Dear Mackenzie,
Thank you for writing in. I can imagine that what you’re going through is not easy. I can also imagine that you may be feeling shocked and slightly sucker punched perhaps, which is understandable.
The quick answer to both of are your questions is as follows: Is there hope for us in the future? Yes. And it’s a resounding yes. You also asked, How do I let him go when this good thing came to an end so quickly? The short answer is that you don’t have to let him go. You can still love him and feel his love for you even though you cannot be together physically at this time. The reason you would want to do this is explained below — and it’s an important one.
In the video I recorded for you, I talk about an old love relationship of mine where my old love and I parted ways and I stayed connected to my love for him and his love for me for three years as I continued on my journey of healing the places within me that he was brought into my life to help me heal. I didn’t date, and I didn’t try to escape the pain of loving someone so much and not having them in my physical world. Not only did this period teach me about what true unconditional love is (loving someone without a single condition on the love, including their physical presence in our lives), it also taught me how to truly love myself, how to comfort and soothe myself, how to overcome my addictions and escapes, and how to stay connected to my pain and allow it to heal me.
Those three years of staying in love with a man who was not a part of my physical reality changed everything about me and my life and it set me up to experience a life that’s even better than I ever could have dreamed it could be. I’m eternally grateful to him.
So, although things may seem rough at this present moment, know that everything you’re going through is purposeful and I’ll give you some action steps you can take to shift this experience away from just a painful experience, and into an experience that is also purposeful and intrinsically powerful for you as a human being, and a soul in a human body.
To start though, I need to give you a quick primer related to soulmates. Given how strong the connection you and your boyfriend have/had, it would seem to me that there’s a matter of the soul involved, which means it is likely a soulmate connection. To truly understand your powerful opportunities to heal, below I’ve outlined some info on the soulmate dynamic and the purpose of the soulmate connection, and then I head into the tools that can help you to make this time apart powerful, purposeful, and full of love for yourself, him, and all others. If you don’t believe you’re soulmates, all this information still applies; pain is always purposeful no matter who inspires it within us.
The Soulmate Dynamic
Deep love coupled with deep pain are sometimes hallmark symbols of a soulmate union if one or both parties have a lot of growth to do and/or places within that need to and/or are ready to heal. Sometimes the pain is during the course of the relationship and other times it’s when the relationship breaks apart.
Most people are expecting soulmate relationships to look and feel like the fairytale stories that Hollywood writes about, but that’s just not how soulmate stories unfold in many people’s lives; most people have too much pain in the way so they can’t really stay connected to the love — not until they heal the pain. Instead, many soulmate relationships are rather triggering for one or both people. The purpose is to trigger up the pain that’s present so that both parties can heal. But, instead most people’s defenses go up when they get triggered and as a result, they hurt one another with their pain, or they run and hide from the love — and all because they don’t understand what’s happening and they don’t have the tools yet to safely feel their pain and to use their pain to heal themselves, the union, and each other.
We all have many soulmates we’ll meet during the course of a lifetime. Not all are supposed to last forever, but each will have a lasting, positive impact for those who know how to do the work to heal in all the places the soulmate came into their life to help them to heal. Because just as the name implies, the soulmate relationship is a matter of the soul, and the soul is here to experience life so that it can heal, grow, and evolve. I also believe the soulmate’s role (depending on what type of soulmate we’re talking about) is oftentimes to prepare us for the love of our life. And in order to be ready for the love of our life, we must shed all the crap that’s in the way between the kind of love we say we want and the kind of love we’re capable of receiving (e.g. let’s say you want someone who loves you and supports you but every time you meet someone who tells you they love you, you don’t believe them or you’re unable to accept their support. When this happens, it is pain/old emotional wounds that are blocking you from being able to receive that which you say you want. Soulmates can help us clear our own blocks created from old wounds so that we can get out of our own way. We just have to be attuned to learning from the pain they may inspire in our lives – rather than blaming them for it.).
Now, two soulmates who split apart do have the potential to come back together in love and union if they can both do the work required to heal the places within them that are ready to heal — and if they’re meant to come back together.
“How do we know what’s ready to heal?” you may ask. I give some pointers below for beginning to look within yourselves to see what is ready for you to explore.
