Let's be honest: the desire to part in most cases is not mutual. We do not go as close friends to celebrate it with a glass of Prosecco, thanking each other for the best we have given each other. In reality, one of the partners decides that it is time for everyone to go their own way. As a rule, the other side does not agree with this at once.
The one who is left behind must go through all stages of psychological recovery. Their sequence is conditional, but, as a rule, it is denial, anger, bargaining, depression and only then - the acceptance of the situation and willingness to move forward. At one stage an unexpected and, as it seems, joyful surprise may await - the former offers to try everything again.
"Everything will be different from now on," he says, cheering up his inner voice, which does not allow him to understand why a person who has recently decided to part with us is changing his intentions.
What most likely awaits us in reality? It largely depends on the motives of return.
RETURN AS A FAREWELL PHASE
The last years of our marriage are hard to call happy, but when we split up, it didn't get any easier," Vadim admits. - I literally crossed out everything that reminded me of my old life, even stopped talking to people I knew together. But the feeling of inner emptiness increased. I finally realized that I couldn't stop myself from going back in time with my thoughts. We started seeing each other again, but it became clear that there was no attraction between us that started the relationship. The decision to part for the second time was not so painful.
We want to start over rationally, but we are unconsciously driven by a very different desire," explains Jungian analyst Lev Khegay. - Often this happens if the relationship was perceived as a difficult experience and, having parted, we tried to quickly displace him out of our memories, but with the water, we threw out the child. It becomes unbearable for us to devalue a part of our lives and thus deny ourselves. Therefore, we return not so much to our partner as to ourselves, to the part of our personality that has the right to different feelings and mistakes.
Having lived with a partner for a while, we understand that the decision to leave was the right one. Returning is just a phase of farewell. After all, in order to move forward, we must calmly and meaningfully look into the past.
LACK OF INTIMACY WITH A NEW PARTNER
It takes time to get over the breakup, and there's a different deadline for everyone here. However, research shows that most of us are looking for a new partner and getting involved earlier than a year later, and some of us leave immediately for someone we have met in secret. The "wedge wedge" method usually does not work well. If we are willing to share something with a partner, it is only a feeling of emptiness that we are trying to displace. Is it necessary to say that no one who loves us can save us from ourselves?
With no difficulty in honestly experiencing and accepting what happened, we are able to transfer previous problems into new relationships. And then we turn around and look at the lost love in a new light. We look through a scattering of beautiful moments that were not appreciated. It seems to us that the failure with the new partner has helped to rethink everything we have lost. In fact, we are trying to use the relationship as a psychological crutch to support us in difficult times. And we risk going back to the same feeling very soon: everything that we are trying to recover is falling apart.
LOSS OF COMFORT ZONE
The reason for the separation is often the desire to make the partner responsible for his or her own dissatisfaction with his or her life. It seems that when we leave a relationship, we will magically escape the problems. However, meeting with reality can only aggravate the state of internal loss. Then we decide to come back - not so much willing to take responsibility for the crisis of our union, as trying to restore a sense of security.
We wake up with a rudimentary fear, which we are used to calling inexplicable, although, if you look at it, its nature is quite understandable," reminds Lev Khegay. - Whatever the enviable social heights we have reached, the structures of the brain remind us of our origins in mammals, which are determined to evolve to survive. The unconscious crisis of parting interprets the unconscious as an imminent threat to well-being, and to return to the partner pushes the inner panic.
If we have not solved our own problems, the crisis in the relationship will repeat itself, leading to an endless series of parting and returning
The first time we break up, we're really in a state of euphoria. Just as the heroine of Truman Capote Holly Golightly thought that as long as she had breakfast at Tiffany's, nothing bad would happen in her life, so we return the feeling of security to being with someone we all seem to know about. And even quarrels and mutual accusations are known in advance.
Needless to say, if we don't solve our own problems, the crisis in the relationship will repeat itself, leading to an endless series of parting and returning.
RETURNING FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN
I didn't think it would be so hard for a seven-year-old son to worry about me and his father breaking up," says Marina. - He shut himself up, lost interest in the hockey classes he used to love, and came back in tears from his meetings with Dad. It was hard for us to see it, and I suggested that the ex-boyfriend try to start over. Now we still live in the same house, our relationship is smooth, but that doesn't make any of us happy.
Such decisions confuse the situation, even more, giving rise to the illusion that a child has the power to decide whether his parents stay together or not," said Gestalt therapist Natalia Artsybasheva. - This responsibility is beyond the reach of children.
Sometimes children are secretly expected to give thanks in one form or another - from good grades to submission to the interests of the family
"Adults have their own needs - for support, sex, acceptance, general interesting leisure time. For the most part, they are not just about parenting," says Gestalt therapist Maria Lekareva-Bozenkova. - In addition, sometimes children are secretly expected to give thanks in one form or another, from good grades to submission to the interests of the family. If only one of the partners has cooled down and the other has dreamed of reunification, then returning for the sake of the children makes the other feel unnecessary.
SO IS IT WORTH TRYING TO START ALL OVER AGAIN?
Sometimes a fiasco in a new relationship makes you reconsider your priorities and look at the merits of your former partner," says Maria Lekareva-Bozenkova. - A home-sedent husband from a nerd will become a safe harbor after a man's holiday and a hummingbird. A careerist husband will turn from an indifferent to his family into a man who provides freedom to communicate with his friends and choose a hobby against the backdrop of a jealous housebuilder.
Only if we have given ourselves the time and effort to go through the crisis, having rethought a lot, do we have a hope of starting from scratch," says Natalia Artsybasheva. - However, even here it is important to be ready for unexpected turns. In the new scenario of relations, partners can switch places. Left behind, having gone through a breakup gains independence and tastes like more freedom, self-realization, and independence than ever before. He who returns is not very ready for this.
The more considered and considered the decision to leave was, the harder it is for us to decide to return - and the less chance we have of thinking about leaving the partner again once we get back. Reunification is only possible for sufficiently mature people who admit that both have made mistakes.