Dealing with a Breakup | Separation Psychology

Love is one of the deepest feelings we experience. We don't start any relationship thinking it will end. But over time, love can turn into a situation where we don't feel good with our partner anymore and it doesn't satisfy both sides. Even in the happiest couples, traits that once attracted them can eventually turn into frustrations that drive them apart. At this point, we can find ourselves in the process of separation with a joint or unilateral decision. When our relationship ends, so do our dreams about our relationship. We often feel grieving after a breakup. The separation process is similar to the grieving process as it represents the emotional absence of our partner. Because the absence of the person with whom we once shared every moment of our lives coincides with his death in our lives. In the post-breakup period, as after a death, we mourn our loss with denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and finally acceptance.

Undoubtedly, we all experience breakups as painful and negative experiences. However, like other negative experiences, how we deal with this process, our actions and reactions during the process are powerful enough to affect our well-being. That's why learning about post-breakup processes, understanding why breakups are painful and what we can learn from them helps us contribute to our well-being. So how can we do this?

How to Heal After Break Up?

• Allow the feeling of mourning and sadness: Dealing with a break-up may seem difficult, but it's not impossible as long as we allow our feelings. Allowing ourselves to mourn the separation is essential for our psychological well-being. Denying the process and avoiding our emotions by reducing the importance of our loss prevents us from experiencing the grieving process in a healthy way. Unfortunately, we cannot leave behind a challenging experience by going around it. It is only by going through this experience, by owning our own suffering, that we can make real progress.
• Review your broken relationship: It is important for us to review our past relationship when dealing with a break-up. Because we often feel bad after a breakup and we need to take a good look at what might have created that feeling. Is the sadness we feel really rooted in the loss of the relationship or is it about an illusion about the relationship? Sometimes what we really lose when our relationship ends is not the intimacy we once felt with our partner, but an illusory sense of security and happiness that we made ourselves believe in. In such a situation, we can dream of the days when we will always be happy with our partner, and when we leave, we see that this will not happen. In this case, our loss may not be directly related to the partner himself, but rather to our expectations and dreams. Evaluating our relationship from a realistic point of view can help us understand what part of our loss upsets us. When we find what we are upset about and can be honest with ourselves about it, we can get through the process more easily. Otherwise, we enter a more painful process by denying our real reasons.

In such a situation, we can ask ourselves the following questions:

• Did we really treat each other in a loving way?
• Were there really respectful and loving communication between us?
• Were we really there for each other when needed?
• Were we both honest with each other?
• Did we contribute to each other's growth and development?

• Silence your critical inner voice: When we feel rejected after a breakup, we can listen to our critical inner voice, which often attacks our self-confidence and self-esteem for dealing with a breakup. When we listen to these destructive thoughts, we may be more likely to feel humiliation rather than sadness about our loss. Our critical inner voice often makes it difficult to deal with the break-up by saying that no one will love us, that we will be alone, that we are not important to anyone. Remember, our critical thinking is rarely factual. For this reason, reminding ourselves of our positive sides and showing compassion can help us overcome separation more easily. 
• Add the activities that are good for you to your daily routine: With the effect of negative emotions we feel in the period of dealing with breakup, sometimes with an unconscious self-punishment motive, we can get away from activities that are good for us. Doing sports, watching our favorite TV series and movies, helping those in need and taking care of self-care activities can help us strengthen against negative feelings and thoughts during this period. 
• Make room for emotional support: It's best to feel that we are not alone in difficult times. For this reason, socializing with our loved ones, friends or family members, even when we don't want it, supports us in the post-breakup period and helps us to get out of the negative cycle we are in.
• Keep yourself busy: The best way to keep negative thoughts from attacking while we are dealing with a breakup is to keep our minds busy. While it's crucial to allow ourselves to experience sadness and process it, there may be times when we need to shift our focus to avoid them to prevent overwhelming and harmful effects. Redirecting our thoughts towards other points can be an effective way to prevent them from becoming destructive. We can read a book, sign up for a course we've been wondering about for a long time, go shopping, or make an effort to add new skills to ourselves.
• Take a break from social media: Just as seeing our partner physically after a breakup is not good for us, our social media can harm our well-being. It is very likely that following our partner on social media and trying to learn about him, but these behaviors are not good for us in the early times of separation. For this reason, it is a good opportunity to take a break from the social media world, return to ourselves and prevent sad scenarios we will construct in our minds.
• Emphasize self-compassion: One of the best ways to cope with devastating emotions when dealing with a breakup is to remember our self-worth. Reviewing our strengths and understanding our positive features can help us in this process, because our minds repeatedly say how unworthy we are in the breakup period. Remember we can be adequate and complete individuals without our partner.

