Losing love (5 ways to cope)
By
OptimistMinds
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Author bio
The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
In this article, we will be dealing with the topic: losing love. Losing someone you love or having to undergo separation from someone you adore and love the most, is a painful and heartbreaking experience. In this article, we shall be exploring the different kinds of lessons a person learns after losing the love of their lives, effective coping strategies one could adopt to deal with losing love, and quotes that emphasize and relate to the agony of losing people you love.
We will also be answering certain questions related to feelings of love, falling out of love, and losing love.
Losing love
Before we delve deep into the topic, let us take a look at some relatable quotes concerning losing love:
- I broke my own heart loving you
- I loved you every day and now I will miss you every day.
- The toughest part of letting go is realizing the other person already did.
- Though lovers are lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion – Dylan Thomas.
Losing love is emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausting, painful, dreadful, and it highly disturbs your mental equilibrium. You slowly start to realize that love is not only about merry laughs, long hugs, and sweet promises. The other side of reality hits you hard and you see the double-edged facet of love.
Simultaneously, you feel isolated, helpless, and it may seem like there is nothing more you can do to change your current situation. You may begin to see every day as a burden to live and find it rather difficult to indulge and enjoy life as earlier. Additionally, some of the most unbearable and drowning feelings experienced during this time are those of guilt, regret, and immense hurt for losing your love and having to undergo the process of recovery from the loss.
It involves the painful processing of the fact that you lost someone who stood by you, through your thick and thin, who might have loved you unconditionally, and who was ready to invest ample effort and time in helping you grow and heal in life. It occurs as a two-way process; losing love and gaining the energy and emotional balance to realize and acknowledge the loss. It takes sufficient time and gradually, the pain starts subsiding and you will enter the stage of reflection, with internal strength and external sources of support that you might have sought.
The why question
When a relationship comes to a close, and when you have gently accepted and understood the loss, the next step is to ask yourself, as gently as possible, what went wrong?. The ‘why’ question is inevitable and imperative. When you sit with yourself and take time to figure out what were the reasons from your side that led to the ending of the relationship, it helps you to gain insight into your behavioral patterns, thought processes, and emotional glitches that are causing harm to your authentic self and the relationships in your life. It helps you to identify, understand, analyze, and work on those traits and behaviors that are undesirable and transform them into useful and desirable coping mechanisms or completely get rid of them.
There are a set of effective questions you can ask yourself, to better understand what caused you to end a relationship:
- Did you feel insecure and unworthy in the presence of this person, which led you to do things to sabotage the relationship?
- Did it scare you when they sought intimacy with you and make you create a barrier between you and the person on the other side?
- Did you want to commit, but at the same time, you experienced fear and anxiety at the thought of giving up your freedom and usual way of living?
- Were you lying to yourself and your partner for saving the relationship from breaking off?
- Did you unintentionally or intentionally disregard their emotions and experiences in any manner?
- Did you break their trust or fostered dishonesty, at any point in the relationship?
- Was distance creating difficulties in communicating and being there with your partner?
- Was it situational or circumstantial?
- Were there any financial issues that caused underlying tensions and frustrations?
- Were you really in love with the person or was it just an infatuation?
These questions, when answered, lead you to gain more clarity as to why the relationship ended and what are the emotional and thought patterns that made you sabotage the relationship unintentionally. Self-sabotage is something common that can happen, irrespective of our relationship status. However, when we are self-sabotaging, while in a relationship, it indicates that we are not truly aligned with ourselves and our needs. It also brings out our deepest fears, insecurities, and inabilities to be honest with ourselves and others around us.
This leads you to unintentionally sabotage the relationship with your partner as you are not able to be aware of yourself and the pressure you are exerting on yourself, which leads you to excessively focus on your partner and losing them at any moment. Ironically, in the whole process, we start to lose ourselves as well. This causes severe frustration and mental exhaustion, as time passes.
After losing the love of your life, you slowly and painfully realize that you were the major reason for leading to the loss, through self-sabotaging and ignoring your genuine feelings and emotions.
