While we’re no longer talking and I couldn’t make that budding relationship last, her book suggestion was invaluable.
I got a better a picture of what it takes in the book, The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work.
I’m still not sure I can fulfill these 7 principles but I finally got a scientific, research-based answer of what it’s going to take.
Here are the 7 principles it will take to make marriage work, if not for this marriage, then at least for your next one:
1.Being familiar with each other’s worlds.
You’re familiar with intimate details of your spouse’s life and you pay attention to these details. As the author puts it, couples who know each others love map, “know each other’s life goals, worries, and hopes.” When you have greater personal insight about your spouse, you’ll know your spouse better. When you know your spouse better, there’s more room for love and affection.
2.Look at each other with admiration.
Behind the antagonism and fights of a unhealthy marriage, can you still care for each other? Do you still find things that you like and respect about each other? The idea is to continue to cherish and appreciate each other in the normal course of the marriage. If you see your spouse with positivity and admiration, you can save your marriage and be happily married.
3.Turn toward each other.
You can make your marriage work better by regularly connecting with and turning towards each other. Are you being thoughtful towards each other, helping each other and being there for each other? Each time you help each other out or are there for each other, you are funding your emotional bank account. It’s paying attention to everyday interactions and valuing them, instead of taking your interactions for granted.
4.Let your partner influence you.
You have to an equal partner with your spouse to make the marriage work. You have to both participate in the decision making and respect and honor each other’s opinions and thoughts. You have to be willing to give and receive input to each other and take their thoughts into account when making decisions. When you accept the other person’s influence in making a decision, you strengthen the friendship between both of you. “…the goal is for both of you to be influential and to accept each other’s influence.”
5. Solve your solvable problems.
Take a new approach to settling conflict and solving problems that can be solved in a marriage, as opposed to the perpetual problems in a marriage. The most effective steps for resolving issues starts with softening your start-up, making and accepting repair attempts, soothing yourself and each other, compromise, and processing grievances so they don’t linger. The basic idea is to have good manners and to treat each other as you would a work colleague or guest when resolving problems.
6. Overcome gridlock.
Some arguments never end and both sides believe they are in the right. The issue becomes increasingly polarizing over time and neither side wants to compromise and lose. The best thing to do is to avoid or sidestep gridlock if you can avoid it. If you can’t avoid it, figure out a way to acknowledge it and discuss the issue without hurting each other. Neither party has to give in and lose, Gottman points out. “In satisfying relationships, partners incorporate each other’s goals into their concept of what their marriage is about,” he writes. He suggests ways to uncover each others deepest hopes and dreams to help couples find common ground and be able to support each other in the pursuit of these hopes and dreams.
7. Having a shared meaning.
Each successful marriage has it’s own culture. It symbolizes something and stands for something. “When a marriage has this sense of meaning, conflict is much less intense and perpetual problems are unlikely to lead to gridlock,” observes Gottman. The more you agree about the big picture or the profound things in life, the better your marriage is likely to be. Even if you don’t agree, if you can speak honestly and understand each other’s convictions and beliefs, your marriage will fare well. Meaning can be enhanced in 4 ways; creating rituals of connections around different aspects of your life. You can also develop meaning by supporting each other’s roles in the family, supporting each other’s personal goals and finally, having shared objects or activities that symbolize your shared values and purpose in life.
The idea of this book isn’t about doing everything but doing something. It’s about re-evaluating, communicating and implementing some of the many ideas discussed.
If you’re at a critical point in your marriage where some changes need to take place, pick up this book today.
The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work is the conversation starter and invitation to explore and understand each other more. Self-awareness and self-understanding, individually and as couples, can go a long ways in improving the quality of a marriage.
Pick up The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work here.
“I can predict whether a couple will divorce after watching and listening to them for just fifteen minutes.” John Gottman, Ph.D
If you had a crystal ball, would you have predicted divorce?
I sure wouldn’t have. No one ever gets married thinking they’re going to get divorced.
Are there tell-tale signs of divorce? According to John Gottman, professor psychology and researcher who has studied thousands of marriages, the answer is yes!
Thanks to years of scientific data and analysis in his laboratory in Washington observing and following up with real-life married couples, here’s what Dr. Gottman found.