Before I go there though, there’s a quote I want to share with you, a Truth really. It was written by Raymond Charles Barker and it goes like this: “Divine love brings together and maintains together those who belong together so that the glory of God may be made manifest on earth.” For me, this quote, this Truth, gave me permission to let go of trying to control outcomes, fear potential outcomes, or even guess about them. For I truly do trust and believe that we all end up with the people we are supposed to be with and if we’re not supposed to be with someone, we won’t be, and if we are, we will be. As soon as I surrendered to this, much of the fear of being loved and feeling loved and loving someone else disappeared, and I stepped further into trust and faith, which are divine powers we all hold; divine powers that bring great peace.
The One or the One Preparing You for the One?
Now, I can tell you with absolute certainty that your ex-boyfriend is either The One or he’s The One Preparing You for The One, which means that regardless of whether you two come back together or not, loving him and spending the last seven months with him was incredibly purposeful in your life — provided you do the work to grow in any/all areas where you’re being invited to grow. More on that below.
When I discovered that I could (and should) think of each person I date in this way (as The One or The One Preparing Me for The One), it took loads of pressure off of trying to see into the future to determine if the person I’m with is The One. It also made it easier to let them go if they showed up in a way that was not aligned with my vision, my values, and my pictures of a relationship and future (read more on the importance of creating relationship pictures here and below) and it made it easier to let go of the feeling/fear that I had to hold on to people and relationships that didn’t honor me or best serve me and my life’s destiny.
Now, I’m not saying this is always easy. But, it’s a heck of a lot easier than feeling like you’ll never find The One, when the person you thought was The One departs your life. That feeling is one of helplessness, and it will leave you chasing love (perhaps the wrong love) rather than being open to recognizing lasting love when it arrives.
So, spend as much time as you need to feeling the pain, but do so with the knowing that something great is waiting for you. I remember that in the moments when I missed my old love the most (even in the fetal-position-balling-my-eyes-out moments), I always knew that the pain I allowed myself to feel would guide me to the places I needed to heal so that I could have the love I always dreamed of having when I was ready for it.
So just know that if he’s not The One then he is preparing you for The One. This belief is a mindset, and it’s a choice. If you choose to adopt this belief, you will be taking on a growth mindset, which is a mindset that can and will change everything about this situation and how it feels to live it. This mindset will also give you hope — and it’s hope you may need in order to do the work necessary to carry on and move forward toward an even more expansive and loving and powerful relationship (either with your ex or with someone else). It also gives you your power back.
Below are some of the tools and strategies I wanted to share with you. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Truthfully, I could write an entire book with all the tools and tips I’d like to share with you but for now, I’ll just include the ones I feel will be most helpful to you as you traverse these next few days, weeks, and months.
Tools & Strategies to Use
Creating Relationship Pictures
It is absolutely critical that you spend time thinking about the kind of partner you’d like to have and the kind of relationship you’d like to have. And it’s equally important to look at the pictures you have about a partner as well as the pictures you have about what your relationship should look like and how you want your future to look.
Everyone has pictures they’ve created about their lives (like little movies or photographs) that depict how something will look, feel, etc. Oftentimes when examined thoughtfully, we find that a lot of our pictures aren’t even our own. Sometimes they are our parents’ pictures of how our life should be, our parent’s information on how a marriage should be, societal pictures (for example: go to college after finishing high school then get a job or live in a good neighborhood with a white picket fence, have a baby).
And oftentimes if we’re not aware of the pictures we have, then we aren’t able to change them nor are we able to attract into our lives the kinds of people and experiences we really want to have. In this article, I talk more about getting clear about your relationship pictures so that you can see if your ex-boyfriend was really a fit or if you were wrapped up in the fantasy of him (and how he made you feel / who you wanted him to be).
Getting clear on your relationship pictures will also help you to see when you find someone who matches your pictures and when you find someone who does not. 🙂 Both are equally helpful as we pursue a happy, fulfilling, nurturing relationship with the love of our lives.
Learning Your Triggers (aka the areas you’re ready to heal) & How to Comfort & Soothe Yourself
I’d also recommend that you spend some time learning what your triggers are and begin to write them down. Your triggers are going to show anytime you feel emotional pain of some sort (anger, fear, anxiety, resentment, longing, shame, blame, etc.). In order to know the places where you’re ready to heal, you’ve got to know where you’re wounded. Our triggers (or our triggered responses) show us those places.
Now, here’s the important part: I don’t want you to act on the triggers. I simply want you to practice recognizing their presence. Our triggers are our emotional body’s way of saying, “Hey you, I’m hurting and/or afraid right now and I just need you to listen to me.”
