How To Get Over a Break Up Excerpts

From the section on Grief:

It is said that the second most intense life stress is loss of love. The first is death. But I question this? Both are final. Both, in most cases, result in the physical removal of someone special from your life. Both result in the loss of a way of life we have become familiar with. Both have resulted in hanging strings of things that were never said. However with death you have the peace of knowing you were in your lost loved one's heart. You were not abandoned purposely, cast aside, or rejected. With death you can take off work and get sympathy. You are given gifts of comfort and understanding. You can go through closing rituals and you can feel contentment that they are in a better place. But with breakups, separation, or divorce, even though you have the assurance that they are still alive somewhere on this Earth, their love was intentionally withdrawn from you! They opted to leave you. We no longer have their presence, nor their care. They no longer want us. Either way, death or breakup, you had little say or control over the situation. I've often wondered if I had been able to deal with my loss easier if my ex had been taken away from me at God's will while he still loved me, instead of his intentional, direct withdrawal of his love for me on his own volition. That's not to say I wish him dead, oh my! That's just to say I think my own personal grief would have been less self-destructive and more accepted and socially supported. I have been through both the death of a loved one, and the intentional physical and emotional withdrawal of a loved one, and I would have to say grief over breakup, separation, or divorce can be equally as devastating–if not more–than grief over the death of your loved one.

In death you lose your loved one's physical presence in both your present time and your future. But in the loss through breakup we haven't just lost one's physical presence in our lives, but their love, also. We experience grief over the loss of their mental, emotional, and spiritual presence, too, along with our own sense of value and self-worth, our pride, our ego, our dreams, our hopes, our security, and our feelings of being loved. We feel rejected, not good enough, not lovable, unwanted, and cast aside. We feel taken for granted and unappreciated for all we have done. We have gone from being everything to being nothing in a moment flat! But what kind of people would we be if we didn't grieve? Doesn't our grief stem from our having been loving, devoted, caring, committed, trusting and involved? Would we really want to be the type of person that is so cold, callous, without emotion, and self-centered that we could easily just dismiss such a breakup and walk away unscathed?..."

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From the section on Fighting Urges to Contact Our Ex:

Habits, and urges, and addictions, oh my! They go hand in hand–what is one without the other?

What is usually the hardest for someone going through a breakup is fighting those relentless urges to contact the ex. "I just need some closure. I just need some answers 'why'. I just want to explain to them, plead with them, beg them, show them how I'm sorry. I just want to hear their voice, see their face, and have them see and hear mine. Maybe they'll realize how much they miss me...blah, blah, blah....yadda, yadda, yadda...." Ewww!!!! Those urges are just so annoying. But what drives us to follow through with them? To risk our pride, our dignity, our self-esteem, and self-respect and fall crumbling to our knees to plead with them? What are they, God or something? Geez! We are sorry-sacks aren't we *grins*. But we've all done it. We've all thought about planning 'accidental' meetings, dreamed of chance encounters and hoped for final conversations. We've all come up with emergency reasons to contact our ex–we've conjured up causes, and schemed, plotted, and coerced our friends to arrange it. So why do we do it and how can we cope with them? How do we fight urges that dominate our thinking and interfere with our daily routine?

WHY DO I FEEL SUCH AN OVERWHELMING URGE TO CONTACT MY EX?
Your ex, and the relationship, were very important to you. It's simply an unreasonable request to expect you to just walk away without the urge to regain that importance back in your life! You crave your ex and the relationship–not just because of love, or security, but because it was a habit and habits are addictions...and addictions are fed by cravings. Without the craving there would be no addiction. It's not the object of the addiction that drives us to have to have it, it's the unbearable, never-ending craving for it that motivates us to lose all for the object of our addiction. It's not the plain, simple alcohol itself that drives the alcoholic to drink...it's that relentless craving for it. Why should breaking the love habit be any different? Only this scenario is a little different. We crave them/the relationship, as much as an alcoholic craves alcohol...however, alcohol won't deny itself to the alcoholic, it won't reject the alcoholic's attempt to drink it, it's readily available to him...but the source of our cravings will deny itself to us, therefore making our craving just a little bit more complex. We have to think of ways to manipulate our objects of addiction. Craving itself is not going to satisfy the urge. So now we're like a junkie in the street that will do just about anything to get their cravings met. We lose pride, dignity, self-respect. We trick our minds into believing that we have catastrophes so we have an excuse to reach out to our objects of addictions..."