February 25, 2015,
Relationship, Relationship Tips 
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I met a client yesterday who told me that for no apparent reason or cause her partner came to her one day and told her he wasn’t happy. He said he wanted to take six months living separately from her to decide whether he really wanted to be in this relationship. She was dumbfounded and asked whether he was seeing someone else. He denied it. He just kept saying he wasn’t happy and needed some time separate.
Couples often do not realize the problems that prevent them from being happy. Instead, they keep searching for the answers outside of themselves and outside of their relationships rather than looking within.
Furthermore, there are many cases when following a break-up, one of the couple jumps into a new relationship before taking the time to explore their part in the breakup. These are what we refer to as rebound relationships. Months or sometimes even years later that same person finds themselves in exactly the same place, again asking the question: “Why can’t I find happiness in my relationships?”
The Rebound Relationship: Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire
This is why rebound relationships generally do not work. When a relationship ends, you need time to grieve. Even if you were the one who decided to separate, you still need time to heal your wounds and to learn your lessons.
The lessons are not just about relationships, either, but about yourself. You don’t want to duplicate the mistakes you made that shattered the previous relationship.
Why Rebound Relationships Generally Don’t Work
I also repeatedly hear stories of couples separating because one partner or the other has “found someone else.” That the new relationship could possibly work out is a fantasy. First, the new relationship is created within a context where one of the former partners (and most often, the new third party as well) is still in a relationship. The work has simply not yet been done to fully disconnect them from the first relationship(s), which detracts from nurturing a new one.
One process must be completed fully before another one can really begin.
I’ll go back to my story here. I had known my future partner for some time before my separation from my first husband, but I ensured that he was never the reason for my decision to separate. I conserved this new relationship as a friendship only until I felt complete with my separation.
Nevertheless, my new partner became a friend and a support. We both understood that the time would come, as it did, when I wouldn’t need a confidante or a sounding board for the grief, the anger and the sadness I was experiencing.
Because we went into relationship with awareness, we were successful, and now we can boast of making a rebound relationship into more than just a passing fling. It is a happy and fulfilling long-term relationship based on equality and a deep love for who we both are.
I am sharing my own personal experience so that I can give you the strength and the courage to be yourselves and to believe that you deserve the best new start. And even if you believe that your destiny presents you with a new, great relationship, think of the fact that today it seems to you surrounded in a pink cloud. And what about tomorrow? Will it sustain the life storms that follow after not getting over the separation? Most probably not.
If the relationship is a struggle, it may actually reflect the worst of both of you: a lot of distress arises when fundamental needs continue to be unmet in either of you. It can be even more problematic if you have the same unmet needs and if your underlying script beliefs are that they’ll never be met anyway.
How to Begin a New Relationship
I say to couples I counsel who also began their relationship from a rebound that they should ensure that they have fully finished with any previous relationships before embarking on another. This is the only way to give a new relationship any hope of survival, regardless of what anyone may believe.
You owe it to your future partner, and to yourself, to be emotionally and mentally fit before embarking on the journey of seeking out the person who may become your life-long partner. The best relationships exist between people who actually have all the skills to live happily on their own.
The point to remember here is that your relationship, if successful, will naturally reflect the best of both of you.
I repeat: to have a fulfilling relationship with another, you must start with love for yourself, and you must truly be OK with who you are as a person. Only then can you really consider the possibility of “happily ever after” with someone else. Nonetheless, many of you will continue to follow the allure of the “perfect relationship,” the “fairy tale” promised to you in songs and in the movies. For some of you, the dream continues to be shattered, time and time again, but for others, it will come true.
Get to know yourself before you get to know your future spouse
In order to get to know your own needs, strives and desires you need time. And this time is as important as every second of your life. You cannot establish a strong relationship if first of all you lack one with your own self.
And what does this mean?
The short answer here is EVERYTHING. Everything you are made of – your values and beliefs, self-assessment, self-knowledge, attitude, disposition, and even attitude towards every tiny detail that is a part of you.
And when you do know yourself best, you will be able to get to know, to the fullest extent, another human being. You will surely manage to get rid of the Rebound Relationship variant. You will be capable of presenting your partner with the best of you – gratuitous love.
And for my client above. My advice to her was to take this time as a learning opportunity for herself; to not think about the six months ahead but rather to let that take care of itself in the knowledge that what will be will be.
Please, write to me and share with me your own experience on this. I am looking forward to your letters!
To the wonder of you,
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