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by Wayne L. Misner
**If you've resolved your anger, what benefits if any have been gotten? I feel so much more free. Less anger means no stomach pains, less headaches, and an easier time sleeping at night. I don't walk around angry all the time. I think changing the direction of my anger instead of using it as self-sabotage, I use it in a positive way and it gets me going... I have found a lot of peace and have realized that in letting go of being angry I have allowed myself and my family to heal. I no longer find myself overcome with feelings of helplessness borne out of the anger. ** Look Closely At Your Motives Many of our problems are emotional in nature or provide some meager pay off. Could you be using your anger as a way to stay connected to someone? ? While a negative connection, anger may keep you from letting go of a past relationship. Are you afraid of having no relationship? Are you frightened of having to forge your way through singles’ events to find a new relationship? Are you hoping that things will somehow magically change? Another reason why it's hard to let go is because sadness and grief often underlie anger. An individual going though a divorce or broken relationship must recognize both the anger she feels toward her former partner for his past behaviors, as well as the sadness that comes with having lost a shared, precious dream. That ex is the person you once fell in love with, the person you pinned your hopes and dreams on. They had the qualities you were looking for. You shared times, events, friends, holidays, trauma, perhaps births, with this person. They loved you intensely. If fact, they still may love you. But the problems in the relationship were more than you could bear. Perhaps you loved a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde. One you loved with all your heart, "But the other I do not like,". One is the fantasy, the image seen through rose-colored glasses, the promise, the unrealized success, ability, possibility and capability. Your heart becomes intoxicated and sees him with filters. He is not a real man but a “potential.” That's the confusing part; you do not like him but your heart is keeping him. What you love, the qualities of Dr. Jekyll, are the parts that need to grow and to take over his complete body and snuff out the bad Mr. Hyde. Most of the divorces that make up the fifty-two percent of divorces figure would go down all over the United States if Dr. Jekyll would win the battle. You cannot live life with your heart alone. You must use your head. The bad was very bad. Thus your confusion. Yes, it is confusing to love someone and hate someone too. But, you loved the good of that person not the bad. The bad is what eroded the love and pushed you to make the choices you did. It is very difficult to throw away this type of connection. It can be more difficult still when you interact with the wonderful, caring side of them now. Having to walk away from such a relationship can be the hardest thing you ever did. To let go of your past relationship, forgive your ex, forgive yourself, and understand that his total behavior was who he is. Sometimes he was wonderful (you may always love that part of your ex), and sometimes he was horrible. Someone wrote, “Now over time, I will get over, getting over, loving you.” You must let the offender go free. In order to conquer fear you must face it head on. Recognize you were in a dysfunctional relationship (that you may have or may not have contributed too). Awareness of your own personal responsibility will help you break the connection and start moving in the right direction. Be careful that you don’t get into a cycle of self-blame, guilt, anger that will erode your self-esteem and creates negative emotional consequences. You may be thinking the wrongdoer, who has committed all these hurtful acts, has no right to be forgiven. But, forgiving is one of the pivotal stages in resolving anger. Remember forgiving someone is not forgetting or condoning what they did. In addition to your anger you may be going though a grieving period. Yes, losing a relationship is the death of the relationship and people go though a grieving period. When someone loses a loved one, be it from a broken relationship, the death of a relationship, divorce or death they go through a series of stages. The time it takes to go through each stage is different for each person. Timing has a lot to do with who it was, how long you were together, how it ended, who ended it, and many other factors. The sequence of the steps is: Denial. You can’t believe this is happening. Shock, numbness, and believing something will happen to make it change. Anger. Having no hope, loss of heart, feelings of guilt, if I only…… Depression. Sadness, hopelessness, the end of the world, I will never be happy again. Acceptance. Concession, belief, recognition, I will go on. It is possible you will cry within each of the steps above. It is also possible to go into a new stage for a while, fall back into a previous stage, and go forward once again. A new life There is a life after loss. It might sound like a contradiction but it is not. It feels like a piece of ourselves has died when that person leaves us or we leave them. It seems impossible that life goes on without the person we loved so much. I lost my first wife when she was twenty-eight and I was thirty. We had two sons seven and three. I remember taking the boys to a diner to eat after the funeral. People were eating, talking and laughing. Trucks and cars were passing by. I could hear the music from the radio. The singer was Skeeter Davis, singing a song about “Why do the birds go on singing….” My world had come to an end. A large piece of me was just torn from my body and I was dying. Why was the world going on? How could people be laughing? How could trucks keep running? And why, oh why do the birds go on singing? But life does go on, and with it comes a very long, painful process. Grief is a quiet thing. Grief is part of life. When we lose someone it becomes one of the most stressful events in our life. There is life after a loss. It is different, but life nevertheless. Very slowly over time, finding joy again is possible. You will find that activities you enjoyed as a “ten” on a scale of one to ten (ten being the high end of the enjoyment scale), no longer make you feel good; they have dropped to a one. Plus, you have no desire to do the activities. You might start to withdraw from all types of activities and from associating with people. The paradox of this situation is that part of the healing process is time and the other part is to continue life. Give yourself the time to heal. The healing time required will vary from one person to the next. Eventually, the time will come that you must force yourself to get on with your life. Being happy, having fun and enjoying yourself has a lot to do with