Breakup Advice

Today we have a reader question that touches on the issue of enmeshed relationships.

If you have a question too, feel free to contact us and, when you do, please let us know if we have permission to post your question – with any changes necessary if you wish to protect your anonymity – along with our response.

Today’s question, posted with the reader’s permission, arrived in an email entitled “Cheering each other up” and reads as follows:

I’ve recently just had a break up, it wasn’t too long a relationship, 11 months, but very intense, especially the beginning. Your page has some really useful information. The question/dilemma I have, that perhaps other people often come across is that, I love my girlfriend very much, and when she gets down I want to make her happy, but sometimes life might hit her hard and she will be down for some time, I will try to cheer her up but sometimes feels like a real struggle and this will make me sad that she is sad then we are both stuck in a rut. Have you got any advice to prevent this situation in the future?

And our response:

Well the first things that cross my mind when I consider enmeshed relationships, of which this may be an example, are identity and boundary issues. If her mood is affecting you too much and you are unable to separate your feelings from hers, you may be identifying too much with her and having unhealthy boundaries. Obviously it is perfectly reasonable and healthy to identify with and open your boundaries to someone you are in a relationship with to some extent. If they are down for an extended period, it’s certainly reasonable and even expected that you will feel somewhat down about this too at times. But ultimately it isn’t helpful to either person for you to identify or become enmeshed to the extent that your feelings blend with theirs. The fact that you say it is so intense from the very start is also a sign that identity and boundary issues may be involved.

The next thing to consider is who you are attracting. Are you attracting women repeatedly that have a pattern of being depressed for long periods? If so, you may want to think about why this pattern exists. Do you have a rescuer complex where you, consciously or unconsciously, hope to be a woman’s savior and have her eventually come to look up to you as the person who fixed her? If so, you may want to rethink this strategy. For one thing, many people who are constantly depressed have deeper issues than a relationship alone, especially without the help of therapy, can fix. In addition, this is really not fair to you since you also deserve someone to be there for you and pick you up at times and, if they are constantly in the dumps, you will always be giving more than you receive, which, over time, chips away at your own energy and self-esteem. Your email was titled “Cheering each other up” but the email itself only talks about you cheering her up.

Depending on what you discover when you think about these topics, you may want to look into the theme of codependence, which plays out in many enmeshed relationships. Or you may ask yourself sincerely if these issues apply and find that they don’t. Only you can answer that. If they do not, then there are some other things that could be considered. But this is a good starting point.

If you’re visiting our website, there is a good chance that you’re wondering how to get over a bad break up. You were recently dumped or felt that you had no alternative but to finally dump your significant other. Or perhaps it was a mutual, but very painful, split.

Now you are stuck in the aftermath. It hurts…badly. And you’re wondering what to do next.

While there is no single answer for getting over a broken heart in every situation, there are some guidelines that you can use in approaching the situation. Let’s take a look at some of these.

**Don’t Focus on “Getting Over It”** – As we talked about in our piece “How Long to Get Over a Break Up?”, one of the worst things you can do to get over a break up is, paradoxically, to try to get over it. Just like the watched pot never boils, healing from a breakup doesn’t happen optimally when you are focused on the endpoint. So if you shouldn’t focus on getting over the breakup, what should you focus on?

**Focus on Processing the Break Up One Step at a Time** – Though you may not think of it this way, healing from a relationship is a process. You can sometimes rush through the feelings and bury them, but if you do you will likely pay a price down the road. It is much more healthy in the long run to allow yourself the time to go through the process step by step and come out on the other side stronger for the long haul. So what should you focus on? Focus on what you need to do at each step. And the first step is…

**Survive the Pain without Running Back or Doing Damage** – Early on, the most difficult struggle will be to simply handle the pain without doing anything that will be more detrimental in the long run. If the relationships is clearly over, or if you know deep down that it should remain over, then your first task is simply to withstand the pain. It is difficult because, for most of us, everything in our being tells us to run to drown out pain as fast as we can. But think of the pain as a sort of exercise. You’re building your ability and confidence in your capacity to tolerate your feelings without running from them. For some of you, this will be the first time you’ve ever truly done this.

