After the tears and the pain, this ordeal in which we believe we are dying also helps us to grow. It enlightens us on our capacities of resistance in the face of separation as well as on our aptitude to find, little by little, our autonomy.
Overwhelmed by grief, lost in a ruined world, devastated . It is very difficult to consider the secondary benefits of the heartache that sweeps us away. And yet… wouldn’t this also be the occasion of a rebirth? Above all, we have great pain. Far beyond, often, our fallen love. As if we are losing a lot more than a soul mate. “Human beings have great difficulty in defining themselves,” observes psychoanalyst. The romantic relationship gives him, precisely, the illusion of being complete: by thinking of filling the lacks of his half, he finds meaning in his existence; by being loved in return, he believes his needs are filled. But this is all an illusion.
A feeling of emptiness
When the veil is torn, we realize that we are “existentially” incomplete. The emptiness of the apartment resonates with that which we carry within us. A moment of vertigo sometimes experienced as a passage from all to nothing. “Especially when we need the other to support an ideal, strong and positive image of ourselves.
An anxiety of abandonment
With this terrible question which, from the Oedipus complex, torments us: am I not then amiable? Because if, since the very first separation that is birth, we have learned to fend for ourselves, the end of the couple also awakens an anxiety of childish abandonment. Especially for women, who have already experienced it twice? According to Freudian theory, the little girl unconsciously wants her mother to give her a phallus, her exclusive love and a child. Annoyed at not receiving anything, she asks her father for it. Another disappointment when she realizes that he loves his mother and has babies with her
While the boys undergo only one renunciation of their desire: “Already provided with a phallus, they turn only to their mother, the father being a rival”, adds the psychiatrist. As in our early years, we feel helpless, passive, and vulnerable.
Acknowledge your grief
First, to deal with the most urgent: to cash in the violence of loss, the fear of emptiness, of the future, mop up disappointment, heal our narcissistic wounds … Little by little, find ourselves, and, along the way, learn, grow , redefine oneself.
How? ‘Or’ What? Beginning by acknowledging the grief. While the word “rupture” trivializes the event (everyone is separating nowadays), “speaking of heartache, I admit the pain, I take my place as subject, underlines, so my responsibilities. As there has been co-construction of the couple, there is co-separation therapist and author with of Finding the strength to dare (Intermediations). It is never the bad guy who leaves and the good guy who is abandoned but, “noting the deadlock in which the couple has got themselves, one of the two has disinvested and can leave the other without too much damage.
Understand the reasons for the breakup
For us who remain alone, past the cloud of hatred that allows us to protect ourselves by designating the other as the culprit, it is necessary to elucidate what went wrong and how we participated in this failure. “What projects did we have together, what commitments did we make? Had we updated the contract that bound us on the loyalty, independence of each? Who had the power, who decided the holidays, the education of the children? So many questions which allow, when we can see clearly, to avoid, later, the exact same fiasco. If we always play our love stories to the same tune, we can indeed learn, from one couple to another, some variations. A touch of creativity, flexibility, which colors our landscape of Sisyphus in search of affection.
