Still struggling with breakup months after

[Bee]

Hey, I know I'm not alone in struggling to accept and move on from a breakup. It's a tale as old as time and something most everyone has grappled with at some point in their life. 

It's been three months since my partner and I broke up. We were together for five years- 

I believed I would marry this man. I imagined our future life-he and I often talked about it. Having children, creating a life and a home. 

And three months ago that came crashing down. 

I thought with even this small passing of time (3 months) I would be feeling better- if only marginally.  I feel worse. 

I am able to function in my life, my job, my self care routine. But the pain of missing him, all the hopes, dreams and plans we made play out in my head. 

I know it's a grieving process, he wasn't just my partner, he was my best friend, my family, someone who was always in my corner. I really loved him. Still do. 

I am just so exhausted from this pain of not having him in my life. Of missing him. Everywhere I go, I'm reminded of five years' worth of memories- all with him. 

How do you learn to let go of someone you thought would be in your life forever? How do you let go of someone that you love so deeply? 

[therising]

Hi Bee

I feel so deeply for you, given the terrible grief you're facing. It sounds so incredibly painful. My heart goes out to you.

I'll share what came to mind for me not too long ago when I sat in meditation in order to gain a greater sense of the suffering a friend's mother faces, something I'll never be able to fully relate to. This friend is my 21yo daughter's boyfriend of 2 and a half years. His father suddenly died about a year ago, which left the entire family in a terrible state of grief, especially his mum. Her husband was and still remains the absolute love of her life. What came to mind for me in this meditation was along the lines of 'While you have felt disappointment in your own marriage time and time again (over 22 years), your disappointment has been gradual. While it has been painful at times and has led you to tears, it has still been gradual, leading you to adjust and leading you to acceptance bit by bit. Imagine facing all that disappointment at once. Imagine the pain all at once. It would be shocking and overwhelming in so many ways, mentally, physically and even in soulful ways'. Needless to say, I sobbed uncontrollably as I felt even more deeply for this woman.

I think while we can easily feel disappointments, we don't necessarily feel our self making appointments in the first place. They kind of just happen, without much thought. 'I appoint you as the person who brings me joy, the person who makes me laugh, the person who listens carefully to me. I appoint you to be the person who leads me to see what I need to see when it comes to the way forward. You are my seer. I appoint you as the person who adventures with me, the person who imagines and wonders with me and the person who delivers dopamine hits to my brain and gets my endorphins going. I also appoint you the role of the person who brings me peace when I am desperate for a greater sense of peace' and the list goes on. There are already 10 appointments there, short of the dozens that may also exist. Most of the roles I appointed my husband, I dis-appointed him from. As I say, it took time and it wasn't easy. Some of those roles I gave to others, appointments others could easily fill or were more than happy to fill. I found my visionaries, my fellow joy seekers, my imagineers and adventurers who love imagining and adventuring with me and so on. There aren't too many roles left for my husband to fill, something I've fully made peace with. It doesn't bother me.

With the gradual and conscious disappointments (from certain roles) my vision began to change. When we can no longer see this person as being 'He/she who leads me to adventure', for example, and we begin to see that person as being the one who can clearly do it, a conscious shift begins taking place bit by bit.❤️