Accept the fact that you can’t always make them happy…
Giving something or someone the best of you yet facing failure at the end of it is hard to cope with. The process may be difficult, but recovery is a possibility no matter how deep the wound. The soul always knows how to heal but the question is how to silence the head and heart for it to work out.
Health, family issues, society and personal matters etc. can be a cause of sending all your efforts down the drain in case of a failed relationship. Even though you did your best, it just did not work out but then again, remember you cannot control everything.
Dealing with the aftermath of a failed relationship is a difficult process. One needs all the motivation and support one can get.
So here are a few steps in order to do that and become a better version of you again, even after things did not work out for the better. Because as Stephen Chbosky said, we can’t decide where we come from but we can certainly choose where we go from there.
1. Accept that you can’t always make them happy
Happiness comes as a choice to many people. If you tried your best to make your partner make that choice yet they still didn’t then it is not so much as your fault as much as the fault in their own decision-making. You need to accept that you cannot always make them happy no matter what you do.
2. You cannot control their feelings
No matter how smart, loving, humorous and understanding you were towards your partner you cannot make them fall in love with you. Their feelings are justified to them in their own way, nothing less and nothing more.
If you gave it your best yet they didn’t share your feelings, there is not much you can do about that so why over something you cannot control to begin with? Someday you will meet the one who appreciates all you do for them. Don’t let one defeat rule your entire future.
3. Maybe it wasn’t about you
Even though right after the breakup, the obvious signs might make you feel like it was your fault the relationship failed. But come to think of it, maybe it was never about you and it was about your partner.
They could possibly be suffering from self-hatred, or low self-esteem or too depressed to feel right being committed to someone. So try to look for the reason of the breakup past yourself. As soon as you understand this, it might become easier for you to move on and not punish yourself for the failed relationship.
4. Believe everything happens for a reason
Things change and people leave and life does not stop for everybody, also as Stephen Chbosky writes. So people come and go out of our lives as they are meant to be a lesson some no longer than a paragraph while others long enough to be a chapter in your life’s book. Things change for better ones to take their place.
Similarly, people leave and so do their memories so that we can make room for better ones. It all simply happens for reasons innumerable and out of your perception. So believe and hope for the best.
5. Decide if you want to be friends with them after the breakup
For some couples after breakups, they find it beneficial to just be friends. For the rest, not so much. You should make sure if they want the same thing after the breakup and then take it from there. Maybe you both can be better at being friends as you failed to be in a relationship. It’s all a matter of getting a clear idea of what the other wants, what would make the breakup more tolerable.
6. Don’t hope when there is nothing left
It hurts to hold on longer than you should. So instead of sitting there and hoping if they will come around, whether they will develop feelings for you once again, or whether they might realize their mistake and come back to be with you such hope bleeds in a way that it may never stop.
By standing at that one door that closes, you might miss out on the other ones that open in place of it. You should not, therefore, stay stuck in one place forever when so many other good things await you out there. Learn to move on and not hope when there is nothing or no one definitive left to fulfil that hope anyway.
7. Make room for their happiness
If you truly care about them then you should want the best for them too. Mayne they can have that along with a lot more just not with you. It can be hard to accept at first but then you see them happy and successful in their life, flourishing as an individual being and you realize that yes, blaming yourself for the breakup is foolish indeed especially when it has led them to be a freer, better version of themselves. Likewise, you deserve to live your life to its fullest too instead of chasing a light too far gone.
When the odds will work in your favor, you will eventually come to terms with the simple fact that you cannot control lives and happiness of other people no matter what.
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Have you been in a failed relationship? Let me know in the comments below!