When you have a relationship with someone, they become part of your story. And when that relationship ends – especially if it’s abruptly and without answers – you’re left reeling…wanting those answers, needing closure. It’s the “needing closure” and answers part that keeps us stagnant. It impairs our ability to move on into a healthy relationship. Or to move on at all.
But what if you find yourself unable to get away from the “why” and “what if” and “what did I do wrong?” questions that bounce around in your mind? Here are five things to try that might help you move onward into better places with greater people.
Remind Yourself of What You Deserve If the person in question just walked away, no answers, no contact, and “ghosted” you as the kids are saying now, that’s pretty darn disrespectful. The person doing the “ghosting” has to know that’s going to hurt the other person, yet they’ve done it anyway. You can take some comfort in knowing he took himself out of the equation, saving you the trouble later. Frankly put, you deserve better. Know that anyone who could treat you with such disregard and disrespect is not the person for you. Let me be clear: even if the relationship was new, even if it was one date but you kept talking, even if it was online and you talked often – nobody should just stop. A decent person bows out properly.
Replace Your Thoughts You’re probably ruminating over this situation, asking all the questions of why things happened the way they did, blaming yourself, discounting yourself because you’re certain that you weren’t good enough. And you want revenge of sorts. You want to be able to say your peace, get it out, purge, and feel vindicated. But you can’t and you don’t need to spend one more second on this person who left you twisting in the wind. When they come to mind and you’re tempted to run this over and over in your mind, replace your thoughts. Pick up a book, call a friend and talk about anything but this guy, exercise, or turn up the music and dance. Start praying. Pray for yourself, pray for whoever pops into your head. Replace those obsessive thoughts of this guy and what happened – with good things.
Visualize It’s easier not to think about the person and what you wish you could say to them when you’re at work, out with friends or otherwise keeping busy. It’s not so simple when you’re home alone or trying to sleep and you’re literally left to your thoughts. So visualize. Instead of picturing one last verbal encounter with the guy where you could spout something profound and make a grand exit, start picturing your next move. Or a vacation. Or writing a book. Or who your real dream guy is. Picture how strong you’ll be now that you’re moving on. Think forward to the good things, not back to the bad.
Help Others It’s not really a new concept to know that helping others helps ourselves. In the situation of the ghosting guy and being hurt by a relationship, helping others really does help you. You get outside of yourself. You reaffirm to yourself that there’s more to the world than this one guy. And it feels good to help others. We should all be doing it!
Learn From It I’m going to guess that if said guy just walked away with no explanation, there were hints in the relationship that it wasn’t perfect. So what were those hints? Did you miss any red flags? Did your gut tell you this guy wasn’t “the” guy and you missed that intuition or ignored it? How can you treat yourself better going forward, make yourself stronger, and be super discerning about who you date? Ask yourself all the questions and look honestly at the relationship, and just see what you see.
Bonus: If someone ends things abruptly like this, don’t dwell. This wasn’t your fault. This was an escape route for them. It’s cowardly, to be honest. You dodged a bad relationship by them leaving, even if it’s this way. If they couldn’t just be honest with you about wanting to end the relationship, what else weren’t they forthcoming about? You’re doing okay. Keep it up.
You deserve more,
