How I finally stopped grieving after my break-up | littleduckie's Blog

I've realized lately how little substance my ex-BF really had.  I gave him credit for a lot more character and depth than he really possessed.  I didn't choose him for his looks, but he was breathtakingly beautiful.  Long, curly, almost black hair; eyes as big and pretty as a girl's; a fine body, perfect proportions, perfect muscle tone--although he was about double his ideal weight, I could see the beautiful form behind the fat & never minded the extra weight.  (Although, ironically, he was constantly making derisive remarks about heavy women that we saw in public places.)

But in the final analysis, that was all he had: looks.  He was the most selfish person I had ever met, although it took me a while to see that.  He was a seething mass of fears and neuroses.  When a crisis would arise, he made no attempt to discipline his emotions, but got a case of "the vapours" like a high-strung Victorian lady.  For a long time after I realized just how troubled he was, I felt sorry for him, blaming it on his difficult childhood, etc.  But there's more to it than that.

A LOT of us have gone through horrible experiences in our lives and still managed to make something respectable of ourselves.  Many people, instead of allowing their suffering to make them self-centered, develop a heightened sensitivity to and compassion for the sufferings of others.  Perhaps some of the difference in the way people respond is a matter of how much natural inner strength a person has.  But some of it is also a moral choice.  It is morally wrong to allow oneself to become a self-centered, whining, manipulative perpetual victim and emotional bully. 

Yes!  It is actually a moral failure to allow yourself to wallow in negativity instead of getting a grip on your emotions and making a healthy, useful human being of yourself.

Now, I'm not talking about people's responses to a particular crisis.  I'm not saying people shouldn't have normal human feelings, or that they shouldn't grieve for losses, or feel pain over experiences in the past.  I'm talking about a general approach to life.  There are two choices when life has been unfair to you: you can give up and let it destroy your potential and use your painful experiences as an excuse for your irresponsible behavior, or you can accept your situation and determine to make the most of yourself despite it. 

The latter course isn't the easy one, but it's the only ethical one.  We all exist in a social matrix; we all benefit from living in human society and thus we all have obligations to society.  There is not one single person who is completely independent and therefore exempt from moral obligations.  Even a hermit who goes off into the woods and lives off the land is not really independent of the rest of humanity.  All the knowledge he took with him, all the manufactured goods he took with him, everything that makes it possible for him to survive in apparent isolation -- it all ultimately came from other people and he is in some way indebted to them.

Reflections like these are what finally allowed me, just in the last several weeks, to feel that I was really over my ex-fiance.  It took me eight or nine months to even stop feeling the pain every moment of my life, and I couldn't figure out why, because no break-up had ever affected me like this before.  And suddenly one night I realized what was different this time: I hadn't allowed myself to judge him.  I had been determined to be "nice" about it & never express my anger about the way he treated me -- never even feel anger, if I could help it.  THIS IS UNHEALTHY.  No, we shouldn't make snap judgements about people -- but that does not mean we shouldn't judge.  We should.  We must.  We have no other way of protecting ourselves from the unethical actions of others.  If we insist on not judging, we have no basis for objecting to the way others treat us.  It's strange how modern culture insists on never judging anyone and at the same time tells people to be assertive and stand up for themselves.  We can't have it both ways!

Someone will probably say, "But morality is a private matter."  Actually, it's not.  Morality is ENTIRELY a social matter.  There is a wonderful book by Matt Ridley called The Origins of Virtue which explains how human ideas of right and wrong are deeply rooted in our biology -- in short, they are a group survival strategy.  Morality does not come from "God" -- it comes from the realities of living together in complex social groups.  Such a lifestyle only works if people follow certain rules.

This is not a cohesive essay, and I apologize for that; I'm just sharing some thoughts.  My point is that it was allowing myself to judge my ex's conduct as not just hurtful in a personal way, but immoral in a larger sense, that allowed me to stop grieving.  I wanted so badly to think the best of him and never criticize him, and I took that to such an extreme that I was destroying myself inside. 

DON'T DO THIS TO YOURSELF.  I think it's an excellent virtue to be able to withhold judgement until we are sure of all the facts; ultimately, I believe that we are all perfect spiritual beings who cannot be harmed by others, so in that sense judgement is not justified.  But judging the conduct of the person who hurt you is a necessary part of the healing process.  You won't feel better until you have processed all the facts and come to some conclusions about what really happened.  Whatever your higher spiritual ideals may be, the "anger phase" of the grieving process is a part of human nature, and it serves a purpose.  If I had allowed myself to feel the anger in the first month after the break-up, I would have spared myself an extra seven or eight months of anguish.  Remember that the grieving process has evolved over time, and each step of the process serves a purpose.  The human mind is incredibly complex, and it knows how to heal itself.  Let yourself feel whatever you need to feel as long as you are on a path to healing.  At some point, of course, the healing must be complete, and you must let go and move forward . . . but don't think you can just skip the anger and judgement in the process just because it's not "nice."  If it didn't serve a purpose, it wouldn't be a universal feature of human psychology.