It doesn’t take science for these concepts to make sense. Any one of us who’s been in a divorce can easily to recognize these very destructive behaviors we committed in our marriages which ultimately led to our divorce.
His analysis can be found in his New York Times bestselling book, The Seven Principles for Marking Marriage Work. Oh, and course, if you’re wondering what those 7 principles are, come back for next week’s post.
(And I don’t have to say this but if you would like to get all my posts and never miss a post, please put your name in the subscribe box in the sidebar of this page)
So what did studying thousands of marriages, couples and relationships show about divorce?
In listening to couples quarrel in the lab and fight as they are being studied, here are the signs that lead to divorce in relationships.
1. Starting off harshly. If your discussion starts harshly and filled with negativity, the discussion is going to end in a fight. “Statistics tell the story,” per Gottman, “96 percent of the time you can predict the outcome of a conversation based on the first three minutes of the fifteen-minute interaction!” He’s not saying if you start negatively, you’re going to have a divorce but if you have enough negative conversations which end poorly, you’re going to find yourself divorcing down the road.
2. Criticism: Gottman points out there are differences between complaints and criticism. Complaints are when you’re not happy when your spouse did something and you express your feelings to her about what she did wrong. A criticism, however, takes it to another level by attacking the person’s character or personality. You don’t simply comment that you’re upset that your wife spends too much money but complains that she’s a spend-thrift who is out to bankrupt you. You don’t complain that the meal is not tasty (this is a dangerous complaint by the way) but you go on to say that she isn’t good at anything or she can’t even do the simplest of things in life!
3. Contempt: Contempt is when you feel superior to your partner and disrespect her. You cultivate contempt by building up a whole series of things that you’re unhappy with and then don’t talk about. Partners who are contemptuous take on the higher moral ground and question the other person’s ability, worth, skills or behavior. You build up disgust and anger towards each over a period of time. You lose respect for each and believe you’re no longer equals but better than the other person. Every mistake or error in the relationship allows you to become even more contemptuous and lash out at each other.
4. Defensiveness. Often times, when you’re defending yourself in an argument, you’re really blaming the other person. You take the position of an innocent victim and lay the blame at the feet of the other person. “Defensiveness in all its guises just escalates the conflict, which is why it’s so deadly,” Gottman observes. Defensiveness means you’re not accepting responsibility for your part of the interaction and instead shifting blame back on your spouse.
5. Stonewalling. This was my favorite and I’m sure how most men handle conflict in marriages. In a regular conversation you pay attention and look at the person speaking. You listen, make up your mind, respond and go back and forth with each other. The stonewaller, however doesn’t participate in the conversation. “He tends to look away or down without uttering a sound,” Gottman writes, “He sits like an impassive stone wall…acts as though he couldn’t care less about what you’re saying, if he even hears it.” You feel that you can’t win no matter what and it would be easier to get through the hour by not being present or pretending not to listen. Stonewalling is not getting sucked into the drama you observe is going on.
6. Flooding. The reason men and sometimes, women, stonewall, is because they experience a feeling called flooding. “It occurs when your spouse’s negativity is so intense and sudden that it leaves you shell-shocked.” You try to avoid feeling flooding or flooded that you stonewall and keep the attacks at you at bay by not responding. One person is not able to handle the other person’s hostility, criticism, contempt, etc. If you feel flooded often, you’ll start distancing yourself emotionally which will ultimately lead to growing apart, feeling lonely and divorcing.
7. Failed Repair Attempts. Repair attempts are efforts couples make to reduce the tension of a situation, take a break from an argument or put the brakes on where a conversation is going. It’s humor, or changing subjects or taking the heat of any given situation. When couples don’t repair the above common practices, tension and resentment continues to build up. When couples are criticizing and being contemptuous, there is little room for repair, making flooding more pronounced and leading to one or both spouses withdrawing.
Even if a marriage has all of the other faults above but the couples can repair arguments and the behaviors above successfully, the marriage remains successful in the long run. When there were no repair attempts or when the repairs were drowned out, marriages eventually ended.
These signs of what lead to the destruction of a marriage may be sad and depressing. It may trigger memories for you of all the behavior you both exhibited in your marriage.
How do you actually make marriage work? You can wait for my post next week on the 7 principles of making marriage work or you can pick up The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Workhere.
