I no longer have a relationship with _________.
Today I was thinking about how much I love being a relationship coach. I also do a lot of coaching with people who think they no longer have a relationship with their ex-husband, partner, sibling, parent or old friend, because they don’t have physical or phone contact with them. But that is simply not true. The truth is, if the person is still occupying your thoughts and taking up space in your brain, you have a relationship with them.
Our own thoughts can cause us pain when we think about people who are no longer in contact with us and we wish they were. Sometimes this comes in the form of someone who has passed away and we are still grieving. But it may also be a family member who is unreachable due to drug or alcohol abuse, a sibling who you haven’t spoken to for many years due to a disagreement, a friend who just stopped calling, or perhaps, like me, an ex-husband who avoids talking to you.
There’s a tendency for us to do one of three things:
1) Wish they would act or be different than they are
2) Keep trying to make contact and then being surprised with the same outcome (I call this going to the liquor store to buy milk -which they never have)
3) Cut them off completely and make up reasons why we don’t want them in our life anyway.
Each one of these takes up brain space and energy that creates a negative feeling for us whereby we cause our own pain. That brain space and energy we are giving up could be used to create a productive and positive thoughts instead. So, I want to offer you a fourth thing to do:
Send them love and let them just be who they are.
We don’t know what is going on in the other persons brain. They are having their own thoughts and feelings. What we DO have is the ability to manage our own minds and take care of ourselves. The other person is an adult. They get to think and do whatever they want. Hurt people hurt people. It’s possible that however they are acting is coming from a place of hurt. We can’t change that. But we CAN show up as the best version of ourselves and like the way we are thinking and acting. Afterall, aren’t there times when you’ve been hurt and from that way felt anger, fear, sadness or shame then showed up in a way that you may have regretted later? We are all human.
Take some time to grieve the lost relationship recognizing that, like death, these lost relationships also contain the 5 stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Allow yourself to feel those feelings.
Then, decide how you WANT to think about this person in your life. This will become your relationship with them. For me, I’ve given up trying to convince my ex-husband that my way of doing something is better than his or expecting him to respond any differently than he does or by cutting him off completely. I decided to just love him as he is. When I think about him, I send him love and am thankful for the time we had together and that he loves our children so much. His reasons for not wanting to have contact with me have nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with him. When I take away his actions meaning anything about me, I can just stay in my own lane. Work on my own thoughts and show up the best way I can today. And guess what? It feels so much better!
This person that you think you don’t have a relationship with but is hogging up space in your mind, can you love them just as they are? For being a human with a beating heart just like you? What does that look like? They are on their own journey. Stay in your lane. Work on your own thoughts and feelings. I guarantee that if you work on you first, consciously showing up in every situation the way you want to, with no expectations of them to be any different than they are, a new relationship will be created.