The end of a relationship.

There's nothing quite like it.

The heaviness on your chest, the constant reminders of the person you don't see anymore. The shocking sensation of feeling like you have left something important behind.

Emptiness that hollows you out and leaves you exhausted and ragged.

When you are in this state, you just want the suffering to end.

While going through my last breakup, I felt like I would never come out of the pain. I honestly felt as though I would never stop feeling so damn low.

I was stuck on obsessive thinking and blame. Mostly of myself.

Moving through breakup pain and out the other side is a unique and personal experience. Nobody can predict how long it is going to take. For some, like me, it can take years.

However, by committing myself to do the difficult work to heal, I discovered two essential concepts that enabled me to finally become unstuck and rid myself of the constant suffering I was living in.

You need to go through these two processes to avoid getting stuck in rumination, blame, guilt and what-ifs.

These thoughts and behaviours will keep you stuck in pain and suffering for longer than you need to be.

What does taking ownership mean?

Ownership can be a very daunting concept. Sometimes you can feel that you have taken ownership, but you've only explored the surface level.

For example, you know you were messy, which really annoyed your partner. Perhaps you had a tendency to be grumpy when you were tired. You didn't get along with your partner's family. Maybe you each had hobbies that didn't interest each other much.

You accept those things and understand how that could have contributed to the end.

True ownership is going deeper than that and getting past the barriers of denial. Denial can be tough to recognise in ourselves because denial is what keeps us safe from emotional pain.

Most of us avoid emotional pain at all costs.

We need to acknowledge our deeper, more subconscious behaviours. Were you keeping your partner at arm's length emotionally? Do you have a fear of intimacy that prevented you from going all in?

Do you have an addiction you haven't acknowledged? Workaholism, drinking, shopping, drug use, gambling, porn?

Were you allowing your partner to do the majority of work on the relationship? If your partner was coming to you to bring up issues and you were shutting them down or minimising them, that is leaving them to do all the work.

Quality relationships require effort and time.

Can you honestly look at yourself and say that you were putting in as much effort as you could have? If not, it's time to get honest with yourself about why.

Ownership is a complex issue because it requires us to go beneath our top layer.

It asks us to go into the subconscious mind and identify repeated patterns, programming, beliefs, conditioning, self-defences and coping mechanisms. As human beings, we are always in survival and defence mode on a primal level.

The end of a relationship will bring out all of our greatest fears and insecurities. This will obviously be a time when our brain wants to shift into a defensive mindset.

This is why being proactive about owning our part is so important.

If we take true ownership, we can shift the blockages that prevent us from doing the honest inventory essential for moving on.

Taking ownership means accepting that you played a role in the ending of this relationship. This even applies if you were cheated on or left for someone else. As uncomfortable as it is, you have to reframe your victim thinking.

I'm not saying you are in any way to blame for those actions, but could you consider that there may have been red flags you overlooked at the very beginning? Was there a chance you ignored what your intuition was telling you?

Here are the steps I took to help me take ownership:

• I stayed single so that I had the time and space to reflect on the relationship and find the lessons I needed to learn.

• Considered my patterns and behaviours in a non-judgemental way. No blame, just observation and noticing.

• Educated myself on attachment styles to see if I may have been engulfing or avoiding my ex-partner.

• Acknowledged my childhood experiences that may have contributed to some of the behaviours I bought into my relationship.

• Accepted that I played a role in the breakdown of the relationship.

Once you have been brave enough to own your part in the breakup thoroughly, you are ready to move into forgiveness.

Forgiveness — What it really means

I've spoken a lot about forgiveness because it is often misunderstood. We think of forgiveness as meaning that we absolve a person of all responsibility for hurting us or not treating us with care when they promised to.

Or we think that forgiveness is something that we give to other people and not to ourselves.

However, we can look at forgiveness as a salve for the pain experienced in the ownership phase. If you were courageous enough to admit that you contributed to some of the dysfunction, you might get stuck in blame.

Emotional blockages, which stop us from moving through breakup pain and out the other side, usually stem from the inability to forgive ourselves and our exes.

What does forgiving someone really mean?

It means getting above your own ego, and acknowledging higher levels of humanity.

It's an understanding that you can use forgiveness to turn the breakup into an opportunity for deeper healing of past trauma, and develop your emotional maturity.

Forgiving yourself or someone for mistakes and wrongs can be very difficult, but moving on is a lot harder to do without forgiveness.

Even if your partner was extremely toxic or abusive, they are acting on subconscious blueprints that were likely set when they were children. This doesn't excuse or justify their wrongs.

Honest humility can help you understand that people come together in relationships for reasons that go beyond attraction, romance, and love. Some relationships begin purely because unresolved issues and trauma are in our subconsciousness.

We are drawn to these relationships because they are opportunities to try and find a resolution to this pain and suffering. We think the relationship is going to heal us.

Sometimes, the healing we seek occurs once the relationship is over.

If you could see yourself and your ex-partner through this lens, could you reach for a little more forgiveness?

Forgiveness requires faith that your experience was one piece of the bigger mosaic of your life.

That the pain you are experiencing now is a necessary step to feeling the inner peace you were looking for by entering the relationship in the first place.

Takeaway

Separation grief and pain is a world unto itself. It's all-encompassing and at times debilitating. The only way out of it is through it.

No matter how long you experience it, there is joy and hope and you will recover if you set an intention to do the work needed.

You can use ownership and forgiveness as tools to help you become unstuck, learn the lessons and enjoy life again.

If you want to feel like you are taking the best steps for yourself and your family during separation, book my Road to Recovery coaching package here.

If you want to explore a free 1:1 coaching session, connect with me online or find me on Twitter.

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