Now if you were just going to sit in pain and suffer, that would be masochistic. And this is not about masochism. So what do you do once you are surviving the pain?

**Seek Insight into what the Pain is Telling You** – The pain of your breakup is a messenger. It has within it lessons about your past and who you truly are. Once you are surviving, the next step is to mine the pain for its wisdom. This is best done with guidance from those who have experience at interpreting this kind of pain. I highly recommend you check out the books that we recommend and read them while the pain is fresh. They will teach you things you will carry with you for years to come. You may also, at this time, seek guidance in support groups online or in person or by finding a therapist, possibly one that specializes in relationship issues, who can advise you personally on how to get over a bad break up.

**Begin to Gradually Participate More in Other Activities** – There will come a point where you are able to return more proactively to your work, hobbies and social life, yet may not want to do so. It is a good idea not to push yourself too hard, just as you don’t want to jump into a rigorous exercise program while you’re still injured. But you also should push yourself a little bit, a step at a time, to get back into the action again.

**Make the Changes Called for By What You Have Learned** – Having mined your pain and started to return to life again, it’s time to grow. If you’ve read the right books or sought help from the right people, you will surely have some new ideas about how to change some of your character traits or behaviors to get out of the patterns that led to this particular breakup. When you make those changes, you are using the lessons of this breakup to improve your future life and relationships. Everything comes full circle.

At this point you are ready to throw yourself back into life, hopefully even stronger than before.

What you’ll notice is that the more you focus directly on getting over the break up, the harder it will be to move on. When you instead simply focus on each step of the process, after a while you’ll sort of lose track of time and notice more and more spurts where you forgot to think about your ex or to feel the pain. It’s a tricky, magical sort of thing.

And now you know a little more about how to get over a bad break up….by not trying to get over it at all.

Here at Breakup Advice, we believe that recommending books to read after a break up is one of our most important tasks. The period after a break up can be a painful one. Yet, it is also a tremendous opportunity for learning and growth. And for both of these reasons, finding, reading and perhaps even re-reading just the right books during that sensitive period when you are still wounded can prove invaluable.

Let me explain.

When you are going through the intense pain of a breakup, one of the most comforting experiences that you can have is realizing, in a very direct way, that you aren’t alone and that what you are going through makes sense. Sometimes, especially if there are unique issues in your particular situation, you can feel like nobody truly understands or even as if you are going crazy. But the right book can come in extremely handy in reflecting to you that there is always some reason behind what can feel like madness or pain that will never end.

In addition, if you find the right books to read after a break up, they can help you to:

• Gain insight into why you attracted and were attracted to the specific person that you were, not only in this most recent relationship, but in relationships throughout your life

• Gain insight into exactly why the relationship failed and if its failure reflects any significant patterns

• Understand the sometimes counterintuitive or hidden explanations for the pain you are feeling – explanations you might never find without guidance from those who have been there or studied relationships for years

• Learn exactly how to heal some of your longstanding wounds – wounds that can date back to your earliest years – so that you can attract a healthier partner next time around and have a better chance of creating a lasting relationship that works

There are a huge number of books about relationships and breakups on the market. Many of them offer very little useful advice. Others are downright fraudulent or scams. How do you know which books are really worth buying and reading?

We have tried to help you with this decision. We’ve read many of these books and have been extremely selective in choosing only the very best to suggest to our readers. We truly believe that the books that we have chosen to recommend can help you tremendously in surviving your breakup, learning and growing from it, getting over a broken heart and coming out even stronger on the other side.

In fact, we are confident that you will return to the lessons that you learned from these books again and again throughout your life.

You can check out all of the best books to read after a breakup in our Breakup Advice Bookstore.

Reading books alone may not heal all of your wounds or fix all of your relationship problems. There are many other options that you might eventually consider as well, including participating in support groups and seeking the help of a talented and wise therapist.

But you simply can’t go wrong by first picking up any of the great books that we recommend, taking in what they have to offer, and then using that to help you make decisions about where to go from there. Even if you do find that you need additional help, these books will offer you guidance in determining just what help that might be.