Breaking up is hard to do

Last week, I saw a fellow for the first time whose wife of thirteen years has told him to move out. I am also treating a woman who is going through a divorce after thirty some years of marriage. And there's the fellow who has been in love with a gal for ten years. It's been on and off again but she's moving to another state this week. She has another man. And there was a teary conversation with a gal who thought the guy she met on the Internet was the man of her dreams. He stood her up for the second time. Only she believed that he would magically get over his 'fear of intimacy' and come around.

Having walked enough people through break ups, I've learned a thing or two.

1. The person initiating the break up is having just as rough a time as the person who has been dumped. Dr. J, a wise analyst, taught me that the next relationship the initiator runs to is usually disastrous. That's what I've seen too.

2. It is grief that is experienced with its concomitant denial, rage, sleep disturbances, and depression. It comes in waves, some manageable and some so strong that it almost bowls one over.

3. The underlying strength of the personality is a huge factor in the ability to withstand and heal from the experience. For example one woman, pooled in misery, wailed that this current break up only proved that no one could love her. I pointed out the difficulty might not be any inherent unlovability but her skill at picking men. She found men who were cold, distant and rejecting replicating the cold, distant and rejecting parents of her childhood.

4. The acceptance that it is really over takes some time. One gal didn't totally accept it was over until her ex-boyfriend married another gal and he gave his wife the baby his ex-girlfriend had always wanted. He had told her he didn't want children. She was furious at him even though she had been married and divorced in the interim...which leads me to:

5. Break up rage can spray everywhere if it taps into old unresolved infantile rage. The greater the frustration and unmet needs from childhood, the more intense and global the rage will be as a result of a breakup. The headlines are full of this stuff.

6. Basic support is helpful. Feel good platitudes are not. Sometimes people just need space and time to lick their wounds. They snap at anyone who approaches them.

7. People can and do heal. With some help, they learn what went wrong. Not infrequently they can look back in a few months and see what a blessing the break up was.

I like Skeeter Davis' song Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now where she sings:
Gotta along without ya before I met you
Going to get along without ya now...

Skeeter has several other very fine heartbreak songs such as The End of the World. Some of my favorites are Neil Sedaka's Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Travis Tritt's classic Here's a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares, REO Speedwagon's Time for Me to Fly and don't forget the broken heart sobbing operatic Italian arias and of course the blues. Oh yeah....

Ira Glass did a wonderful show recently on This American Life about break-ups where he introduces us to a woman who decides after listening to endless hours of break up songs to write her own even consulting Phil Collins in the process.TA gives book after book after book on grieving to those who are mourning...until the bereaved one becomes sick of grieving. There are also only so many break up songs one person can stand.