Your primary goal should be to go about your life with a sense dignity and self-respect. This means doing the following:
1. Do not be rude or disrespectful.
2. Do not tolerate any rudeness or disrespect. In other words, when approached rudely, remain composed and either withdraw or say something like, “Let’s treat each other with respect.”
3. Do not seek too much connection, that is, avoid being needy.
4. Do not give too much advice.
5. Do not complain, but rather ask for what you need in a dignified way.
6. Avoid a victim mentality.
7. Avoid gossiping negatively about your potential ex.
8. Pursue your interests and see friends and family (I don’t mean party wildly, but live an interesting life). Include mutual friends.
9. Find things to be grateful for daily and hourly.
10. Apologize for any mistakes or hurt you may have caused.
Building a basis of mutual respect gives you the best chance of being able to restore the relationship on some level without resentment or hostility. He is most likely to miss you and be attracted to you again if you are strong, kind, independent and amazing.
Whether or not you are able to restore the relationship fully, you will feel better about yourself if you can follow these guidelines. Moreover, the self-composure and dignity achieved by following these guidelines provide the most effective basis for interacting with another person whether you are married, living apart, or divorced.
Avoiding honest discussions about difficult issues
No relationship is perfect. So one of the key ingredients in a long-term relationship is being able to be honest while diplomatic about changes that would improve the relationship and boundaries that need to be set.
If people are too worried about hurting each others’ feelings to be candid, then long-term intimacy may be severely compromised. While attack and defensiveness are counter-productive, honest expression of your needs and desires in a relationship is crucial. A couple needs to be able to talk openly about what is not working in their relationship.
Have you both been able to discuss the issues in your relationship? Do you know why your girlfriend needs to move out to re-evaluate the relationship? Are you sure she is not simply trying to ease out of the relationship without hurting you too much?
Having it both ways
Your girlfriend seems to be calling all the shots while you hand over all of the control in the relationship to her. Separating and the possibility of getting back together seem to be in her hands. Is she trying to have it both ways–keep you waiting for her, while she decides what she really wants? Being too compliant
Notice that she was the one reassuring you, which means she assumes that you will be there waiting for her. Consider whether you have allowed a dynamic to develop in your relationship where you give her total control in the name of being agreeable and accommodating.
While it is important to be reasonably accommodating in a relationship, when you give up too much of your power and subordinate your needs and desires to another person, you will become emotionally debilitated. As a result, you will feel lackluster, your partner will lose interest in you, and passion will tend to diminish. Even if you do get back together, if this dynamic continues, you will lose your sense of self by being too compliant, and she will lose her desire for you.
Taking control of your own life and your role in the relationship
1. Have a candid conversation. Ask her to explain why she is dissatisfied. Assure her that you can handle the truth and see if she can be candid about why she wants to separate. In order for you to have the opportunity to re-evaluate the relationship, you need to know what’s bothering her and whether she can handle difficulties in a relationship as part of a team.
2. Live your life, don’t put it on hold. Keep your life engaged. Avoid sitting around waiting for her to decide whether she can do better. Give her space while maintaining your own friendships and social activities. It’s always good to keep your life interesting and continue to pursue your passions, whether living together, married or not. You will feel more alive and be a more interesting and desirable person.
3. Re-evaluate your relationship with her. Make sure you also re-evaluate the relationship on your own terms. Make sure you are in touch with your own needs and desires and not just simply complying with hers. Imagine that you do get back together. Can you avoid walking on eggshells wondering if she’s going to back away again? Will you two be able to discuss boundaries, needs, and desires? Will you be second-guessing her and trying to appease her so that she doesn’t leave again? Are you willing to simply wait and hope for her to decide to get back together with you? How do you really feel about her wanting to separate yet wanting to keep her options open?
Based on your reflections about these questions, you might tell her what your desires are and decide what actions you would like to take, and see if you can have a productive conversation together.
Separation can be helpful especially if you are both young and haven’t developed a strong sense of self. However, long-term relationships require trust, which is best promoted by honest and open discussions about the inevitable challenges that arise in a relationship.
While it is admirable that you want to maintain a friendly relationship with your ex, you cannot do so alone; it takes two. The power of irrational attacks
Insults and lies directed at you are intended to draw you in and get a reaction. This is probably the only form of power he feels he has over you now — trying to hurt you. And he has known you long enough to know just how to do it.
When you hear untrue accusations, it is very tempting to defend yourself, to lay out the truth, and to prove that the opposite is true. Yet people who are verbally abusive are in a state of fear and rage; they are not inclined to be reasonable and logical. You cannot change the way he claims to view things by responding in any way to his hostile accusations.
