Breakup Advice

A lot of people, when wondering what to do in their love life, turn to relationship advice columns. There are many columns out there and they often give contradictory advice. So which ones should you believe?

The first thing to understand about relationship advice columns is that their writers all subscribe to different schools of thought. There are as many schools of thought about relationships as there are about other controversial topics such as politics or religion. And this can make it confusing to figure out whose words of wisdom really are wise for you to follow.

One thing that can help is realizing that these many schools of thought can basically be grouped, as we have discussed before, into two main categories:

• Symptom-Focused Breakup Advice
• Origin-Focused Breakup Advice

When you just need a quick fix to a superficial problem and are truly alright with knowing you will probably have to face it again in some form later, symptom-focused breakup advice – and relationship advice columns that take that perspective – can be useful.

However, in most cases, we at Breakup-Advice.org favor an Origin-Focused approach for reasons laid out in the blog post linked above.

When you are considering a relationship advice column, you need to think critically. Start by reading a few of the author’s pieces and deciding if they tend to write from a symptom-focused or origin-focused mindset. Some authors may combine the two and, if done well, this can be very helpful.

In the end you will have to make up your own mind about which school of thought on relationships appeals to you – or, more importantly, which one you think is actually accurate. Just know that there are various perspectives and don’t simply believe the first one you read offers the golden ticket to happiness.

Now what relationship advice column do we recommend?

Since we strongly favor the Imago Relationship approach, it is no surprise that we recommend columns by people involved in that community. And there is one in particular that stands out.

Al Turtle is a therapist who works in the Imago tradition and he runs a website where he addresses countless questions about relationships and offers his wisdom. It is appropriately titled Al Turtle’s Relationship Wisdom. We have no doubt you will find it extremely enlightening.

Al’s is the column with which we are most familiar. But if you do some searching, you can find others written by people schooled in Imago therapy. For example, with a quick search we discovered that Stacy Notaras Murphy, a certified Imago Couples Therapist, writes a relationship advice column for The Georgetowner.

Ultimately, the best advice of all is to read a variety of relationship advice columns by people from different schools of thought and, over time, compare and contrast them to find the ones that really have the most to offer.

In the painful days right after a relationship has ended, it can be difficult to imagine how to get through a breakup. The pain can be so intense that some people believe it will never end. Others even feel that they want to harm themselves. It can be a serious time in a person’s life.

The most important thing in getting through a breakup is first to maintain basic safety. This means that if you truly feel like harming yourself or others, you should take steps to get the support you need. Your first step should probably be to find a good therapist in your area that can help you grieve and guide you so that you don’t do anything that you will regret later.

Once basic safety is in place, the next issue is persevering through the suffering itself. It is perfectly natural that, for some period after a breakup, you will experience pain. In fact, if you don’t experience any pain after a meaningful relationship ends, that itself may indicate a problem worth investigating.

Dealing with the pain of a breakup is a lot like dealing with the pain of any injury. If you hurt your arm, you need to take some time to relax where you don’t put too much pressure on it. Similarly, when your heart is hurting after a breakup, you may need to take some time to go easier on yourself.

Also like other injuries, depending on how serious it is, you may need to get it treated. If your arm is broken, you may need a cast. And if your breakup has triggered extremely sensitive areas for you, perhaps tied to past wounds, you may need treatment by a good therapist to help you heal up stronger than before.

The next level of getting through a breakup is learning. In many cases, underneath the pain that separations bring are important lessons about ourselves trying to come to the surface. Often the pain brings with it messages of past unresolved issues. If you express the pain through journaling, for example, you may find your mind wandering to past abuses or abandonments that you had long forgotten about. These events can be very painful to remember, but surfacing them gives you a chance to heal them and make your recovery even more full than it would have been otherwise.

Because breakups bring on periods in which we have so much to learn, it can be very helpful, at those times, to read good books about issues relevant to relationships.

The important thing to remember about how to get through a breakup is that things aren’t always what they seem. You may feel the pain will never end, but you know in your mind it will. You may feel that the person who broke up with you has hurt you like nobody before, when later you may realize that they actually triggered hurt that originates in your past more than in your present. You may feel that you have to be very strong and stoic, when in reality what you need most is to ask for help and finally let your pain out, perhaps for the first time in your life.

There is no one way to get through a breakup. We all grieve in slightly different ways. But if you follow these general guidelines, you will be able to forge your own path through the darkness and back to light and future love.

Many visitors come to our site wondering how to recover from a breakup. While there is no one formula that works for everyone, there are certain guidelines that are bound to help you come out stronger and healthier in the long run.

Recovering from a breakup is a healing process like most others. It takes time and it often happens in phases. Let’s take a look at each stage and what you can do to get through it optimally.

The Immediate Aftermath

Right after the breakup happens, you may be deeply wounded. Some studies have even shown that breakups can significantly impact our brains and hormones. So expect that you may not be yourself and that you may feel a lot of pain in the early stage right after the relationship ends. In most cases, this is normal.

Your main task in this early phase is really to simply weather the pain and grieve. And it can really be ok early on to do what it takes, minute to minute and hour to hour, to get through this step. Whatever comforts you without being overly unhealthy is alright.

It’s ok to have a little ice cream now and then. It’s ok to spend a day watching your favorite TV shows. It’s certainly ok to spend some time reading good books that can help you feel less alone.

This phase can last anywhere from a few weeks to months depending on how long and intense the relationship was. It may feel like it will never end, but know that it will eventually and persevere.

One thing to note is that if the pain seems abnormally intense or if you are feeling driven to do self-destructive things, you may want to seek professional help. There is no shame in seeking support and it may even help you grow more than you would on your own through this phase.

Readjusting to Life

In this phase, you begin to come out of the fog of the immediate aftermath. You still aren’t necessarily totally stable. You may get hit by heartbreak now and then when certain experiences trigger it. But you’re feeling more and more stable for longer periods of time.

In this phase, you will want to begin getting back to how life was before for you. Start going out more with friends. Start doing the things you’ve always enjoyed. You may find that sometimes you are fully invested in these activities and other times you are going through the motions. This is alright.

As this phase stretches out, you will increasingly find yourself getting lost in life again and only realize later that you forgot to remember to be hurt, so to speak. This is when you know you’re really getting closer to recovery.

Re-Emerging Stronger than Before

At a certain point, you will realize that not only are you going for almost all of the stretches of time without feeling intense grief, but you are even feeling stronger than you were. This is because a breakup can help you go through a form of detoxification. You cry. You process issues both current and past, conscious and unconscious. And after that takes place, just like after you’ve digested a good meal, you feel even better than you did previously.

If you want to know how to recover from a breakup, the answer is to accept that it is a process and focus on doing each step of the process to the best of your ability. Even though a breakup can feel like the end of the world at first, it can ultimately prove to be the beginning of a new and better world.