What does ‘getting over someone’ even mean? When we end a relationship there are inevitable feelings of loss. There will be regret, sadness, possibly hurt and anger and quite often unfinished business. Getting over someone means completing that unfinished business for yourself even if you’re not able to complete it with them.
One of Freud’s well-known phrases was, “What do you don’t resolve, you repeat”.
None of us wants to waste our lives going over the same old ground in one relationship after another, not getting what we want or need. We want it to be better next time!
It’s really important to evaluate what was good bad and indifferent for you about the relationship, so when you have the next relationship, you know what to look for and what to avoid.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What was attractive to me about the relationship and the other person?
- What was I hoping for that did come to fruition?
- What was I hoping for that didn’t happen?
- How was I in that relationship?
- Could I be fully myself?
- Was I making sacrifices that were too much for me?
- Was there respect, support, love, and affection?
- How did I want to be loved?
- Was my partner willing and able to show me love in that way?
We want to be homing in on ourselves, to identify what feelings and needs were not being acknowledged or expressed in the relationship. For example:
- Did we really speak up about them?
- Was there a mismatch?
- Were we dimming down our own light in order to be acceptable in the relationship?
- Were we tolerating bad behaviour or behaving in ways we didn’t like?
It’s this honest evaluation that will enable us to grow in maturity. Ultimately helping us to developed new relationship skills, so we evolve instead of going a full circle.
So, what does getting over the relationship really mean?
It’s different with every relationship. If you have children together it may be that your goal would be working through what went wrong between you so that you can have enough of a civil relationship to take care of your children and co-parent well.
Going through a conscious uncoupling is the best way to achieve this. Even if only one of you takes the programme, the results can be astounding. Sometimes couples even get back together as a consequence of the increased communication and honesty that comes about throughout the programme.
If trust and respect have completely gone or you feel unsafe, your goal may be to completely separate from the other person, never see them again. In this case, healing, growing and making sure you never make the same mistakes again is your goal.
You can use the conscious uncoupling process for yourself. Play explore and free yourself from the underlying patterns that made you think it was okay to enter into a relationship with somebody who was less than safe.
Should ‘getting over someone’ be the goal after a relationship?
It’s part of the goal. Often when we part from someone we loved or still love, it opens up deep feelings that go way back to attachment styles we formed in childhood. This is often something that we are unaware of on a conscious level, but we’ll be living in and acting out unconsciously.
We need to separate out from the other person and do that healing, to evolve from those early childlike patterns of dependency and demand and move into more adult, healthier interdependence.
A break up is a real opportunity to grow and change. If we don’t get over the other person, we are likely stuck in a very young pattern of relating that will not be healthy for us going forwards and block us from having future healthy love. It’s more like a parent child relationship, with the child, having very little power or agency. You’ll need to grow and rise up through this for a healthy future relationship.
How else can we ‘move on’ from a relationship?
There is a running joke that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.
However, if we do, the chances are we will repeat the same pattern as we did in the previous relationship.
Rebound relationships are fraught because we don’t give ourselves time to process what’s happened with the past relationship and grow from it. Likewise, we’re not looking at the new person with great clarity and discernment. We are just jumping and hoping they will catch us.
Is it OK to never ‘get over’ someone?
No, definitely not. It’s a waste of your life looking back and not living into your future.
Is not being over someone a bad thing?
Yes, it is, because it means you are stuck in the past and a victim to those old patterns and ways of being. There lies depression and misery. Don’t get bogged down in the past. Look to the light and a better future!
If you’d like help to get over someone that was a big part of your life, please get in touch. You can also visit my website for more information on Conscious Uncoupling.
My name is Heather Garbutt and I send you my love and wish you every success in the search for your true love. If you would like guidance on attracting, true, committed and healthy romantic love, contact now me on Heather@heathergarbutt.com.