A million songs lamenting heartbreak detail how the rupture of a relationship can affect us in original and unpleasant ways. These soundtracks to pain may make great music, but rarely ease it. A cloud of gloom still descends over me when I hear songs from The Police album, Regatta de Blanc, though I have no recollection of who provoked this teenage angst. The body retains memories of pleasure and pain jealously.
Break-ups can be a massive blow to our self-esteem with the effects reverberating through every area of our life. The loss can sometimes seem unsurmountable – the mourning before feeling ready to love again can feel like a bereavement. Humans are social animals who usually work best in harmony with others. Being alone can feel devastating after intimacy is lost. The fall-out from a passionate tryst can hit some harder than a divorce ending a marriage lasting decades.
A colleague of mine once described falling in love as ‘a kind of madness.’ Falling out of love, I believe, can also seem like a temporary form of insanity. Surviving well and limiting the damage are often key to returning to normality relatively unscathed. Usually, the loss needs processing and a willingness from the sufferer to re-evaluate what happened.
Recovery is often hampered by unpleasant emotions we would rather disown. Feelings of bitterness, jealousy, and hate are initially commonplace. An isolated break-up can dredge up traumatic childhood memories buried deep in our subconscious, and a belief that such endings will be forever repeated.
How counselling can help
Understanding your role in the drama can help you avoid its future repetition and allow you to take back control of your romantic life. You may be desperate to understand the mind of a former partner, but greater knowledge of your inner self can reveal your role in its unravelling. Such inconsolable lows may one day be reviewed as significant turning points – the break-up may be the signal for positive change. Counselling lets you purge yourself of these negative emotions and allows you to develop new insights to break out of vicious cycles. Friends and family can help, but sometimes their advice is tainted by their own bad experiences. Sometimes too their bias towards you blinds them to objective truth.
Many people see themselves as unlucky in love. Therapy helped me realise some of my choices were just misguided and that I often misinterpreted breakups as personal failures. But looking back, the relationships were often less than what my romantic imagination built them up to be. Thinking a relationship will complete you is also a common but often misguided concept. You run the risk of putting your happiness in the hands of another – a responsibility that often weighs too heavily. Thinking a new relationship will paper over the cracks in your daily life may avoid confronting the real issues eating away at your self-confidence.
I often speak with clients trapped in poor relationships that are sustained by the fear of facing the unknown beyond its end. Sometimes the ‘investment’ of time in a relationship makes people hang onto it beyond its natural life – as if breaking-up is a weakness rather than an honest sensible response to its failings. The traditional view of marriage as a life-long contract supports the idea of longevity being a worthy accomplishment. But for whom is an unhappy house worth sustaining? Rarely for those living in it. Ending at the right time can preserve the good times in your memory. Great friendships often emerge from the shared trials of the past.
Modern dating culture multiplies our romantic options bewilderingly. The deceptive and unrealistic promises promoted by the Internet and multi-channel TV create enticing and unrealistic expectations. Counselling can help you find the balance between appreciating what you do have and what more you could gain.
For struggling couples, relationship counselling helps identify poor communication. Improving it can pay rich dividends. It might also clarify if a partner is not prepared to make changes. Either way, it can release you both from feeling helplessly trapped.
At least one song relates that ‘breaking up is never easy,’ but when you understand the reasons behind it, you can learn from past mistakes and make better choices the next time. When that happens, you may start noticing all those songs that celebrate love…
Available Help
Anchor Counselling offers support for relationship problems with both individual and couples counselling. Specialist support is also available from relate.org.uk, which has branches in Richmond, Ealing, Barnes, Staines, and Isleworth and provides extensive information on its website for all kinds of relationship difficulties. For information on relevant NHS services in your area go to nhs.uk.