Don’t feed abuse with your hope
Moreover, if he senses that you can be hooked into argument because you feel you have to persuade him of the truth, he will continue to throw insults and untruths your way. If he senses your desire to be reasonable and on friendly terms, you are continuing to give him the power to hurt you.
You have to give up the hope that he will come to appreciate what you brought to the relationship and what you have enjoyed together. You can still appreciate those things on your own. He may even come to do so down the line, but it will take time. You will not be able to reason with him in the short term.
Being reactive to his anger in the form of arguing on the phone or writing long defending emails spurs him on, like a kid who gets a big reaction when having a temper tantrum. Any hopes that he will become reasonable should be put aside; otherwise, he will continue to lambaste you with abuse.
Disengage
What you can and must do is to disengage. Don’t feed his abusive behavior with your emotional reactions. Ignore the attacks. Don’t engage in any more letters or conversations with him other than for pure practical or legal purposes specific to your separation.
If he calls and starts attacking, you just have to hang up — without yelling or defending yourself. Just say “I have to go.” Or “Let’s talk when you are less emotional and hostile.” CLICK. Or do not take his calls. Do not subject yourself to insults, twisting of the truth, or negativity.
By ignoring accusatory correspondence, you prevent your ex from dis-empowering you with his abuse. No matter how he tries to incite you with falsehoods and attacks, don’t engage, because it triggers his desire to hurt you and engage you, which makes him feel empowered in a very unhealthy way. More importantly, the less time you spend arguing and defending yourself, the less dis-empowered, hurt and angry you will feel.
Stay empowered
This is not to say that you should not pursue what you are legally entitled to. Defending yourself in court is a different matter. Defend yourself in the most effective way. In court, you can count on the presence of a rational third party without a stake in the outcome.
If you have to correspond about practicalities, make your correspondence very brief, neutral and businesslike, without any negative comments. Don’t act scared of him. Any hints of your own defensiveness, fear, or anger reward him. On again off again charm
Beware. He may suddenly be friendly and you might hope that he’ll give you a ray of sunshine – but the storm still rages. You cannot count on someone who hurls insults and untruths one moment and is friendly the next.
Of course, you can be polite and respectful, but unless there has been a lasting transformation in him, don’t engage in discussions with him, other than brief business-like communication to deal with the logistics of your separation. Change focus
What you focus on greatly affects how you feel. Thus, it’s important to shift your focus to more positive aspects of your life. Communicate with life-enhancing friends and family. Focus on taking care of yourself, pursuing your interests, helping others in need, and, above all, keeping your perspective and sense of humor.
Clinging and smothering behaviours are the unsavoury consequences of a deep-set existential, almost mortal fear of abandonment and separation. For the codependent to maintain a long-term, healthy relationship, she must first confront her anxieties head on. This can be done via psychotherapy: the therapeutic alliance is a contract between patient and therapist which provides for a safe environment, where abandonment is not an option and, thus, where the client can resume personal growth and form a modicum of self-autonomy. In extremis, a psychiatrist may wish to prescribe anti-anxiety medication.
Self-help is also an option, though; meditation, yoga, and the elimination of any and all addictions, such as workaholism, or binge eating. Feelings of emptiness and loneliness – at the core of abandonment anxiety and other dysfunctional attachment styles – can be countered with meaningful activities (mainly altruistic and charitable) and true, stable friends, who provide a safe haven and are unlikely to abandon her and, therefore, constitute a holding, supportive, and nourishing environment.
The codependent’s reflexive responses to her inner turmoil are self-defeating and counterproductive. They often bring about the very outcomes she fears most. But these outcomes also tend to buttress her worldview (“the world is hostile, I am bound to get hurt”) and sustain her comfort zone (“abuse and abandonment are familiar to me; at least I know the ropes and how to cope with them.”)
This is why she needs to exit this realm of mirrored fears and fearsome mental tumult. She should adopt new avocations and hobbies, meet new people, engage is non-committal, dispensable relationships, and, in general, take life more lightly.
Some codependents develop a type of “militant independence” as a defense against their own sorely felt vulnerability (their dependence.) But even these daring “rebels” tend to view their relationships in terms of “black and white” (an infantile psychological defense mechanism known as “splitting”.) They tend to regard their relationships as either doomed to failure or everlasting and their mates as both unique and indispensable (“soulmate”, “twin”) or completely interchangeable (objectified.)