I did whatever I could to avoid the breakup of my marriage.
Family intervention. Check.
European vacation. Check.
Marriage counseling. Check.
Date nights and communication. Check.
But it was all a bit too much, a bit too late.
Our relationship was beyond repair and nothing could save it.
Years of fights, yelling, speaking, not speaking, resentments and disrespect towards each other had created a relationship that no longer existed.
She left and all I had was had were some pots and pans, my clothing, heartbreak and soul-crushing pain.
Sleepless nights, uninterrupted streams of tears and consistent thoughts about whether living was worth it.
I believed my life was over.
You, too, may believe your life is over and it’s your ex’s fault.
You may believe that your ex is a heartless, soulless human being who had a lifelong plot to destroy you.
But before you conjure some sinister, criminal story about how your ex arrived on planet Earth to cause massive destruction in your life, let me introduce another possibility.
What if it had nothing to do with your ex?
It had nothing to do with the separation, heartbreak or divorce.
It had nothing to do with the cheating, disrespect or animosity that built up between you two.
When you’re experiencing the worst heartbreak of your life, and as your life is falling apart, you desperately want to believe your ex is to blame.
Your ex is the threat to your marriage and the destroyer of your life, you think to yourself as you seethe with anger and resentment.
Yet, we have the whole thing wrong.
It’s not about the pain, suffering and destruction that your ex caused.
That’s not what this whole life thing is about.
Sorry to break the news but life isn’t about heartbreak and pain, sadness or even joy.
It’s not about the white picket fence, a house in a gated community or having a family. It’s not about marriages that last, careers that accelerate or a luxurious life of chefs, butlers and meals in the White House kitchen.
Those who are lucky enough to live relatively calm and stable lives (none of you reading this, of course) will experience a mundane and non-growth oriented life experience. Not growing is comfortable and relaxing.
Yet those of you who have gone through the washing machine of life must come to some understanding of why you’re going through the spin cycle.
The spin cycle puts your life in upheaval but allows your soul to awaken.
Every time crazy life events – like divorces or breakups – happen, the world as you know it bursts wide open and you question the very meaning of your existence.
When you’re questioning, you’re existing. You’re asking yourself who you are and why you’re here.
During those times of questioning, profound spiritual shifts happen.
You are here to be more of yourself. You are here to be more of your inner being. You are here to become more of your spiritual being.
All of these beings exist within you but are dormant.
Only when your life and circumstances get shook, do you get woke. (I’m not even sure what that means but all the kids are using these words.)
Anyway, point being: the more upheaval in your life, the more questioning. The more questioning, the more awakening to who you are. The more awakening to who you are, the more aligning with your spiritual nature.”
Your spiritual nature is your essence, your being, the inner you that jobs, families, houses, careers, drinking and bowling nights usually hide. You don’t have to know who you are if you are busy and if life preoccupies you. When you’re experiencing success and achievement, you don’t have to ask who you are.
Only when your world breaks apart are you ready to ask questions, to grow and get in touch with your highest self.
So your devastating break up or the divorce you’re going through isn’t here to crush you, like you believe. It’s here to awaken you and take your life and consciousness to the next level.
The game isn’t about worldliness, happiness and stuff. It’s about spiritual awakening and inner peace.
A breakup can fertilize the ground for contentment and waking up.
Divorce can fertilize the ground for spirituality, knowledge and awakening.
You may feel like life has handed you a death sentence when you’re really being born again.
Your task isn’t to seek comfort and stability while on earth.
Your mission is to discover who you are and become more of that in your life.
I wrote a book about living an authentic life and living your truth; pick up 7 Sacred Promises here today.
“Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn’t about what others can give you because you’re empty. It is about what you can give others because you’re already full.” Yasmin Mogahed
I had tied my identity into our relationship.
I was she. She was me. And together, we were “we.”
I had entwined my social, professional and personal identities with this concept of “us.”
Both our names appeared on the return labels of the letters I sent out.
Inside our Christmas cards, both our names appeared as silver-stamped signatures.
Knowing my place in the world was easy when I was married.
No matter how bad our marriage was, it was comfortable, certain and complete compared to the world around us.
If divorce or a long-term breakup creeps into your life and you’ve created an identity with another person, you’re about to experience a life-altering event – one that shakes your identity to the core.