The problem is that most people act when they are triggered because when we are triggered, our defense systems kicks in (fight, flight, freeze) and we are erroneously taught to avoid feeling the pain/fear that the triggering event inspired. So, we shame others, blame them, resent them, run from them, chase them, drink, smoke, overeat, use drugs — we do whatever we have learned to do to avoid feeling the pain.
The sad part, though, is that the painful experience isn’t what hurts the most. What hurts the most are all the defenses we create to protect ourselves from ever feeling the pain. Oftentimes, the pain goes away after a simple acknowledgment of its presence and, if needed, a good cry or a logical self-assessment (positive self-talk) about the pain/fear. It sounds odd, but I promise it’s true.
SO — my recommendation to you is to begin to become familiar with your triggers. Most people’s triggers and defenses operate on auto-pilot. But, if you want to heal and have a shot at having a life with the love of your life (whoever that may be!) — you’ve got to be focused on growing and healing all the places within you that are ready to heal and your current ex and his decision to break up with you may be God’s way of giving you your moment to heal.
So take this moment, if you feel guided to, and use this strategy so that you can learn to turn off the auto-piloted reactions and begin to live consciously, becoming aware of yourself and your programming so that you can change whatever parts of your programming and/or life that you don’t like anymore — or whatever parts are no longer serving you to hold on to. You have the power to cause the change you wish to see, which is so exciting to me!
You will know every place that’s ready to heal based upon every place where you get triggered or feel wounded/hurt/pain in some way. Wherever you hurt the most, you also have the greatest opportunity to grow the most. Remember this. The pain is your superpower. You can learn more about pain being your superpower and strategies for connecting to your pain using a growth mindset here.
The information you gather from grabbing a pen and paper and taking note of every time you want to blame someone, escape into a drink, chase their love, shame yourself, put up walls around your heart, avoid ever being hurt again, shame someone else, escape into a bag of potato chips etc. will be invaluable to you as you continue your journey.
The amazing thing is that as you learn the places, you’re triggered and learn healthy ways to comfort and soothe yourself when you are triggered, the less triggered you become. I used to walk around perched, like a charged magnet getting triggered by nearly everything and everyone. Nowadays, I’m not really triggered by anything or anyone. I have healed nearly all the places within me that were wounded and when I do find myself feeling an unexpected trigger, I know exactly how to go within and heal the parts of me that are afraid, hurting, or stuck in some past memory that’s affecting how I feel in my present moment.
To learn the strategy I use to comfort and soothe myself, check out the video located in this post (the content in the post will be helpful too). I recommend using this strategy or something similar every time you feel triggered; it’s an incredibly loving way to soothe the inner child in you who’s just hurting and/or afraid. Learning how to be kind and loving to yourself will go a long way and will help you learn how to love and honor yourself more should you struggle in that space. This strategy is also a good way to begin learning how to safely let yourself feel your feelings and feel your pain without needing to stuff it down, or use shame/blame toward yourself or anyone else. I still use this self-soothing strategy personally to this day and I love it; it keeps me in my power and it will do the same for you if used regularly.
As a side note, I thought it may be helpful to call out a few examples of moments when someone is getting triggered. For most people, their triggers are so engrained in them and their reactions to the triggers are so automatic, they don’t even know where/how to begin to realize what a trigger is. So here are a few examples:
Pretend Example #1: Your friend says she’s tired and isn’t going to be able to go out to dinner with you tonight. You get angry with her, resentful, and want to tell her that if she was really your true friend, she’d be there for you in your time of need.
This is an example of someone being triggered. The person who’s not getting her needs met gets angry, then resentful, then shames her friend. These are feelings that are best to write down and not express because it’s actually okay (and healthy!) for your friend to honor herself if she’s tired. It’s your job to learn how to meet your own needs and learn ways to comfort and soothe yourself. The trigger is highlighting the place within you that’s ready to learn how to comfort and soothe yourself. The friend is not the cause of the pain, she’s just the reminder of it. Make sense? This example also highlights what we call a “projection of pain” — making your pain your friend’s fault — and it’s not healthy or helpful for anyone; projecting our pain keeps us stuck.
Pretend Example #2: Your partner breaks up with you and you begin calling them constantly, going to their home, and begging them to take you back.
