New love for your old love
Break ups are hard. Obviously! We all process them differently but, I think we can agree breakups are sad. There’s always that point, after a break up, where you start to feel better. Life is on the up swing and it’s always at that moment that you’ll see your old love with a new love. Knowing your ex is moving on can be even more painful than the break up and that’s what I want to talk about today.
Yes, I agree that break ups can be tough BUT, I kind of love them. I’m not a masochist either. I love break ups because they are always really fertile ground for me and where I do my most growth. The heart break is painful and I’ve spent many a night crying myself to sleep but, I dig the deepest in those time. The last time I experienced a really painful breakup I started long distance running and started taking french lessons. It feels like a break up can wipe the cobwebs off my eyes and I see myself more clearly and see what I’m capable of and then I start to take action. It end. However, seeing my old love with a new love still brought to my knees. Until I discovered a secret.
A handful of my exes got married right after we broke up. A couple of those were pretty painful to watch as they moved on so quickly. Right before I was traveling, I experienced heartbreak and a month or so after I saw through social media he was already dating again— after telling me he wasn’t ready to date— and it hurt. Oh, did it hurt. When I was traveling, I really dug into why and it’s because I thought him moving on with a new love meant that I wasn’t enough for him and he found someone who was better than me. I took time to search through all the pain I had experienced when an ex moved on and it was all for the same reason— I thought it was confirmation I wasn’t good/pretty/skinny/smart/cool enough. I was putting my worth where it didn’t (and doesn’t) belong- in someone else’s perceived opinion of me. After working through my realization and drawing my worth back inside, where it belongs, I realized that my exes moving on had nothing to do with me. I want to be happy and meet a partner that I can grow with and I want that for everyone else too, including men I once loved. Actually, I want that extra for them because we shared deep care for each other.
When I’ve spoken about Guy (my last partner) and how I’ve handled our transition to friendship, I’ve gotten a lot of women reaching out about how I’ve kept my perspective through the whole thing. And it’s because my worth was not in him or our relationship. Our ending was sad of course but it didn’t pull a rug from me because it couldn’t. My worth isn’t outside of me and it can’t be taken from me. He can do whatever he wants and it still won’t effect my worth. That’s the real secret—high self worth. Where is your worth? If seeing your old love with new love KILLS you, it’s probably because somewhere inside you, you feel it’s a sign that you aren’t good enough. The reason you feel that way is because you are putting your worth in a person who isn’t you and in a relationship- external factors. External factors will always change and lead to proverbial rugs being pulled out from under you. When you work through the reasons why you put your worth externally and then do the work to pull it in, it’s no longer the end of the world to watch an ex move on with a new love. You’ll know their moving on is not a sign you aren’t enough or that your relationship didn’t matter. When you have high self worth you will trust that when you decide to leave a relationship it’s for the growth of both parties involved and you’ll feel happy when they find someone new. Even better news? The less energy we waste about what someone else is doing the more we can invest in ourselves! And investing more energy into ourselves means we can move on too!
If you’re moving through a break up and feeling stuck, I look forward to connecting over a session.