I mean, who would Queen Elizabeth be without Prince Phillip? Who would Lil Dicky be without Chris Brown? Kim without Kanye? Donald without Melania? Ben without Jerry?
Your heart, mind and soul will do everything in their power to hold onto something that feels like a necessary part of your identity.
You can’t let go because you’re attached for your life to the people you loved. The threat of losing them threatens your very identify and life.
How do you let go of your deep attachments to the people who were once part of your life and heart?
1. Your heart can go on without another person.
Yes, your heart can go on. I know this with 100% certainty because I’m living proof of it.
A few years ago, if you had asked me if I could go on, I would have emphatically said no.
Yet 5 years later, 500,000 written words later, 10 published ebooks later, 5 moves later, 3 around-the-world journeys later, I can tell you without a doubt: yes!
You can go on!
To get through life, your heart doesn’t need someone else.
You are fine on your own and you can find love by yourself.
You were born as love and came into this world as a loving baby, giving love. That is your true nature.
For much of your life, you’ve masked the truth that you are love because the world hasn’t been particularly kind or loving to you.
It’s never too late to tap into that love that is already there.
2. Your identity does not depend on someone else.
Once again, I’ve found this to be true.
You know, it wasn’t that hard to write address labels with only my name. It was actually shorter and easier.
Also, Prince had an identity of his own.
So did Janis Joplin.
And Santana.
And Elvis.
No, we’re not creative musical geniuses who changed the course of history, but you are a unique, special and one-of-a-kind human being.
There is only one you, just like there’s only one snowflake, only one raindrop, only one type of leaf.
You are you, even without a partner, relationship or significant other.
3.You are made of the same fabric as your ex.
How can you lose someone you can’t lose?
Imagine that you and your ex are clouds in the sky. If one of the clouds hides, does that change the fact that the cloud is there?
You and your ex, and everyone you know, are part of a greater universal spirit; a human threat that encompasses everyone on earth.
Our egos tell us that we are different and separate from each other.
Every spiritual master and divine guide who has walked this earth tells us the opposite. They say that we are all one; we are all representations of the greater divine fabric.
You may break up with your ex but to lessen the sense of loss, remind yourself that you haven’t really lost them. You can’t lose the cloud or the moonlight. It’s present even if some days you can’t see it.
4. Relationships and people are like nature.
You can learn to confront attachment if you simply view it as you view nature.
Nature you can handle but people, not so much. Let me explain.
In nature, creatures are born. They reproduce and kill. Other creatures eat them. There is a continuous cycle of beginning and ending. Lives end and life is birthed.
The weather is similar. The seasons come around like clockwork every year from spring to winter.
You and I don’t cry about these seasons that enter our lives. You don’t go into a deep depression because it’s the fall or because it’s winter. Instead, we learn to accept and celebrate each season of our lives.
You dress for the type of weather. You try to drive in the rain in California (rather unsuccessfully) or in the winter storms in Boston (quite successfully).
You don’t resist nature, the weather or the seasons.
You accept and celebrate the positive and negative of these cycles you have no control over.
Aren’t people and relationships like nature? Can’t we learn to accept and celebrate the good while accepting and saying goodbye to the bad?
5. You can fill the emptiness you now feel.
Removing your ex from your life has created a hole that you can now face.
Only when you experience this hole or vacancy in your heart can you do something about it.
Imagine that your whole life, you’ve been trying to fill this emptiness with something unhealthy or with some person.
Now is the time to acknowledge the emptiness for what it is. Instead of alcohol, drugs or people, fill this emptiness with yourself.
Pour in love, compassion and kindness for yourself. Learn to accept yourself and be loving towards yourself. Learn to stop criticizing yourself and putting yourself down.
You can heal only something that you know is broken. You can fix only something that you can see.
The breakup gave you this opportunity.
6. You can release the grasping and feel more free.
When you can’t let go, you’re continuing to grasp something you once had.
Grasping and being attached raises feelings of neediness, desperation and being stuck.
When you need someone else in your life, you’re not free. You’re at that person’s mercy.
You don’t believe that you can do life on your own. You believe that your identity and future are tied to the person you’re in love with.
Letting go allows you to breathe freely and take your life into your own hands.
