The Loving Truth

How to Navigate Heartbreak

• Sharon Pope • Episode 167

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Heartbreak is hard, even when the relationship you leave behind wasn’t healthy.

We hold onto stories about the person and the relationship, but those stories keep us stuck.

To heal, you have to see what is real.

Look at the facts and be honest with yourself about why the relationship ended.

Write it down, reflect, and ask yourself what worked, what didn’t, and what this is teaching you. 

Heartbreak is painful, but it’s also an opportunity to grow.

If you step into the grief with awareness, you can move forward stronger and more conscious of what you truly need.

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host relationship expert and certified Master Life Coach, sharon Pope.

Speaker 2:

Hello, loves, this is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Today I want to talk to you about how to navigate your way through heartbreak. So this particular podcast was inspired by someone inside of my membership community called the Decision, and it's a particular woman that I'm thinking of right now, who's navigating a lot of difficulty, lot of difficulty, and she's feeling heartbroken and confused and lonely because she has recently broken off her long-term affair relationship. And you might think, well, that shouldn't be so hard. It's the quote right thing to do. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't come with some feelings. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't come with some feelings In the same way that another client, her husband came home and told her the marriage is over and she's got some feelings about that and she's navigating some deep heartbreak, because when a marriage ends, there's loss and there's a lot of feelings, right. So when things end, we're going to have feelings about them.

Speaker 2:

Now, with this particular client who had broken off the relationship that she had with her long-term affair partner, now they've done this dance before where one or both of them decided to call it quits and it would go for a few weeks and then usually he would reach back out and she would be back engaged with him and it would just start the same cycle over and over and over again, or she would reach out and then he would respond. This time seems to be different because it's been more than a month probably around two months by now and, at least as far as I know, there's some blocking going on in terms of they can't contact one another because they blocked each other's phone numbers. Now, I'm not going to suggest that this particular relationship that she had was a healthy one, and it's not just because it was an affair, it's because he was controlling, he was verbally abusive, he would gaslight her and make her question herself to the point where she didn't know what she wanted, to the point where she didn't know what she wanted. She couldn't understand what her needs were and what her desires were and what her preferences were, because they had become all about him. And she shared with me that she was reading the book 50 Shades of Tired and there was a quote from that book that resonated with her, and here's what it said the most confusing man you'll ever meet is the one who is still in the middle. He's both the wrong man and the right man in one man. He's both good and bad, your brightest moment and your darkest hour, he's first to make you laugh and the first to make you cry. This is the man you'll have the hardest time understanding because on one hand you love him for the joy and on the other you despise him for the pain she's really. As she's going through this time, she's realizing how unhealthy that relationship was, but that doesn't make it not hard to pull away from, because for many years she relied on that relationship really as a point of distraction from the challenges that she faces inside of her marriage and it provided her a respite from all of that. And now she doesn't have that.

Speaker 2:

So getting over heartbreak when a relationship ends, whether that's a marriage or an affair or just someone that you have dated for a while that takes a lot and I think the first step is to tell the truth about it, to tell the truth about that relationship. I think that the quicker you can get at what is real and true and factual, then the quicker you can come to a place of real healing. But human beings, we don't actually like to tell the truth that much. We really like to remain in our stories. Our brains love to create stories and then fondle those stories over and over and over again. So the truth is not a projection of what we created, about who they were or about who they could be, or it's also not this made-up fairy tale about how we could have been together. It's what is real and factual.

Speaker 2:

James Hollis says that every relationship begins in projection, and what he means by that is that you don't actually see or experience the other person as they are. You experience them through your lens, and here's what I mean by that. So imagine that all of us are just walking around with a pair of glasses on and we each have a different prescription lens in our glasses, and what's embedded in that lens is the totality of all of our life experiences. It has our thoughts, it has our beliefs, it has our values. Embedded in that are things like traumatic or emotional experiences that shaped our lives, that created different beliefs or thoughts about ourselves and about other people and about the world around us, and no one has the same lens as you do. So as we meet and experience and get to know someone, it's always us filling in the blanks. Yes, we see and experience them in terms of what they're presenting, but we fill in the blanks around that, and usually we fill in the blanks around that with all the things of how we want it to be so that we can feel safe.

Speaker 2:

Now, all of this is unconscious. Of course, this isn't something that we set out to do. We don't think about it consciously, but many times we will see who they could be. I don't know about you, but I have fallen in love with men before based upon their potential, as opposed to who they actually were and how they were actually showing up. We think about who we could be with them and how it could be so amazing together. We see the very best parts of people and we overlook things that might be considered red flags or things that maybe aren't that healthy, because at that time we're falling in love, and when we're falling in love and when you're falling in love, your brain centers the exact same places in your brain are being lit up as if you are on cocaine or or opioids, right? So you're not looking for why this drug is bad for you. You're looking for why this drug is bad for you. You're looking for why it makes you feel so amazing, and then we create a whole storyline around that we have to interrupt the fairy tale story that we've created in our minds if we're going to come through this heartbreak. As long as we stay stuck in that fairy tale, we're going to be suffering in heartbreak, and so we've got to be able to interrupt that story.

