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Recovering Into Love

© Michele KayD

Last week, the topic was when to end a bad/unhealthy relationship. This week, the focus moves a bit deeper, by exploring how to get over a failed/ended partnership. It's about not only recovering from an old love, but recovering into a new, healthy love.

Before even attempting to reenter the dating field, there must be sufficient time to really heal. Depending on the length and magnitude of the relationship, it's an individual time frame, one only the person going through it can determine. While it may feel initially tempting to reimmerse into the deating pool, it's honestly not in the best interest. Just as we go through standard stages of grieving the death of a loved one, we also need to allow the stages of healing from an break up. In a way, the two are interconnected. Life must be faced either without the estranged person or with him/her taking on a differnt, separate role. Life must be first rebuilt without that someone and then allow the newly-single to become whole, on his/her own. When you aren't there for yourself, you can't truly be available emotionally for someone else, including someone new.

After healing, review the issues of why the relationship failed. Were there trust, honesty, communications, or other problems? What role did both partners play in the breakup? Did you cause or lead to the problems? Are there underlying hangups that led to the breakdown? If so, you may need to address and work on those issues before moving forward. It is a frequently noted truth that we tend to repeat negative situations, fall into and essentially even attract the wrong kind of relationships until we figure out and improve our own blocks. This is why repeated patterns occur, why some people perpetually seem to find themselves in the same, destructive kind of unhealthy patterns. Until creating happiness for oneself, it can't be expected to come into one's life from an outside source or to be there to offer another.

The key, as I believe and have experienced it to be, is that when you feel secure with yourself, alone, then you are ready to open up to the possibility of sharing yourself in a meaningful partnership. Don't rush the process or think there isn't enough time, because the reality is that there isn't time not to give yourself what you need. Love has been proven to work in amazing, unpredictable ways, yet when you are ready, love does find the right links and presents itself.