One problem many people face when there is a breakup or divorce is that one party doesn’t want to let go. It is often the one who was blindsided by the breakup. You see them pining away for the one that got away. They obsess over the other person often falling into a depression for a while.
Their friends try to help them out yet for some reason The person who was left doesn’t want to let go. We have all done this at one time or another. We all have that one that got away. You think they were the best thing yet they left us for some unfathomable reason. I had one she was my world except that I messed up and I lied to her about some rather important events in my life, she found out and I wandered around lost for many months after. Even after I married I still thought of this one gal. It was a problem. It took me several years to finally understand that she was not the right one. She would have had me trapped in a city I didn’t want to live in. I would have probably taken a completely different life journey that would have led to me not being who I am today.
So how do you let things go? Is it a person or something else? How do you let it slide like water off a duck’s back? The answer is that it’s not as easy as you would think but there is a subtle art to letting whatever go.
There are many different ways to let go.
Now we will be focusing on how to let people go in particular. Yet there are many times we hold on to grudges, frustrations, and many other emotions. In fact, we hold on to emotions more than we hold onto people. The very reason we hold on to other people is because of the emotions we felt when we think of them.
We create suffering in our lives because of the thoughts we have about people. Those struggles are because of our identity with a particular topic. We often become frustrated with ourselves. We hold on to anger because someone wronged us and then wonder why we are bitter. How would your world turn out if you had gracefully let the anger go?
How much easier could you breathe if you didn’t hold on to stress so much that your shoulders are blocks of concrete, and your arms go numb? You have tension headaches because you take what someone says to heart and you complain to only yourself?
Before we talk about how you let it go let us look at why you are holding on to it in the first place.
Why do you want to hold on?
This is a question people rarely ask themselves. Why do you want to the grudge you are holding on to or why do you want to hold on to someone who doesn’t want to have anything to do with you?
That question is a powerful question and the answers will make sense to you when you are in an emotional state. Yet, when you are able to look at the circumstance and process the thoughts outside of an emotional storm you find that the answers don’t match the feelings.
You see you have to first come to understand the reason why you are wanting to hold onto someone. We claim that it is love yet is it really? Is it really love to not want the other person to find someone they are happy with? If they aren’t in love with you and you are still in love with them Yeah it may be emotionally rough to want them to find someone who they love. To hold on to them and make them miserable in your refusal to let go sounds way crueler than to let her go.
You see many times we don’t let things or people go not out of love but out of ego. Our ego is what causes us to make these decisions based on fear. If I let my wife go, I will never find happiness again. If I let this grudge go then how are those who wronged me going to know Im mad at them? Do you see how both of those thoughts are absurd?
Will you never find happiness? Of course, you will find happiness gain if you want to. Will you let the people who wronged you know you are mad at them? Yeah, you will but you will look like the jerk out of it all because you are letting the people who wronged you live rent-free in your head. Your ego caused you to get the solution backward in both instances.
What do you stand to gain from holding on?
Another good question to ask yourself when it centers around holding on to someone or some emotion is this,
What do you stand to gain?
So what is your answer? What DO you stand to gain? A miserable wife? A miserable life? All because you want to try to hold onto an old memory about how things USED to be? Yeah, it was awesome when you and your wife first married. You had sex once a day if not 2 or 3 times a day. Yet demands on life arose. Suddenly you were promoted and you had more responsibilities. Your wife had her life and your relationship with her ran its course. It happens. The spark dried up and she found another man who lit her up again. Could you have prevented it? Yeah Did you work at it? A little. Could she have tried harder? Yeah. Did she? In your eyes no but in her eyes maybe she did It just wasn’t aligning.
So what do you gain from making your ex-wife miserable? You wind up looking like a jerk. You give her every reason as to why she shouldn’t stay. Your ego causes the opposite of what you want to happen in the scenario. So Find out what you stand to gain and fully question it. The more you are honest with yourself and the more responsibility you take for your part of the marriage falling apart the easier it is to let your wife go because you do love her.
How is holding on to a person serving you?
It’s again another way to look at what you have from the previous question. You stand to gain something from not letting your ex-wife go. What is that? Is it something you really want? It may be you want your wife to feel as bad as you do. That is, a reason. But is that reason really who you are? Is it showing your wife how much you love her? Who is that solution helping your situation?
Many times we want to avoid the painful details so we don’t examine why we are behaving the way we do. Because we want to run from the fact that we are being insensitive jerks we ignore the pain and suffering we are inflicting on our wife, and at the same time state that we love them. Love doesn’t inflict pain. It may hurt from time to time but that hurt is from the loss not from the love itself.
But what about the pain and suffering that my wife inflicted on me? Where is your band of brothers? Why are you not using them for what they are for? You are laying there in that puddle of pity and wanting people to feel sorry for you. That’s not the way of Men. That is a grown boy wanting someone to feel sorry for them. That is a grown boy trying to manipulate others. Stop it. And go hang with your band of brothers.
She wronged me! Why should she have all the fun?
This is a thought that is based solely on the victim mindset. It’s not my fault that my wife left me? Is it really? You didn’t just sit on the couch after work. How many times did you come home and ask your wife if she wanted to go walk with you? A few times? Why not every day even if you knew it was going to be no? I am not saying you taking responsibility for your part of the divorce to make you feel worse but to help you see that You didn’t keep pursuing after the “I do” is on your head. Take that failure and apply the lessons learned and grow from that lesson.
So how do you let them go?
So you have decided that you aren’t going to be that obsessive jerk anymore. You are going to let your redhead go her own way and you are OK with her doing that because you have your own path to take. However, you have been in this habit of not letting go for quite some time and it’s a bit of a habit now. So how do you change?
First, don’t put them on that lofty pedestal. Most nice guys who put their wives on a pedestal have a hard time letting go. This is because it would mean that all that effort was for nothing. That thought can create some painful emotions so you have to grin and bare it.
Look at the circumstance with love
Go back to when you loved your wife unconditionally. How would you have thought? Look at it like that. Can love her and be glad that she is finding happiness.
Accept that you did what you could with what you knew at the moment. Now you know more and you are going to be better.
So how do you become better?
I would work on the 4 pillars of a Relaxed Male.
Develop The Man’s Mind – Start reading more, and listen to books and podcasts more. Educate yourself. The Moment you stop learning is the moment you stop living.
The Man’s Body – Get yourself in shape eat right and exercise
The Man’s Soul – Find your purpose
The Man’s Community– build up your community and you will become a better man.
The key here is that you are working on yourself. That may seem selfish and to many nice guys, it is. Yet it’s the most selfless thing you can do for your family and future wife. You see you are the reason they are in your world. So you need to keep yourself going. You do this by continuing to grow in your Mind body soul and community.