Things not to do when dealing with a breakup

Separation is a painful experience in itself. However, there are some thought patterns and behaviors that we can avoid and the experiences we can face to overcome the negative effects. Drawing attention to these points can help us to experience this process more easily.

• Avoid devaluation: Just because a relationship is over or the way it ended is hurtful doesn't mean that the whole relationship was a bad experience. In times of dealing with breakup, we often say or ask ourselves “If our relationship was good, it wouldn't be over.”, “Was it all a scam?” and “Did she/he ever love me?”. Making sentences like this may not be a very realistic point of view and may cause us to suffer more. Rather than devalue our experience, we should accept it as it is and remind ourselves that the relationship is a whole process and cannot be summed up only in its ending.
• Don't try to mask your pain by trying to find a replacement: Sometimes after our relationship ends, we may turn to a band-aid relationship to lessen the pain we experience. In fact, we are unconsciously trying to fill the void created by our loss. But band-aid relationships are often short-term and only delay our sadness. Thus, they can prevent us from taking lasting steps towards dealing with the breakup.
• Making hasty decisions: We are sometimes prone to making hasty and poorly thought-out decisions in order to get rid of the negative mood we are in after a breakup. Actions such as moving to a new house, changing city, leaving a job can help us escape from our current feelings, but they are likely to harm our well-being in the long run. If you are thinking of making such decisions, you can give yourself some time to question whether this is what you really want.
• Don't let your partner contact you whenever she/he wants: Ending a relationship may not mean that partners are completely out of each other's lives. In fact, it is a situation that we all desire to have two individuals who respect each other and communicate with each other when necessary. However, trying to establish this communication immediately after separation can be wearisome for both parties. In this context, our partner's should contact us within the limits we will determine after separation. This can increase our well-being by making us feel that we have not lost control over our own lives.
• Too much solitude: We undoubtedly need to be alone in order to understand our feelings and thoughts in the post-breakup process. However, it is important for our recovery process to ensure balance by not allowing the time we are alone to turn into social isolation. In other words, even if we spend time alone for a certain period of time, we need to keep our social support channels open. Activities such as having a coffee with our friends, going to the movies with a family member and walking with a loved one increase our emotional resilience during this period.

How Does the Pain of Separation Pass? How Long Will It Take?

The pain of separation is one of the most negative emotions we all experience. For this reason, we may want to get rid of this feeling quickly. But sadness and mourning are as natural and human as our positive emotions, even if we experience them unintentionally. Rather than trying to get rid of this feeling right away, accepting that it is a process and recognizing our emotions by taking small steps allows us to make permanent contributions to ourselves. How this process will go depends on many different factors such as the duration of the relationship, the nature of the relationship experience, the type of separation, the conditions we are in and our emotional resilience at that time. However, in order to make the process of dealing with the separation in a healthier way, it may be helpful to pay attention to the following points:

• Avoiding catastrophe: Catastrophizing the situations we live in means breaking the situation from its reality and current impact and making it more severe, general and worse. In the post-breakup period, we can see this experience as a summary of our lives and as a negative experience whose impact and pain will never change. For example, we can convince ourselves that this pain will never go away, that our partner is the only person who can make us happy, or that we will never feel good again. Instead of thinking about the worst outcome; considering other possibilities, reminding ourselves that there are days when we will feel better and get out of this cycle accelerates our recovery. 

