What if breakups were celebrations?
When’s the last time you celebrated a breakup?
I don’t mean the kind where you shit talk the other person.
“That asshole doesn’t deserve me. Good riddance.”
I mean the kind where you continue to be on the other person’s team - wanting and hoping the best for them. The kind where an ending of a chapter doesn’t mean that you’re now against each other.
Normally I write about my personal experience on this blog, but I’m feeling so inspired by one of my clients right now that I can’t not write about it!
After meeting every week together for 14+ months in a row, I’ve seen this person move through romantic despair and hopelessness, wondering if true love is really even possible within such a traumatized world. I’ve seen them end a relationship of EIGHT YEARS after cultivating a deeper attunement to their body and simply following their body’s feedback. It didn’t feel good to be with that guy, so why were they letting their energy leak like that?
And, now, after having regained hope and then falling deeply and passionately in love with a woman, they found themself in awe of what is possible in love and relationships. And today, after multiple sessions of expressing fear of leaving the honeymoon phase (what if the relationship won’t last forever!), they proudly announced to me that they had ended things with the very person who reignited a spark inside of them that had felt dormant for so long.
In fact, they were celebrating!
To break up with someone doesn’t mean you stop loving them. It doesn’t mean you turn from allies to enemies. It simply means the relationship is going through a transition.
Within a Capitalist, hetero-normative society we often feel shame around breakups or even self doubt.
“Does this mean I’m a failure at love?”
The Relationship Escalator turns love into a linear, outcome-oriented mission. But my client has effectively divested from the Relationship Escalator after weeks and weeks of ongoing commitment to shadow work, to unlearning internalized systems of oppression, and to prioritizing secure attachment with themself first and foremost.
Why are endings worth celebrating?
Often times relationships end because there was not enough alignment. Or perhaps the relationship de-escalates to honor the facets where there is alignment. Misalignments are huge energy drains that have ripple effects on every single aspect of a person’s life. So to acknowledge the misalignments (living in reality instead of clinging to a fantasy or a formula for relationship “success” that comes from society and not from within) and to adjust accordingly feels like a huge energetic relief. Not only does it stop the boat from leaking, but it opens up space for relationships that are more aligned and more easeful. It’s most certainly worth celebrating!
Not to say that there isn’t grief* or that acknowledging misalignments takes away from the beauty of moments and delicious chemistry that was shared. But that one element of relationship transitions that hetero-capitalist society makes taboo is the celebratory aspect of it.
There’s so much to celebrate!
The energy that was once leaking, now being recovered and alchemized into life-giving projects and relationships.
Clearing out dead energetic space to invite in more alignment (which brings more ease).
Acknowledging the fears that were once present - not wanting the relationship to end because it felt so euphoric. And then seeing things with surrender, clarity and acceptance of what is.
Scarcity would be to cling to a fantasy of what once was or what could be. Abundance is saying “no thank you.” Now that I’ve had an opportunity to get to know you more authentically (past all those first impression performances), I choose to accept misalignments and let them go.
The trust that you build with yourself by honoring reality and not clinging to an illusion.
The faith that by choosing yourself (and what you need) over and over again is not a short term failure, but a long term success. An embodied knowing that prioritizing your needs first sends the message to the universe to bring what you need into your life. This is, of course, a process that cannot be rushed . Everything happens in divine timing. There is so much abundance in feeling secure in yourself no matter who comes and goes from your life.
Knowing that, by having experienced such a delicious and life-giving relationship (even if it’s misaligned long-term), that it’s simply evidence of what is possible in the world. Not something to cling to and, ultimately, suffocate in hopes of revival. But knowing that something even more juicy and nourishing awaits you because of the way you’re showing up for yourself and what you’re signaling to the universe.
Now, these concepts might be easy to grasp, but to embody them is no simple task. These concepts are rooted in love and abundance, which is inherently at odds with the social systems that shape U.S. society today. Hetero-Capitalist Patriarchy are all rooted in scarcity.
And so to actually integrate the intellectual understanding into a lived embodiment is a HUGE celebration that only comes after an ongoing commitment to unlearning internalized systems of oppression. It’s a process of reprogramming the subconscious animal body away from control and scarcity and towards love and liberation.
Towards life.
Too many times have I witnessed people suffer through romantic partnerships that are simply misaligned because they made a legal promise to each other many moons ago. At the very best, forcing a misaligned relationship brings discontentment and exhaustion. At the very worst it causes suffering, depression or even abuse.
Today, I’m celebrating my client after having witnessed their relentless commitment to love and liberation to where they can be in a place in their life where “the best relationship they’ve ever had” is not something to force into infinity, but something to learn and grow from. Wetting their appetite for what’s possible in their next relationships. They’ve proven to them that they will not suppress their feelings and needs, they will not suppress their happiness, their life force for the sake of proving to society they’re “successful” at relationships. The true success lies within. Knowing that you attract what you need in your life by showing the fuck up for yourself time and time again.
*Grief is simply an expression of love.
If you never loved someone, then you won’t miss them when they’re gone. You will have been un-impacted by them in your life. But to allow the grief to flow through the body is to allow love to flow through the body - honoring the gifts of that person and what they brought into your life. Honoring how they have changed you (for better or for worse).