The fact to be understood here is that your relationship with another is a true reflection of who you are, in every possible way. This is the reason why when we grow and evolve towards becoming a better person, we start to move away from people who do not support or love us, and conversely when we are insecure, emotionally volatile, and self-sabotaging ourselves, the good ones in our lives tend to go.
The positive side of self-sabotaging
The positive side of self-sabotaging is that you begin to realize that the answers are always within you and not outside yourself. Every tie you need to self-sabotage, you only need to look within you, to clear the confusion. There lies a wealth of information in your behavior and thought patterns that you may choose to ignore or acknowledge.
If you choose the latter, you are bound to grow and if you choose the former, you will become stagnant and even more frustrated with everything in your life. There are instances when we unconsciously cut ourselves off from good things happening to us to avoid painful emotions and dealing with them. This, in turn, causes you to blur out the truth that stands tall, in front of you, and engage in the behavior of self-sabotaging.
Important learnings
Losing love in any manner teaches you a host of important lessons that helps you move forward in life and open up your perspective to wider angles. Some of the lessons are as follows:
- Learn to live your life to the fullest and in every moment, without too many regrets. Life is mostly unpredictable and everything is not under our control. Hence, learn to live in the moment and cherish everything you value and love ardently. Keep yourself open to changes and roll with the punches. Be courageous and willing to take up challenges that come your way and make the right kind of sacrifices, when required.
- Learn to appreciate and show gratitude to everyone and everything in your life. Be grateful and happy for what you have in life and work on yourself and your dearest goals at the same time. Anyone’s life is filled with highs and lows and the trick lies in managing both aspects with the right kind of resources. Keep yourself constantly aware of your emotional and mental processes and listen to your innermost intuitions in times of need. Abundance emerges when you are sincerely able to acknowledge and be grateful for all that you already have in life.
- Learn that healing is not a one-way process that runs smoothly and without bumps on the way. Healing is highly personal and will never be the same for two individuals. It requires an immense amount of patience and strength that comes with an ardent willingness to heal your wounds and to move towards better things in life. Healing is a slow process that needs to be experienced consciously and openly. You need to inevitably sit with your painful emotions and feelings, gently and compassionately feel them, acknowledge them, and let them take their time and space to move out of your mind and body.
- Learn the immense power of choice and exercise it wisely. You can choose the direction of your life and how you want it to turn out. You have the choice of turning every tragedy into a lesson learned and to take away the good things out of it. Of course, we cannot control the bad things that happen in our lives, but we can surely choose how to deal with them and to face the challenges that they pose.
- Learn not to let your past rule your life and always be mindful of dwelling over your future. Let go of regrets and past mistakes, make peace with your inner critic, and know that you deserve a good life with ample opportunities to grow and become a better human being. Become the strong, resilient, and empowered person you wish to be.
Conclusion
In this article, we explored the topic: losing love. We examined the emotional and mental impacts of losing someone you love, related quotes, the importance of introspection and asking why questions, the pros, and cons of self-sabotaging, and important learnings one can take away from the loss of a loved one.
FAQs: losing love
Can you lose feelings for someone you love?
Yes. you can lose feelings for someone who you truly love and care for. This is normal in any relationship and can emerge at the start or into the middle of a relationship. This is also sometimes the same set of feelings that leads to the attraction between two people. A person can lose all their feelings and still hold love for their partner. It could feel like you respect and adore the person, but you may not be ‘in love’ with the same person.
How to deal with a lost love?
Here are some effective ways through which you can deal with the pain of losing someone you loved:
Give yourself enough time and mental space to process the loss and accept it’s reality
Acknowledge the breakup and do not judge, condemn, or try to make sense out of it.
Experience the grieving period intensively and honestly.
Choose to be around people who sincerely want to be there for you and provide ental support during your tough phases of life. You must feel comfortable and grounded when they are around
Gradually start to get out of your head and engaging in the outside world.
When should you let go of a relationship?
You should decide to let go of a relationship when you see more red flags than the good times. Trust is one of the most important factors that is required in a relationship. If you feel the constant need to check on your partner, monitor their activities, and question their every move and decision, it is indicative of severe distrust and disrespect.
References
https://natashaadamo.com/losing-the-love-of-your-life/
