Looking for a little advice about your relationship? Perhaps you have questions about parenting? Ask Andrea! Our social worker, Andrea Liss will pick one question a month and answer it in our mid-month bulletin. You can submit your questions anonymously to her at https://forms.office.com/r/F3rxQKvTdQ
Dear Andrea,
My partner of several years has essentially ghosted me. I’ll admit our relationship was not the best but this is driving me crazy. They abruptly broke it off a few months ago and they are ignoring all my attempts at contact. I am having problems moving on. What do you suggest? - Obsessed and Bitter
Dear Obsessed and Bitter,
Here are eight insights from others who have been in your situation. Do the work to appreciate and operate from these insights and you will absolutely move forward. (By the way, these insights are applicable to any rejection situation- the job you didn’t get, the award you didn’t get, the mistake you made. It all applies).
#1 It's Not All About You.
It’s easy to think that our pain is special and that others don’t have it as bad. What happened to you is not actually personal, although I know it feels that way. Relationships are about compatibility. Compatibility is about the chemistry between people. Compatibility is something that connects, unites and aligns two people. A misguided belief that people hold is that relationships are merit-based systems. What happens when we get rejected is we think we should have been kinder, better, more beautiful, smarter, or richer. But what actually has happened here is that you were rejected because there was no longer a fit between two people. One person in the relationship decided to call it quits before the other did. We all know when we are looking at relationships from a merit-based system when we ruminate “What was it about me? Could I have done more?” You were rejected and your partner has sent the message “What occurred between us is no longer working.”
#2 Healing is your Responsibility.
Even though your partner has added insult to injury by ghosting you, you are responsible for your own healing. Sometimes we think that the person who made the mess should clean it up. This makes sense with spilt milk but not in situations where we are dealing with a partner with limited skill. You can’t expect a person of questionable integrity to care for you upon exiting the relationship. You need to start saying to yourself “The way things unfolded may not be my fault but it’s my responsibility to sort myself out.”
#3 Fairness is BS.
Overly syrupy fairy tales and feel-good stories teach us myths about happily ever after and that when people do bad things they will get their just desserts. Not true. Justice will not be served in your situation and nor will any consequences come to fruition. Psychologists call this the “Just World Phenomenon.” We can hold wishes for bad things to happen to the other person and want comeuppance so that our pain is validated but this will never come from fairness. Nothing can balance certain scales. Fairness doesn’t exist.
#4 Energy Directed Toward your Former Lover is Wasted.
Researching, lurking, thinking and obsessing “Why did they do this?” is all for naught. Blame is easy and it’s also always a knee-jerk reaction. Blaming and badmouthing might make you feel good in the moment, but energy is finite. If you are expending energy on them then it’s not being spent on you. If it’s not being spent on you then you don’t change and you remain obsessed and bitter.
#5 A Bad Day is Not a Bad Life.
You have had many bad nights wondering if you are too broken or will be unable to love again Dear Bitter and Obsessed. You may wonder if all the horrible things your partner said about you are true. It can be easy to catastrophize and say “There is no point, I can’t do this anymore.” But if you look at your life as whole, it’s probably more than an okay one. You have a life after all. Take note of how much luck you have and how great your life is as a whole. Getting hung up on the details leaves us bemoaning ourselves. Keep perspective- you don’t have a bad life.
#6 You Can Moderate your Emotional Reactions.
Avoiding triggers helps. Yes, memories and tears will come and so they should. But it’s okay to put down the love-letters and please stop stalking your ex-partner on Instagram. Facing your emotions helps you feel more confident, more adept at managing them and less frightened of them. It’s important to remember that while emotions are important to pay attention to they can also be false alarms and not necessarily make sense. We can all stand to dial back the credence we give our emotions, especially when they are intense and prolonged and seem to repeat themselves thematically.
#7 You Will Never Understand.
Labeling someone as a narcissist doesn’t help the matter. Even if you knew the person was a narcissist, what do you do then? When you try to understand, you are trying to apply rational thought to an irrational situation (e.g. getting ghosted). Beyond that, there is nothing to understand. You won’t understand because you’re not like that. If you did understand, you would be mean and unskillful and that is not what you want to be I assume.
#8 New Can be Better
Sometimes we say “I want things to be the way they were. They were better then.” You can’t go back and would you even want to after what you know now? It’s time to think about the future and what it can bring. That old life is gone. You need to let that go. Life can be different and in amazing ways.
Bottom Line?
You are not going to get the time back. You’ve wasted enough time in the relationship and now trying to make sense of its demise. Work hard at course-correcting your life and you’ll be just fine. People who take time process their relationships do better in the next one.
If you would like to pose a question for the Ask Andrea column, please send your anonymous question to https://forms.office.com/r/F3rxQKvTdQ and Andrea will do her best to share some of her ideas.
Andrea has a master’s degree in Social Work and is a Registered Social Worker (Ontario) with over 20 years of experience. She maintains a faculty appointment at McMaster University where she teaches in the Masters of Science in Psychotherapy program. Andrea is your MFS OUTCAN Rest of World Social Worker. If you are a CAF family member and would to speak with her or join the spousal support group for all OUTCAN spouses that she runs please email her at liss.andrea@cfmws.com.