You let go of the person by accepting that the relationship is over, similar to how you accept the weather and the seasons.
You can grieve for the relationship you had but you don’t have to hold onto the person you were in the relationship with.
Let go so you can breathe easily and free your soul from the prison you’ve created.
You can walk the path alone for some time before a more significant and loving relationship enters your life.
7. Letting go is not an end but a beginning.
This is an important way to view releasing attachment and letting go.
You can welcome in the new, grow and become anew only when you let go of the past.
You can choose to see the end as either the end or the beginning.
If you believe that the end is the end, loss, sorrow and pain will fill you. If you see the end as the beginning, you’ll see the end as the start of something special.
At the end of that last relationship, you’ll be ready for growth, development and more personal awareness.
You’ll be ready for a new life, a new relationship and new love.
You can welcome in the new only when you release your hold on the old.
“For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law.” Eknath Easwaran
How do you go about finding peace after divorce?
For some time after my marriage, I believed that my ex was intentionally hurting me.
By giving up on our marriage, she was disrupting our lives, the lives of our family members and our close-knit Indian community at large.
I thought the very idea of divorce would hurt all the people we knew – including ourselves.
In your case, your ex could have intentionally hurt you when your relationship ended.
Your ex could have fallen in love with someone else and suggested a divorce so he could move to Portugal to be with the 25-year-old woman of his dreams.
Or, after a 20-year marriage and two kids, your husband could have told you he’s having a baby with his mistress.
Or your ex could have used her support payments – which came from your hard-earned dollars – to create the life of her dreams, travel the world, brainwash your children and make you look like the bad guy.
Your ex could be making your life a living hell, making you question your sanity and filling you with burning anger and resentment.
Your ex may make you want to do what Adnan did to Hae Lee in the Serial podcast (Season 1) and bury the body in Leakin Park.
During this trying time in your life, I believe you have two choices in how your respond to your ex’s behavior.
You can choose to be the victim of your ex’s life and choices or you can go about finding peace after divorce.
Your marriage may have ended and you may have lost your spouse but you don’t have to lose your peace after divorce too.
Here are 7 ways for finding peace after divorce
1. Forgiveness will free and liberate you.
As much as you want to get revenge on your ex and cause them great harm, you are simply creating more problems for yourself. Tormenting your ex will require you to spend more mental and emotional energy fighting with him. Hatred and anger is a losing situation.
Only your forgiveness and the ability to see your ex through a new set of eyes will change your ex. Only your changing your energy will change your ex’s energy. Only letting go of anger and hatred will give you back your life.
If you’re stuck in anger and committed to payback, you’ll spend your time, energy, lawyer’s fees and sanity on a losing battle. Resentment and revenge are losing battles no matter how sweet they may feel at the moment.
The courage to forgive will set you mentally free to live your life and key to finding peace after divorce.
2. Don’t blame yourself for your ex’s actions.
Another way for finding peace is to stop personalizing your ex’s actions.
Whether you believe it or not, your ex isn’t directing everything he or she is doing at you.
Your ex’s decisions may not be wise, productive, or in his best interests, but your ex probably isn’t making these decisions specifically to spite you.
If you are the target of your ex’s anger and vitriol, you must engage in even more understanding and forgiveness.
Remind yourself that you are not responsible for your ex’s behavior. Insecurity, fear, anger and mean-spiritedness may fuel your ex’s actions, but you don’t have to take them personally and you don’t have to believe you caused them.
For finding peace after divorce, you don’t have to blame yourself for what this person is choosing to do.
3. Have an overdose of compassion and gratitude for yourself.
In addition to forgiving your ex, spend some time healing your heart, feeling more compassion for yourself and searching for gratitude.
If you feel compassion for yourself, the fuel of resentment will cool. The fire of hatred will abate a bit. You will hold yourself less responsible for your ex’s actions. You will stop blaming yourself.
Start treating yourself like you would someone you loved – without judgment and with much understanding.
When you meditate on gratitude, you can’t focus on reciprocating pain or being angry at your ex.
4. Take the high road when you face resentment and malice.
Throughout your marriage, you might have enjoyed this tit-for-tat behavior that caused both of your pain.
Yet in your post-marriage life, you may want to create another kind of relationship with yourself and with your ex.
