will want you. More than being by yourself, you’re afraid to be with yourself. You’re afraid of facing the reasons why you’re here in the first place, the reasons why you settled for less than you’re worth. You’re afraid of facing the reasons why, and instead of raising your standards and prompting the right partner to meet you where you are, you have lowered them in a successful attempt to meet your current partner’s inferior vibration. You’re afraid to dig into the dark, dank recesses of your mind and unlock the memories that define the developmental trauma you suffered as a child, which led to your insecurities as a young adult and have followed you all these years, unchecked. You’ve got some work to do, and you’re hiding from it.
Where Endings Become Beginnings
You’re not the only one who feels this way, and though leaving seems like the scariest shift you can make right now, you and I know it’s the only move worth making. You and I both know there’s no other way around it and that you’ll just have to do it scared. But, here’s the good news –– you’ve already survived one-hundred percent of your worst days, which proves that even when it feels as if you can’t make it through, you always do. You’re tough, kid. You’re made for this shit, and all you have to do right this minute is take a baby step in the right direction. Today, make one decision, no matter how small, that will bring you one step closer to a newer, happier, healthier life.
And there’s more good news! Though leaving someone you have loved for so long feels final, the truth of the matter is that relationships never end –– they only change. There is no way to go back in time and undo what has been done or forget someone and what they have meant to your life. There is no Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and no way to unrelate to someone with whom you’ve had a relationship for any amount of time or on any level of intimacy. Couples may turn from lovers to casual friends or even virtual strangers, but none of that signifies an ending as much as it signifies a change. Even when we are estranged, we are in relation to one another; ergo, the ending of one type of relationship is only the beginning of a different sort.
Where You See Yourself
With your fear and doubt gathered in your throat, move forward. You know what to expect if you stay –– more of the same. But, in your new life, any and everything is possible, and the one thing you know you won’t have is the sameness of the past many years. You know for sure that you will open yourself up to possibilities that cannot find you where you are now. Imagine your best life, one that you build, one that doesn’t need anyone else to make it valid. Envision yourself in that place. Feel the happiness it gives you just thinking about it, and then make a commitment to yourself to get there. You have survived a terrible year, you’ve won the life lottery, and by God, you better fucking make it worth it.
