The Rebound Relationship: Out of the Frying Pan, into the Fire

January 30, 2024,  Counselling, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

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 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.

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.

Even if the former relationships have already been severed and the new couple feels they have finished with their previous relationships emotionally, there may still be quite a lot to settle, such as managing a financial separation or creating agreements for care of children. These issues can bring onerous pressures on any fledgling relationship.

I’ll go back to my own 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.

I also kept to a minimum any conversation with my new partner about what was going on between my first husband and myself to also ensure that the new relationship would not be contaminated by anything residual to my marriage.

Nevertheless, my new partner became a friend and a support during that time. 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.

Then, for our new relationship to have any chance of success, my new partner and I had to move away from the nature of the relationship as it was after my separation; it had been characterized by my extreme need to be cared for. We then negotiated new grounds that would take us into the future.

Because we went into it 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.

This is why 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.

Further, I suggest to couples in the process of separating that they put some distance between themselves and any future partner to ensure that the separation does not become complicated by the energy required to embark on a new relationship journey.

And, most important of all, I suggest to couples that they never use a new relationship as the reason for leaving an existing one. Even though human nature wants a reason (and blaming someone else for breaking up your relationship can be a great one), that will never be the real reason. It is important for you to know that, and for your future partner to know it as well.

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. However, 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. If this is you, you run the risk of falling into old patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings as you realize the answer to your own shortcomings cannot and will not be found in someone else.

Often, someone experiencing this goes from one relationship to another, looking for something that can never be found. The solution to your shortcomings is just not out there. It is within 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.

To the wonder of you,

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