The high road means doing the just and fair thing. It’s letting go of the minor and the petty. It’s ignoring the trivial and not letting insulting words or actions get the best of you.
It’s reminding yourself that you’re the better person and that you can walk the high road even if your ex can’t.
The high road will help you move on while your ex swims in the deep waters of hatred.
5. Take the high road for the benefit of your children.
If you can’t do it for yourself, go about finding peace after divorce for your kids.
How you treat your ex will affect how your children view interpersonal relationships, their parents and their future partners.
If you want to make the greatest contribution to your children’s mental and emotional sanity, show them how to forgive, let go, and treat each other respectfully.
Your children have already gone through something traumatic. To allow your separation to hurt them, even more, isn’t fair.
Your job as a role model and a person will have a longer-lasting effect on your kids than anything you teach or share. Your behavior and attitude towards their other parent will be what matters most to them later in life.
Do it for your kids because they’re watching.
6. Find your own happiness, meaning and fulfillment.
If you get caught up in your ex’s life and what your ex is doing, you’ll be angry often and bitter even more.
For good or bad, you are both out of this marriage.
No point crying over spilt milk, who won “The Bachelorette” this season or who’s in the White House. No, actually, we do need to cry about that, but you don’t need to cry about your marriage any longer.
You don’t need to look towards your ex’s life, your ex’s words or your ex’s actions to determine your own happiness. You don’t need to compare yourself to your ex’s life determine what is meaningful and fulfilling.
No reason to compare, judge or experience irritation over the life your ex is living.
If your ex is traveling the world and living it up, good for him.
If she moved to Italy and is dating the prime minister, good for her.
If he’s getting married two weeks after the divorce papers are finalized, good riddance!
You need to return to yourself.
This is no longer a partnership.
You are no longer filing jointly.
Your happiness, your life’s meaning, your taxes and even your peace after divorce are your responsibility.
Yes, it’s harder this way but adjusting to this new reality gets easier with time.
7. Take ownership of your life.
This all brings me to the fact that you are the only person responsible for your life.
As my friend and fellow author, Andreea, mentioned to me, the waves may be high and dangerous but you’re still in command of your boat.
You have control only over your own life.
You can’t do anything about what your ex does or who she does it with.
You have little say over whom your ex spends his money on or how much younger she is.
You are both done being a part of each other’s lives.
You can allow the divorce to end the relationship you once had and then learn to create a new relationship. This is the renewed relationship of two new single people or two new single parents.
Moving forward requires that you accept your divorce, make peace after divorce, and choose to move forward under new circumstances.
You’re the captain of this boat; you can choose the direction you want to go and you can pick up new people along the way.
It’s time to say au revoir to your divorce and demanding ex and aloha to the new life and relationships that await.
The oars to peace after divorce are in your hands.
If you want to know how to find peace after divorce, check out my book on finding peace after divorce, The Sacred Art of Letting Go. (affiliate link)
Your friends have received the wedding invitation.
Your friend’s Mom, a year later, insists on telling you that your ex is now a proud father of a little human.
Things can’t get any worse, can they?
Your ex is living their life and continuing like it’s normal.
You’re replaying old Adele songs, become a closeted alcoholic, watching endless episodes of Revenge Body with Chloe Kardashian.
What gives?
I know in my own life that my ex is likely doing better than ever.
Since the time of our marriage and struggles of being a young couple starting on our professional careers, she’s completed a fellowship, become a doctor, bought a home and travels the world.
What gives?
How do you come to terms with your ex’s success and let go of what was?
I’ve made peace with my ex’s success and here’s how you can too. These are all reminders to help you shift your mindset and reframe the situation.
Only when you let go of what was, can you move on to what can be.
Ready?
You helped your ex get to where they are today.
You were part of your ex’s journey. He wouldn’t have gotten to where he is today without you. He ended up in the relationship that he’s in because of you. He ended up in the career that he’s in, partly because of you. He ended up in the good place that life has taken him due to your making. No things didn’t work out between you two, but your relationship bore fruit in his success.
Your ex succeeding means you succeeded!
Yay, for ex’s succeeding. You don’t seem excited or amused but here’s the deal.
Your ex’s success means you succeeded! You were part of the growth journey for your ex, right?