Speaker 2:

And, if you think about it, almost all popular culture is built around this fairy tale idea. There's this idea that there's this magical other person Some might call it a soulmate or a twin flame person, some might call it a soulmate or a twin flame and then the story that we create around that person is that they're going to be the perfect fit for us and they're going to make love easy and they're going to heal all the wounds that we carry. They're going to know our needs, our dreams and our desires and we won't even have to tell them because they see and understand us so very deeply. All of that is complete and utter bullshit. It just is All of it. Right is complete and utter bullshit. It just is all of it right.

Speaker 2:

First of all, there are many soulmates that we have in this lifetime. Okay, and no one is here. That's going to make love and relationships easy. Love and relationships are hard and it will. That's why they cause you to grow. They ask you to grow more than any other area of your life, except, potentially, maybe, entrepreneurship. Those are the two areas that I think require you to grow in such massive ways.

Speaker 2:

But this idea that they're going to make love easy, or that they're going to heal the childhood wounds that are your responsibility to heal, or that someone, anyone on this planet can know your needs, your dreams and your desires so deeply that you don't even have to communicate them they can read your mind and then they're going to orient their lives around making sure that you have that. Going to orient their lives around making sure that you have that that's not a thing. So we've got to get out of the fairy tale and get into what's real. Here's what worked about the relationship. Here's what made it last as long as it did, and there's going to be some stuff in those answers that you may not like. For instance, with my client, the reason it lasted as long as it did is because I was using you, a fair partner, to distract myself from dealing with the challenges that I have in my marriage and in my life. Like that's not a comfortable truth. Like that's not a comfortable truth, but it is in fact truth. And when you get at that then you can start to see that it wasn't this like beautiful rosy fairy tale story and you have to start challenging yourself on what are the reasons why the relationship ended. Because there was some reason it ended. If it was fabulous, it probably wouldn't have ended, whatever the relationship.

Speaker 2:

There is also a concept that I want to talk about, so it's called rosy retrospection and it was created by Gilbert and Wilson in 2000. It means that we remember the past with fondness and nostalgia, conveniently deleting all the painful memories. And we do this when a relationship has ended. It's like all of a sudden, now that we don't have this thing, it's like maybe before all we could see were the problems. But once it ends and we don't have that thing, it's like maybe before all we could see were the problems. But once it ends and we don't have that and we feel the loss of that. Now we don't remember the painful memories. Now we only remember the past with nostalgia and fondness. And if you think about it, sometimes, when you've had a painful relationship like, let's say, it's with a parent or someone in your family, and then that person has passed away. Don't you often then remember just the good stuff and not the bad stuff? This is the same way. It's because when there is loss, we remember all the good times and we sort of elevate or inflate the good stuff and we push down or push away the bad stuff, and that's this idea of rosy retrospection. And so that's what's happening, and the sooner you can see that as it's happening, then the sooner you can make peace with the totality of the relationship.

Speaker 2:

So, to move through and navigate heartbreak, you've got to be able to tell yourself the truth. It's so, so important, and I want you to write it down. Truth has a different way of being expressed when we write it down, so we can come up with flowery words when we're speaking, we can speak in circles, we can talk around things. We can, yeah, but it but when you have to write things down, you have to condense what it is you're saying into something more articulate, and so I want you to write it down. I want you to tell yourself the truth and write it down.

Speaker 2:

I want you to ask yourself, prompting questions about what worked in this relationship. Why did it last as long as it did? Why did it end? Why did it need to end? How is this for me? Because everything is ultimately for my greater good, even if I can't see it in the moment. How can this be a good thing for me in my life? Those are the kinds of questions that if you're asking yourself those questions, you're going to move through heartbreak much quicker than if you're spinning around in the fairy tale story over and over and over again. If the relationship was amazing, it wouldn't have ended. Okay, if it was wonderful for you but not wonderful for your partner and that's why they left, it also wasn't a good relationship.

Speaker 2:

I would argue that if you say you love someone and you're really happy and your partner is really miserable, I don't think that's love and I don't think it's a relationship that works, because relationships only work when it works for two people, when it works for both of you, and it clearly didn't work for at least one of you. So I have no doubt that at some point my client's affair partner will unblock himself and he will come back into her life and he will try to fall back into some version of the same old pattern, because I know human beings and I know because she didn't close and lock that door, that somehow some way, that somehow some way that reconnection is at least going to be attempted at some point in the future. And in my mind, it's really just a matter of will she become conscious enough during this break away, will she grow enough during this time of heartbreak so that she doesn't fall back into the same old patterns? See, she's going through a really emotionally difficult time right now, but she's also growing. Difficulties are just the things in our life. That's asking us to step up and grow in a new way. And so she's growing.

Speaker 2:

It's painful Growth is often painful but she's growing and she's asking and answering some really hard questions for herself and she's going to have a lot to contend with, no matter what, you know, that person decides to do and when, and if he decides to try to reenter her life, and whether or not she falls back into those same old patterns really will be a matter of how she uses this time of heartbreak, because you can use it productively. You can feel the grief and be able to move through it and beyond it. When're in the grief, of course we want to, you know, fast-forward through that because it feels horrible. But if you're in that right now. I just want to express to you that, first of all, it won't always feel like this and you can use this time as an opportunity to grow, but you have to tell yourself the truth and you have to start asking and answering the right questions. I hope that's helpful for you. Until next time, please take really good care.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a truth andarity session with a member of my team On the call. We'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to clarityformymarriagecom to fill out an application now. That's clarityformymarriagecom. To fill out an application. Now that's clarityformymarriagecom.