It’s amazing what we do to ourselves when we are hurting inside, all the pressures and guilt we carry around. When we have lost someone through a breakup or a death, we feel guilt pushing on our broken hearts. Sometimes family members and friends can make it worse without meaning to. We need empathy not judgment from the people closest to us.
My friend, Sharon, went through a terrible breakup and she told me, “I could feel my friends look at me differently, almost like they were blaming me for the breakup because it had complicated their lives. Who were they going to hang out with? Who were they going to choose? The guilt was so heavy on my shoulders I almost tried to get back with my ex even though I knew the breakup was the best thing for us both.” It’s difficult not to cave into the guilt trips placed on us, but we have to do what is best for us.
Usually most people don’t know the whole story, they don’t know how your ex treated you or the real reason you may have broken up. Sharon also confided to me that she knew long ago she needed to get out. But she loved him and even though she knew deep down in her gut that this relationship was not working. Instead she allowed his friends to talk her into staying because they “claimed” her reasons for getting out were fixable and that she should just give it “time”. “Time” turned into 10 years.
We have to learn to listen to our gut… that’s right “our gut”. We all know deep down what is right for us and what is wrong, but most of us choose not to listen to it. Do you know what feeling I’m talking about? The sinking feeling that begins in your throat then moves down and tightens your stomach into a ball? Knowing what is good for us in one thing but learning to listen to our gut is another. We tend to twist our views so we feel validated in our decisions.
Guilt trips are one of the worst parts of a breakup. We begin to second guess what is best for us and begin to blame ourselves for everything that went wrong in the relationship. “If only I wasn’t so demanding” or “What if I didn’t complain about…”, what if, what if, what if… we analyzing ourselves to death on what we did wrong.
STOP, what is your gut saying to you? Be honest with yourself, are you better off without them? Or are your feelings exactly what your gut is saying? Whether you want to get your ex back or you need to move on, you have to figure out what it best for you. Are there places you could have improved? Or should you just take this break up as a learning experience and not make the same mistakes again?
There are things we all know that we have done wrong, but you have to ask yourself if you had done it differently, wouldn’t it have changed your relationship? Or would the break up have happened anyways? How many things would you have to change in order to make the relationship work? Are they changes that you can live with or do they make you into someone else completely? If it is the latter then you know that you must move on and learn from that experience.
People may try and tell us what is right for us or try to guilt us in to doing something that is in their best interest and not ours. So we have to remember to “check in” with our gut and listen to what is right for us and not allow the “guilt” to set in.
