I Have Not Stopped Loving You, I Have Stopped Insisting

Sometimes it is not love that ends, but patience. That’s right, the desire to continue throwing wood on a fire that does not give heat, on a look that does not embrace, on an embrace that does not reach us. In the end we get tired of insisting, the soul fades, hopes are diluted and there are only the embers of a dignity that we collect in pieces, aware that it is no longer the right place for us.

It is curious how some people, when they go to a professional to try to overcome the pain process related to a breakup, they do not hold back from asking the psychologist “help me to stop loving my ex, help me forget him”. Perhaps not a few therapists would like to have such a magic formula, a fabulous technique with which to make all traces of a love that hurts disappear, a melancholy memory that clouds the days and lengthens the nights.

Nevertheless, a good psychologist knows that pain is a useful suffering, it is a slow but progressive process, which allows the person to acquire new growth strategies and resources to improve the management of their emotions. Every attempt to forget turns out to be nothing more than a sterile and useless effort, which slows down vital learning, the discovery of a method to find within oneself the spirit of initiative and the desire to love again.

Because basically no one stops loving from one day to the next. What happens is that we stop insisting on something that hasn’t been worth it for some time, is no longer worth life.

The two stages of pain after a final breakup

There are those who cannot do without it: insists and stubbornly hopes to receive a little more attention, to be able to share thoughts, decisions, fears, joys and complicity, convinced that the time lived in two can still smell of happiness and not of doubts, of genuine desire and not of detachment, excuses and shy looks… We have all insisted at least once in our life.

It is when we finally understand that it is better to stop insisting that the first symptom of pain appears, when the harsh reality makes us open our eyes to the evidence. However, before understanding the reality of that emotional bond, we are obliged to go through some stages, all of which are essential to finally give up a relationship before it turns into a useless ordeal of suffering.

The stages of this first phase of pain are as follows:

• Blurring of sensitivity: refers to situations in which we cannot understand the reason for certain reactions, the reason for the distance, the emotional detachment of our partner or the reason for his lies.
• Strong desire. In this second phase it is normal to try to insist, leading to the typical self-deceptions such as “he behaves like this because he is very stressed, because he is busy, he is tired …”, “if I were a little more sensitive, a little more affectionate / maybe he would love me a little more, would pay me more attention … “
• Acceptance is the last phase of this first pain, an essential moment in which the person stops insisting on the evidence. Feeding hope is nothing but an obstacle, as we know, a way of slowly poisoning ourselves without meaning or logic, leaving us only one possibility: to get away …

It is at this point that a much more complex phase begins: the second pain.

I stopped insisting, I moved away, but I still love you: the second pain

When we finally say goodbye and move away from the other person, the second phase of pain begins. Faced with the irremediable of what hurts, of what burns our dignity and annihilates self-esteem, the wisest option is distance, it is clear. However, distance without forgetting will never be possible.

We know that assuming the awareness that “it’s all over and there is nothing left to do” frees us from unnerving expectations and from barren land. Yet, what to do with that feeling that has got stuck inside us, like an insistent demon? The second pain is more complex than the first, because if it is difficult to discover that we are not loved or that we are “badly loved”, it will be even more complicated to have to heal our wounds, survive and find ourselves in stronger people.

With this in mind, it is necessary to shape an emotional pain that is in line with our needs, where the mind and body can cry, process, assimilate the absence of being loved and accept by force – and gritted teeth. – the new situation without rancor, without anger or resentment.

At the same time, it is also an ideal time to “insist” on us. We need to bring out a bit of stubbornness, feed ourselves with hope, feed ourselves with new enthusiasm, although at the beginning, we know, it will be difficult. This second pain forces us to insist and persist on our being, modulating memories and anxieties, seeking the perfect frequency in which nostalgia and dignity come into harmony to allow us to move forward with our heads held high.

Images courtesy of Agnes Cecile