“You gotta be tough.”
“Can you get over it already?”
“Stop being such a victim.”
When you’re struggling in your relationship, a lot of people will give you advice.
They mean well. They see you in pain, and they want you to get over it so you can go back to being the happy person you used to be.
Right now, they feel your pain like a black hole sucking all the air out of the room. It hurts them, too. They want to fix it.
So they wheel out the platitudes: “Keep your chin up,” “Don’t be so negative,” “If you keep thinking like that, you’ll make it worse.”
When that doesn’t cheer you up as much as they expect, they don’t blame their words; they blame you.
You’re “holding onto things.” You don’t want to get “better.” You just need to get back to “normal.”
What they don’t understand is that your life will never go back to normal.
“Normal” exploded into a thousand razor-sharp shards when your relationship fell apart.
Even if you manage to patch it back together, things will never go back to the way they were.
You’re not the person you used to be. You can’t erase the memories of what happened. You’ll have to live with that knowledge for the rest of your life.
So hear that well-meaning advice to “just get over it” for what it is:
An attempt to erase your pain because others can’t handle it.
It shames you for not being able to bounce back as fast as other people would like.
It has nothing to do with supporting you and everything to do with other people not wanting to deal with it.
Denial is one of our most common responses to pain.
When a relationship starts falling apart, the first thing both parties tend to do is deny the gravity of the situation.
They stick their head in the sand. They want to believe things will resolve on their own. Give it time. Everything will be fine.
But denial ties your hands behind your back.
You can’t do anything when you’re in denial. You won’t look squarely at what is happening, so you can’t fix it.
That’s why it’s so dangerous when other people force denial on you by telling you to keep your chin up, don’t let it get you down, and trust that everything will work out for the best.
What you need is someone who’s going to sit down with you, hear your story, ask the right questions, and help you gain insight into what’s happening and what you can do about it.
Your pain is a sign something is wrong. Don’t ignore it – listen to it.