• Avoiding rumination: Rumination is trying to constantly visualize negative experiences in our minds by interrupting our mental activities. When we enter the post-breakup rumination cycle, we say or ask to ourselves “I wish I had done this differently.”, “If I had said that, we would not have broken up.”, or “Is it because of my behavior that we broke up?”. Although it is important to seek answers to these questions to make sense of our separation, doing so in a repetitive way that wears us out and prevents us from thinking clearly can increase the pain of separation. Instead of thinking about our assumptions and negative possibilities, it can be useful to focus on the situation objectively. 
• Accepting that it's over: Although it can be very painful to accept the breakup, one of the best steps we can take to deal with a breakup is to accept that our relationship is over. Shelving plans and thoughts about reconciliation allows us to look our way. Accepting that the relationship is over allows us to make room for new experiences and gives us the opportunity to live the separation as a process that we do not consider in our place.
• Remembering the sense of self: Especially couples whose lives have been inextricably intertwined for years are most likely to experience an identity crisis-like experience after a breakup. Remembering that we are an individual before the relationship, that we have strengths and that we are sufficient on our own, can speed up the time it takes us to deal with a break-up by reducing the effects of separation on our self-confidence.

Psychological Stages of Dealing With a Breakup

When our romantic relationship, which is an important part of our lives, ends, many things change in our lives. After a breakup, our routines and habits change. In fact, this loss causes us to feel similar to the emotions we feel when we lose a loved one to death. Just as we go through 5 stages in the grieving process, we can go through 5 stages when dealing with a break-up. These stages are called denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

1. Even though we know that the relationship is over in the denial phase, we do not want to accept it, we try to hold on to the last grains of hope in order to save the relationship.
2. In the anger phase, we constantly remember the negative aspects of our ex-partner, and we talk to our friends about our anger about him.
3. In the third stage, we move on to the part of negotiating, where we think about what we can do to save the relationship and what we can change to get the relationship back.
4. In the depression phase, we have a breakdown and we don't want to do anything.
5. Finally, we accept the situation and the feelings that cause us sadness begin to subside. Although this stage may seem far away, it is not impossible to reach this point.

We are not helpless against the sadness brought by our relationship that ended for different reasons. We can also record developments that will benefit us after our relationship has ended. According to the post-traumatic or stress-related growth theory, stressful situations can also be a source of growth for us. For example; there can be positive changes in our relationships with those around us, in our relationship-maintaining behaviors, or in our personality traits such as a sense of independence. Thanks to the processes we go through after a breakup, we can develop resilience and gain insight. You may be questioning how such a process, which progresses in such a negative way and wears us out, will bring positive processes. You can start our journey in Relate called “Recovering After Separation”. This journey shows that it is possible for us to rediscover and improve ourselves after the experience of separation, and shows the steps we can take in this regard.

Staying Friends After a Breakup

One of the questions we often ask after our ended relationships is "Can we stay friends?". In order not to lose the person in front of us completely and because of the value we give to that person, we may not want them to leave our lives completely. So is this possible? We know that in some cases this can happen after some time has passed and there are couples who have managed to form friendships. But we must not forget that this can be a difficult process. For this to work, both "friends" need to be really open about why they want to stay friends and what they expect from friendship. Likewise, if both parties can clearly define the boundaries between friendship and romance and reach a common point about what is appropriate and what is not, they can achieve this.

Asking yourself the following questions can help you understand whether you really want it and why.

• Am I trying to start a friendship because I see the breakup as a failure?
• Am I trying to be friends because I'm looking for emotional support? Can the other person provide me with this emotional support?
• Do I hope to be reunited inside?
• Am I trying to at least be friends because I feel lonely?
• At some point, my ex may get into another romantic relationship. Will it be good for me to be their friend and witness their new relationship in this new love experience?

When answering questions like these, it can be helpful to consider whether your answers are based on need or preference. A need-based friendship, for example relationships established from such a point “Without you, my life is empty! Do not leave me!", may not be healthy for both people. If it's a friendship based on choice, for example relationships established from such a point "I respect you. You've made a positive impact in my life all this time. We've both changed, but my preference is for you to stay in my world.", can be seen as a foreshadowing of a conscious friendship that is more likely to last.

Personal Development After Separation

In order to deal with a breakup in a healthy way and move forward after separation, we need to take care of our personal development. Although separation is a negative experience, it is possible to fill the void arising from the end of the relationship by focusing on our own development. In the course of life, we often forget to take care of our well-being, develop our abilities or focus on the subjects we are interested in and take action for our own development. Increasing our self-confidence by taking care of our personal development after separation can help us to experience the wearing effects of separation less. In this period:

• Enroll in a new course,
• Conduct research to learn about separation and psychological processes,
• Acquire a new sports routine,
• Participate in activities that highlight your talents,
• Work on the issues that nurture you. 

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