You walked with them for part of the path and thanks to you, they are where they are today.
You may be bitter about it or jealous about their success but you should also feel pride in their accomplishments.
They’re not succeeding because of you.
They ARE succeeding because of you.
You left your ex better off than you found them.
Yay, you!
You were your ex’s life coach.
Sometimes, lovers motivate and inspire each other to turn their life around.
And other times, ex’s motivate each other to turn their lives around.
You were your ex’s life coach in one of two ways. You either helped them get their act together while you were together and helped them up their game. You helped them improve who they were and become a better version of themselves. Or your helped them up their game after your relationship. You helped them become a better person, set better goals and live to their full potential.
You are the life coach you never wanted to be.
Now, how about just life coaching your way to success, love and happiness, huh?
You were both each other’s teachers.
Professor You!
Who would have thought you were responsible for leading and teaching someone else along their path?
We are each other’s spiritual teachers, maybe even guru’s.
You weren’t just a life coach but your ex either got better, improved their life or turned things around because of you.
They learned from you; either how to be more like you or how not to be anything like you.
Either how to be the person they were or how to become an entirely new person.
You likely helped them improve in their relationships, in their marriage and in their life!
Stand up and take a bow.
Not every teacher is thanked or shown appreciation, as you know but deserve all the thanks and appreciation from your ex.
They don’t have to show it or express it.
Your ex’s success is all the appreciate and gratitude that needs to be shown.
Your ex won so you won.
You led the way and lit the path of learning.
Your ex can help guide you on how to move on.
You’re your ex’s professor emeritus.
Your ex can also help teach and guide you.
Your ex can help you see the light on ….how to move on!
The roaring success that your ex is having with life after you should inspire you and help you move forward.
Look at the changes your ex made.
Look at the decisions your ex took.
Look at the risks they took and the challenges your ex overcame.
Their path is likely as rocky as yours. You may no longer be in touch or care what your ex is doing but use their experience to guide you on your path.
Yes, if they can move on, you can move on.
Your life is a journey filled with beginnings on endings.
In the old days, you fell in love, got married and lived happily ever after.
If you were 25 and older, per Liz Gilbert’s book Committed, A Love Story, you likely remained married. Yeah, she says that age was the most critical factor on the success of marriages. 25 and up, high likelihood of staying married. Below 25 and marriage, your likelihood of a committed marriage fell below 20%.
Anyway, in life, yours and even Liz Gilbert’s, relationships start and end. They start again and end again.
We are no longer in the olden days.
We can no longer live up to the expecations of Bollywood movies, mythology, Disney stories and every other fictional account of relationships.
Yes, a long term relationship is what you should want but it’s not for everyone and it’s not always possible.
People change.
Relationships change.
You change.
If you open your eyes to the belief that relationships come and go, it will be much easier to digest your past and your ex.
Also, remember this.
The more relationships you go through, the better you get at relationships.
The better you get at selecting the right person who you could end up with in a long-term relationship.
Your ex is your guide. Your ex is your teacher. Your ex is your experience.
Open yourself to relationships ending so your heart can open again.
You have to find success and happiness on your own terms.
Don’t let your ex be the model for success and happiness.
Look at their path for how he found his success and happiness but don’t let his path be your path.
You don’t have to copy-cat your ex’s life.
Your happiness and success does not have to be like everyone else’s.
Yes, you may want a relationship, kids and family but….
There can also be happiness and fulfillment without all that.
Your job, your new home, your good career and your friends may more than make up for what others are going through.
Among married couples, I’ve often thought to myself, am I the happiest person here?
And often, I realize, why yes I am! I am the happiest person here.
I enjoy my freedom, my work, my writing, helping people, traveling and did I say, writing.
I enjoy having less to worry about and the ability do life at my own whim.
I’d like someone in my life but I’m just find without one.
You could say I’ve found happiness.
The Buddha might even say I’ve found enlightenment.
Society has a lot of dumb rules. You don’t have to play by them. Check out my book 7 Sacred Promises to learn more.
I help people overcome their devastating breakups and divorces and find love again. Instead of visiting the Himalayas, sign up below and join me. I am taking a writing break but will be back soon.
This guide is free. A ticket to the Himalayas is $2000. Your move.
