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Can you look past the end of your relationship? Image: Flickr/ccLicense
Do you feel oppressed, depressed and shut down in your relationship? Does the fear you have about what the future would hold if you leave make you stay despite your unhappiness? Do you fear the unknown future more than you fear the known present? Since you only live once, why do you continue in a relationship that makes you more unhappy than happy? The answers are complex and multileveled, but the key to moving forward when feeling stuck is to recognize that past and present situations contribute significantly to your fear of the future. Feeling compassion for yourself and these experiences is the first step to making needed changes.
Your past contributes to creating expectations for the future and it’s these two places – past and future – that keep you feeling stuck in the present. It's so unfair: these are invisible perceptions that can’t actually affect you directly now. On the other hand, the experiences of your past and fears for your future are some of the most central components of who you are. On a profoundly deep level, they contribute hugely to your identity. The question is, what expectations does your past create and how do these expectations influence your ability to imagine a future without your current, painfully stuck relationship?
When breaking up with someone, you want to know that you will be all right – and maybe to know your partner will be okay too. The extent of your need for a guarantee that you will be okay in the future has a lot to do with how your sense of self either collided or coalesced with your past environments and situations. How were you treated in childhood? What did you see modeled for you? How was your personality and temperament understood and managed by your caregivers when you were young? How was it handled when bad things happened? How has your sense of self been cultivated or eroded during past relationships? These experiences and perceptions set your expectations, and in many instances encourage your fear of the future. Do you feel that you will be okay being alone? Can you allow yourself to believe that loving and being loved again might be a possibility? Or is your current painfully stuck relationship the best you can allow yourself to have?
If your parents and friends modeled healthy relationships and supported the development of your self-esteem and feelings of self-worth, it’s likely you may be more courageous about what the unknown (and unknowable) future holds. You trust in yourself and your resilience, and are as certain as you can be that you will be okay. You may be confident in your support system as well, which enables change and growth more readily than if you have been let down and betrayed. You know you will bounce back and that you deserve better. You may be able to look past the end of your relationship and expect better things ahead. You can make the needed change yourself.
For some, this expectation of a better tomorrow beyond the end of a painfully stuck relationship can be harder to envision. Maybe you didn’t have healthy relationships modeled for you. Maybe you experienced past challenges or traumas that make you question yourself and your self-worth. But still, something inside you knows you deserve better. You’re on the cusp of change, but taking that final step is so difficult! You’re unsure and torn and unhappy but also fearful. And you need support. This feeling of being stuck on the cusp of change can require the coaching of close friends or a professional to guide the self-reflection needed to make a positive change. But with support, change is possible.
Then beyond the people who can feel optimistic that a positive future exists, and beyond the people who can create change with support, are people who are totally, painfully stuck in their unhappy relationship. They feel dependent, immobilized and ashamed. They don’t believe they can be budged. They feel so awful about themselves, have such low self-value, and self-esteem that they feel undeserving of good things and are unable to allow themselves to believe there could be better things waiting on the other side of their current, painful relationship. They stay in a relationship that makes them more unhappy than happy because they can’t believe there’s anything better. If there is, they certainly can’t allow themselves to have it, they are undeserving.
This third group – the group that feels intractably stuck – is very likely to have experienced trauma that creates these low expectations and pessimistic worldview, and they were not provided with enough support to begin the recovery process in the aftermath of their trauma. There’s something in their past that haunts them to this day, which substantially contributes to feeling undeserving of good things. Even if you don't reenact this trauma in your present relationship, the relationship is still re-traumatizing, and the feeling of being trapped and alone within trauma is so familiar that you can’t see your way out.
It’s a terrible loop: you feel so painfully stuck and are painfully aware you’re stuck, but are too afraid of the further trauma you expect is lurking in the unknown to allow yourself to disengage from the relationship that keeps you feeling stuck. It can seem like you are your own worst enemy. The awareness you have of your predicament can make you feel even worse about yourself and even more undeserving of good things. The self-hatred evoked by your inability to break free feeds itself in a way that further ensures you will remain unable to break free.
The first step is not to leave. Obviously, you're not ready or able at this time, and that’s okay. Instead, the first step is about giving yourself a break – allowing yourself to feel compassion for the person that is stuck and just can’t trust in a change that would propel you into the unknown. You are in part a product of your past, and if your past didn’t line up in a way that allows you to expect a better future, of course it can be hard to see beyond your trauma, beyond your relationship, and to feel deserving of good things. If you recognize you’ve been thrust into these situations because you didn’t have the needed guidance or support, you have already begun to expand your self-awareness about what contributes to you feeling stuck. Then you can start to chip away at the power this belief system holds over you. Any increased self-awareness can be empowering, even if at first it breeds shame because it forces you to acknowledge just how stuck you have let yourself be. Compassion for yourself and the position you feel compelled to be in erodes the conviction that unhappiness is your natural state – in this relationship or any other future relationship.
What’s best for you? What are your needs? What about your contentment? It may have been awhile or you may never have asked these questions of yourself and truly respected your own answers. Or even if you know what your needs and desires are, you may not believe they could ever be met. Most importantly, it feels too scary to trust in your own ability to manage alone if you leave the relationship. How can you feel innately courageous about the future in the face of such opposition?
If you feel absolutely stuck with your own negative self-beliefs – work first toward compassion for wherever you are right now. This self-compassion can reinforce the idea that you have a right to pursue contentment. Then you can begin to explore what changes you can make to help you get unstuck, and take another step toward achieving positive self-experiences.
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