Getting Over Feeling Like a Failure in Your Breakup

I’m life coach and counselor Peter Winslow. I know that when a relationship ends, we can sometimes feel like we failed. We failed to keep the relationship vital; failed to live up to the ideal of a perfect partnership; failed to be enough, work hard enough or provide enough to hold the relationship together.

For some, this can be more damaging than failing at say, a business venture.  Announcing to the world, “We split” may feel like saying “I’m a failure and I’m not good enough for a real relationship.”

Yet you can heal from the pain of feeling like a failure. This feeling can readily dissipate when you learn and accept these things:

• You are a human being having human experiences. Breakups are practically a universal experience. Do you know anyone who has NOT experienced a difficult breakup at some time?

• Life is all about changing, growing, and evolving.  A breakup is one of those changes.

• As you change, your experiences change and your relationships change as a result.

• When relationships feel good, that is the right experience for you at that time in your life.

• When relationships begin to feel bad, heavy or difficult, it means it is no longer the best situation for you at that time.

The ultimate lesson:

When a relationship ends it’s because the two individuals no longer are a match to each other as they once were. Doesn’t that feel like nature, life, God or the Universe (insert your favorite term) doing its best work?

The best relationship is a cycle, not a success or failure: we met, we matched, we grew, we changed, evolved, lived and learned. Then we were no longer a match in those aspects of life that make relationships work.

Only by moving on can you make the space for a better life.

  

– Peter Winslow