These, of course, are misperceptions; cognitive deficits grounded in emotional immaturity and thwarted personal development. All relationships have a life expectancy, a “sell by”, “good before”, or expiry date. No one is irreplaceable or completely interchangeable. The codependent’s problems are rooted in a profound lack of self-love and an absence of object constancy (she regards herself as unloved and unlovable when she is all by herself.)
Yet, clinging, codependent, and counterdependent (fiercely independent, defiant, and intimacy-retarding) behaviours can be modified. If you fear abandonment to the point of a phobia, here’s my advice:
Compile a written, very detailed “mission statement” regarding all the aspects of your romantic relationships: how would you like them to look like and how would you go about securing the best outcomes. Revisit and revise this “charter” regularly.
List your 3 most important mate choice criteria: what would you be looking for in a first date and without which there will be no second date. This list is your filter, your proverbial selective membrane. Revisit and revise it regularly as your taste and preferences change.
Conduct a thorough background check on your prospective intimate partner. Go online and Google his name; visit his social networking accounts; ask friends and family for information and an appraisal of his character, temperament, and personality. This preparatory research will put you in control and empower you. It will serve as an antidote to uncertainty and the anxiety attendant upon it.
Next use the “Volatility Threshold” and the “Threat Monitoring” tools.
The “Volatility Threshold” instrument is a compilation of 1-3 types of behaviours that you consider critically desirable (“deal-makers”) in your partner. Observe him and add up the number of times he had acted inconsistently and, thus, reversed these crucial aspects of his behavior substantially and essentially. Decide in advance how many “strikes” would constitute a “deal-breaker” and when he reaches this number – simply leave. Do not share with him either the existence or the content of this “test” lest it might affect his performance and cause him to playact and prevaricate.
As a codependent, you tend to jump to conclusions and then “jump the gun”: you greatly exaggerate the significance of even minor infractions and disagreements and you are always unduly fatalistic and pessimistic about the survival chances of your relationships. The “Threat Monitoring” tool is comprised of an inventory of warning signs and red flags that, in your view and from your experience, herald and portend abandonment. The aim is to falsify this list: to prove to you that, more often than not, you are wrong in predicting a breakup.
In general, try to act as though you were a scientist: construct alternative hypotheses (interpretations of behaviours and events) to account for what you regard as transgressions and bad omens. Test these hypotheses before you decide to end it all with a grand gesture, a dramatic exit, or a decisive finale. Preemptive abandonment is based more on your insecurities than on facts, so make sure to test your hypotheses – and your partner – in a variety of settings before you call it a day and before you prophesy doom and gloom.
This “scientific” approach to your intimate relationship has the added benefit of delaying the instant alleviation of your anxiety which consists of impulsive, ill-thought actions. It takes time to form hypotheses and test them. This lapse between trigger and reaction is all you need. By the time you have formed your informed opinion, your anxiety will have abated and you will no longer feel the urge to “do something now, whatever it may be!”
Armed with these “weapons” you should feel a lot more confident as you enter a new romantic liaison. But, the secret of the longevity of long-term relationships lies in being who you are, in acting transparently, in externalizing your internal dialog and inner voices. In short: if you want your relationships to last, you should express your emotions and concerns on a regular basis. You should knowingly and willingly assume all the risks associated with doing so: of exposing the chinks in your armour; of your vulnerabilities and blind spots being abused, exploited, and leveraged; of being misunderstood, even mocked. But the rewards of being open with your partner (without being naive or gullible) are enormous and multifarious: stronger bonding often results in long-lasting relationships.
Early on you should confer with your intimate partner and inform him of what, to you, constitutes a threat: what types of conduct he should avoid and what modes of communication he should eschew. You should both agree on protocols of communication: fears, needs, triggers, wishes, boundaries, requests, priorities, and preferences should all be shared on a regular basis and in a structured and predictable manner. Remember: structure, predictability, even formality are great antidotes to anxiety.
But there is only that much that your partner can do to ameliorate your mental anguish. You can and should help him in this oft-Herculean task. You can start by using drama to desensitize yourself to your phobia. In your mind imagine and rehearse, in excruciating detail, both the worst-case and best-case scenarios (abandonment in the wake of adultery versus blissful marriage, for instance.)
In these reveries, do not act as an observer: place yourself firmly at the scene of the action and prepare detailed responses within these impromptu plays. At first, this pseudo-theatre may prove agonizing, but the more you exercise your capacity for daydreaming the more you will find yourself immune to abandonment. You may even end up laughing out loud during the more egregious scenes!
Similarly, prepare highly-detailed contingency plans of action for every eventuality, including the various ways in which your relationship can disintegrate. Be prepared for anything and everything, thoroughly and well in advance. Planning equals control and control means lessened dread.