your mind-set, even when times are hard and things are not going your way. When you decide that it is time to get out and have fun and enjoy yourself, even if you are alone, you will be making solid progress. Maybe your suitcase flew to another state, the waiter dropped your dinner order on you, the hotel clerk gave your room to someone else, you ran out of gas, and…..you get the picture. Don’t let it derail your plans or the hope of a rewarding day. You can dwell on the events that did not go your way and get depressed and unhappy, or you can have a mind-set to laugh at all the things that occurred. Emerging from a divorce or broken relationship with a healthier perspective of life requires viewing yourself as much more than a significant other. Your identity goes well beyond the tremendous pain you associate with that role. Look at where you are in life. Self-acceptance is to realize you are today the result of all your life's experience. Each of us is a composite of our experiences--the good, the bad, and the ugly. When someone comes into our life they accept us for who we are, baggage and all. Imagine we are in a “Garage Sale,” sitting in a driveway on some old table. You buy us “as is.” Think of it more as if we were a valuable, rare antique piece of furniture. Each bump, bruise, and scratch are part of the history that makes this antique so scarce, precious, and valuable. Just like the antique, we cannot be replaced even through we contain flaws. You might be able to do some restoration, renovate pieces, and recondition areas; but you are not going to change a dresser into a chair. Be very realistic as to just how much we can change and to what degree idiosyncrasies can go away. Fear Many people must overcome fear to have success in changing patterns of the past. The fears may be many, from being able to love someone again, to allowing someone in to love you, or the fear of being happy. The fears come from various places—a bad (or abusive) relationship, perhaps from bad experiences in childhood or adulthood, loving someone whom then abandons you, being in what at first seemed a good relationship, but then becomes a disaster. Do you purposely sabotage a relationship? Some of us subconsciously sabotage the relationship. Fear of being hurt again, or disappointed, or not being able to have and maintain a relationship. The mind becomes very black and white. Your fear tells you that you trusted once before and were hurt. That hurt was so painful that you may feel you could never again go through that kind of pain. So you start building a wall around you--a wall so big that you will not allow anyone to come though it. But, you pay a very big price for that protection. Having that wall so big and strong, you are not allowing the feeling of love to get in nor can you get love feelings out. Listen to the other person. Try to feel what they are saying as well as hearing what they say. When you were a baby just learning to walk, did you stop trying to walk because you had fallen? Of a more serious nature, if you’re in a car accident, will you ever get in a car again? To try again is the brave thing to do. Each time you fail, use the failure as a lesson to not make the same kind of mistake the next time. However, do have a next time and continue to have next times until life is what you want it to be. In learning to play a musical instrument, you must practice, practice, practice. Analyze the previous mistakes. See where you went wrong. Read books about the subject. Take lessons. Talk with experts. Learn, learn, learn, which will equate to practice, practice, practice. Having fun Our readers are not all at the same place. Some of you are at the beginning of your journey of overcoming your pain. Others are mid way and some are emerging from the other side. When you are past the anger, fear and grieving, “Having fun” are the next steps you may want to take. For those who are not, you may want to take this section and save it to read some time in the future. I like to think of this section as if you’re writing your life story. Each page an event or episode. Many pages equaling a chapter. Many chapters will finally complete your book. Be the writer and director. You are ready to start the chapter of having fun. For the last forty years, women's magazines have published surveys asking what their readers want from a relationship. One word has been on all the lists of answers and has moved up on the lists in importance. That word is "fun" (sense of humor, jokes, laughs, etc.). With the everyday stress of raising families, working, shopping, and driving, we need to unwind. Experts believe that relieving stress, having fun, possessing a sense of humor, and laughing freely enhances the chances of decreasing tension. (That also means the ability to laugh at us.) What we need to do is find the “little boy” and “little girl” within us and get them to come out and play. Fun bonds us and creates memories for many years. When fun is missing, the relationship is headed for trouble. I encourage both of you to spend a lot of time and effort preparing your fun lists. I started one for you. Substitute my desires with yours. Begin implementing some of these activities and ventures into your lifestyle today. A REPRESENTATION OF A FUN LIST COULD BE: Riding motorcycles Mountain climbing Jet skiing Going on a picnic with just the two of you Hot air ballooning Taking a walk in the rain Taking a vacation together Going away to a bed and breakfast Bungee jumping Hang gliding Flying Dancing Mountain hiking Nature hikes Undersea exploring Rafting Going out to a movie or staying in and renting one Tennis Horseback riding Scuba diving Surfboarding Body surfing Snorkeling Visiting national parks, museums, nature centers, flower gardens Windsurfing Swimming Sharing a sunrise or sunset Camping Cooking and baking exotic dinners together Taking a walk on the beach and watching the sunset Concerts Stage shows Canoeing Riding a snowmobile Bicycle riding Peddler village shopping and buying ice cream cones Ice boating Ice skating Some of us have spent our entire life wanting to do some of these events plus others, but always feel we are too busy and don’t have the time. However, we can promise our loved one and ourselves we will do these things in the future. The secret of succeeding now, is to set a planned day in advance. (Paid for in advance if possible. Statistics show that more people who pay in advance show up and do the event compared with those who would like to go but do not pay, because they lose nothing if they don’t show up.) Mark each event off your list as you complete it. Continue until all those things you felt would help your life become more fulfilling; complete, exciting, and invigorating are accomplished. Be flexible and do your list and add your partner’s list, too. You may find doing some of both lists exciting.
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