This is another example of someone being triggered. Interestingly, this reaction could be a fear of losing love (or some other emotional wound that’s showing up in the present moment) but it’s also possible (and likely!) part of an ancestral program running on auto-pilot from back in our tribal days. Back in the tribal days (thousands of years ago), if a member of the tribe was “rejected” and cast out of the tribe, that member likely died. So we are programmed to chase the tribe for safety — avoid rejection — so that we can avoid dying alone in the wild and/or avoid getting eaten by a Saber-toothed tiger. But, in today’s times, there is no reason to fear the same outcome; times have changed. Members who are cast out of a social group are now able to survive. So the trigger may be merely highlighting a program that is running on auto-pilot; a program that can change should one want it to. It’s also perhaps highlighting the opportunity for this person to learn how to be alone, learn how to love themselves and develop more self-worth, or learn more ways to comfort and soothe themselves so that they are no longer chasing love or wanting to be loved so desperately that they’re willing to beg for it from someone who doesn’t even want them.
Do you see how that works? Our triggers are tricky little things, which is why writing them down and getting familiar with them will be oh, so very helpful to you as you journey through your personal growth and life experiences. Our triggers will always show us the places we’re ready to heal.
Figuring Out Your Three Most Important Questions (MIQs)
Vishen, the founder & CEO of Mindvalley has an amazing exercise he takes his staff and students through. I recently completed this exercise myself (twice!) with amazing results. (Note: Every time you grow, I’d recommend you take a look to see if changes are needed to your MIQs. As we grow, we expand our awareness of ourselves and what’s possible. It’s important to update your visions and dreams as you get more information about yourself, your wants, and your needs.)
In the video I recorded for you, I talk about this tool to help you begin to get clear on who you are and what types of experiences you want to have in life. I also share with you some of the things I have on my list and why dreaming big is so important.
In this period of life — when you have time to consider, and reconsider — who you are, what you want, and what lights you up, this is the perfect opportunity to begin planning your life consciously by envisioning it so that you can bring it into form.
Truth is, the #1 reason why people do not reach their full potential in life is because they failed to dream big enough to hit it. The #2 reason is because they doubted their ability to make their dreams come true (or feared they, as people, weren’t worth it). In this exercise (and in life), you’re not supposed to try to figure out how your dreams will come true or when they will come true. Your only job is to think your dreams into form by courageously and audaciously thinking them and then writing them down. 🙂
I’m excited to see what comes up for you. Here is a link to Vishen’s post in which he walks you through the process (in written form and in video).
Now, in case you’re wondering why I gave you these three tools to assist you during this time of transition and change, it is because I believe in you and I believe that this period you’re going through is purposeful for you and I want you to make the most of the emotional pain that comes up so that you can heal that old pain and be open to receiving more love and more light and more of what you want to experience in life.
Truth is, I don’t know if you and your ex will ever come together again — even though I know it’s possible — but I do know that you were blessed to have spent the time with him that you did and if you are able to grow and heal as a result of the influence he had in your life then you are better off because of him. Pain and love co-exist to heal us.
Last thing, pay attention to how you want to respond to his absence in your life. Do you feel inclined to chase after him, do you want to try to “make him see”, do you want to change who you are or what’s important to you so that he will come back to you and remain a part of your life?
There are no right or wrong responses, there are just different responses that leave you feeling different ways. Write down your inclinations and if you find that the action you want to take comes from a place of fear (e.g. “If I don’t do _____ then I’ll lose him”), then try to avoid doing the thing you’re thinking about doing. I’ve learned that any action we take that comes from a place of fear is usually not an action that is honoring to ourselves, others, or the situation (oftentimes it’s not even rational and it’s usually a bit (or a lot) manipulative because it’s the child in us (the wounded child, in fact) that’s trying to get its needs met). So whenever I’m feeling fear, I literally write down everything I want to do to respond to the fear and then I don’t do any of it. I call it the Power of the Pause. Pausing before taking action gives us the time to evaluate if the action we’re about to take is a reaction to a trigger or a thoughtful, grounded response coming from our emotionally healthy, present mind; it’s also how we begin to keep our dignity as well as our self-worth and cause the life we want. 🙂
OK, my dear. Here is your free coaching video:
I hope this was helpful to you. If you have other questions, feel free to write back in to us as often as you need to. You can submit any follow-up questions either as comments below or through the submission form here.
And don’t try to tackle everything I wrote at once. In fact, it’s likely you may want to return to read this post several times to digest it; there’s A LOT in it and each time you return, if you’re like my other coaching clients, you may get something new from it. 🙂
It was an honor and pleasure to create this free coaching response for you. Thank you for writing in and for trusting me with your question and your soul.
With love, gratitude, grit, and grace,
Leave a Reply