Embracing the Ups and Downs: Lessons from Relationship Challenges

Relationship challenges have been coming up a lot lately with my friends and clients, so I’m feeling the need to share more about my learnings along the way. I definitely don’t have all the answers and this is general information rather than specific, but if you want some specific help, I’d love to chat! Please reach out.

First a little bit about my experience. Throughout high school I had a couple of boyfriends, dated a little, but wasn’t interested in getting too serious. As I was coming up to my final exams, a friend of my surprised me by asking me out. I wasn’t expecting it and hadn’t ever thought of him that way, so I said no. But over the next few weeks I started thinking about him a little more, intentionally talking to him and seeing if there could be a future in a relationship there. Turns out there was. We dated for around 4 years (a good portion of it via long distance) before we got married. I was the ripe old age of 22. Looking back I feel like I went into the marriage for the wrong reasons: We’d been together for that many years and there wasn’t a reason to break up, but being Christians we weren’t going to live together before getting married, all our friends were getting married even if they’d been together shorter than us, I wanted to have kids, so why not. During our pre-marriage counselling it was identified that I can be fairly dominant, and he could be fairly submissive (definitely a cruisy guy where as I was more driven and competitive), so for some reason I interpreted that as I need to make myself less in order for us to have a successful relationship. Spoiler alert, trying to make yourself less is not a good way to a successful anything!

The first year of our marriage was great. I got to hang out with my best friend, we had a great group of friends and did lots of things that brought us both joy, but unfortunately that didn’t last. A couple of years into it I realised something was missing, but it took me a while to realise what that something was. Meanwhile I went searching for that something in other places, unsuccessfully. A couple of years of trying to make it work, getting counselling, moving overseas together, having more adventures, we got to the point where we realised we were hurting each other more by trying to stay together. It was definitely not something I expected to happen, but I didn’t know how to heal myself within our relationship, or if it was even possible to do so.

Coming out I was broken. Completely and totally. So far from the person I was made to be, the person I wanted to be. I had completely lost my sparkle, and I didn’t even know how to dream any more.

Healing

Here is the part I’m hoping will be helpful for you if you’re dealing with a broken relationship, or maybe even within a relationship if you’re feeling like you’ve lost your sparkle and want it back. If you’re in a relationship and want to stay in that relationship and find your sparkle again, both in yourself and in your relationship it definitely is possible, even though that wasn’t my experience. Many of the steps are the same, even if the actions around it might look different.

These are the steps I went through:

Grieve: I had to grieve the loss of the relationship. The loss of the dreams I had within the relationship, the loss of relationships associated with it - the friends and extended family. The expectations that I had that were different to my experience. There was a LOT of grief, but when I learned it’s a normal step in the process I definitely felt better about it all.

Accept the reality: This was harder for me in other relationships than in my marriage. I think because we’d been struggling so hard for so long, accepting the reality that we were better off apart came before other steps, but in other relationships this one was such a challenge for me, especially when I thought he was a keeper then he let me go, and I wasn’t expecting it. If you’re in a relationship, maybe accepting the reality involves letting go of your expectations of what a good relationship ‘should’ look like and accepting it for what is. That doesn’t mean you can’t work to improve it but it’s rare that what we have matches our preconceived ideas, or what our parents had.

Rediscover myself: I feel like I had no idea who I was or what I wanted in life when my marriage broke down. Honestly I didn’t even know if I didn’t like certain foods because he didn’t like them, or if it was actually me that didn’t enjoy them, so I had to try new foods. I put myself out there for new experiences, took up opportunities when offered to me. I tried to remember things I used to want to do, I used to enjoy, and added them into my life. Trying new things, trying old things I had neglected again. It meant taking care of myself, looking after what I ate, how I moved my body, finding things that brought me joy and doing them. There were definitely some fails along the way, but each time it was a learning of what I did and didn’t like, of what I did and didn’t want my life to look like.

Dream again: This sort of works in conjunction with rediscovering myself. I started that first year single with a vision board, my wishlist. Photos I’d found on the internet of things I was wishing for that year and put them together as the wallpaper of my laptop. I can’t find it now but it included buying a house and learning to snowboard. I can’t remember what else was on my list (I do have some of the later years wishlist boards), but in that first few years I headed away regularly for the weekend, got up snowboarding most weekends in the winter, bought and renovated a house, explored photography professionally, joined a gym, got some rock climbing buddies and went climbing most weeks in the summer, joined a choir, started dating (mostly unsuccessfully, some a total train wreck!), got counselling, travelled overseas a few times and started to wake up to who I wanted to be and what I had to do to get there. I let myself dream, with hope, but without expectation of what might be in that year,

Keep processing, keep learning, keep healing: Journaling has been an important tool for me over the years. Reading self help books. Getting counselling from various people of various forms. Talking openly to trusted friends. Getting more in touch with my body and mind and what helps me to feel good in both. Including things in my life that bring me joy. Letting go of past hurts, fears, emotions. Putting away my mask and letting people see the real me. Forgiveness, of both myself, and my ex. Honestly, forgiving myself was the hardest thing, and it took a long time, but it was powerful!

Give yourself time: Everyone has a different timeline. It was about 6 years between my marriage breakdown and meeting my current husband and I needed every one of those years (even though I got incredibly frustrated at the time soooo many times!). I had so much that I needed to work through, programming to fix, hurts to heal, and hope to be restored. My husband was with his ex longer, and we got together about 18 months after they broke up, but he has less inner work that needed to be done before we could have a healthy relationship. Somehow he came out of his relationship more whole than I did. So even if it feels like it’s taking longer than you would like, or if it’s taking less time than you expected, give yourself grace.

On reflection now, in that time after, I stayed busy. I was so scared of crashing like I did immediately after our breakup (imagine barely getting out of bed and watching tv shows and movies all day long). I was running on adrenaline and fear. Maybe some of my tiredness now is still paying the price for that (or maybe it’s just old age). My body and mind trying to balance out all the doing in my past with just being, but still being challenged by the patterns of the old ways. It wasn’t smooth sailing. There were highs and lows. Layer upon layer which had to be peeled back to see the me that was hiding in there, the me that had been shoved down and told to become less. Allowing the real me to shine through. For her to feel safe and secure and like she was exactly who she was meant to be.

Looking back now, coming up 15 years later, I feel like a completely different person to the Erin who went through all of this. It has shaped me. It has made me grow and develop in a way I wouldn’t have, and I love who I am now so for that reason I can’t regret it. As far as I know my ex-husband is happily married, which is really what I wished for him even when I didn’t think I could be the one to give that to him. I love my husband and our life together, and I’m grateful that my experience can be used to help others going through a similar experience.

If you’re on the journey, wherever you are and whatever it looks like, and want someone to talk to, I love listening to your experience, sharing my wisdom, and helping you get to the next step, or maybe even a few next steps. You are precious. You are valuable, you are worthy of finding your shine and shining bright!!! Contact me.