FIVE STEPS TO A HAPPY ENDING
Find emotional freedom
1 Learn to harness the intensity of the emotions you are feeling (such as rage, hatred, fear and despair) and transform them from destructive impulses to do harm into
constructive energies of lasting, positive change. Letting go of festering rage is vital as it can help catalyse your own growth beyond the person you were in your previous relationship.
Reclaim your power and your life
2 Instead of obsessively ruminating on everything offensive your ex-partner has done, turn your attention towards yourself to discover what role you played in what happened. To prevent yourself ever repeating this dynamic again, let go of being a victim; reflect on yourself as the source of your experience; release unconscious habitual patterns of peoplepleasing, self-abandoning, over-giving or tolerating less than you deserve; learn how to make amends and evolve. Break the pattern, heal your heart
3 Sigmund Freud named our tendencies to
duplicate the deepest hurts of our childhood the “repetitive compulsion”. An example of this could be watching your parents divorce, leading you to the preconceived idea in following relationships that “men always leave”. You must learn to graduate from this painful pattern of belief and recognise that the past does not determine what is possible for your future.
Become a love alchemist
4 Learn to see yourself as capable of generating a positive future for yourself and others no matter how hurtful or hard things have been. Make choices that transform the dynamic between you and your former partner. One woman I advised gave her ex-husband a financial gift as a thank you for their years together. Her bigheartedness inspired him to offer to rearrange his schedule to look after their daughter each afternoon, sparing her the cost of a nanny. Being generous and offering sincere acts of kindness restores a sense of wellbeing to relatives and friends, including your children, who will move more freely between your homes with a feeling of
Create your ‘happy even after’ life
5 Your goal is not to try to create a better version of what you once had, but to expand what’s now possible to include fresh, new horizons, friends and interests. You should strive to create cohesion and alignment with your community at large and discover wholesome cooperative ways to care for the children, divide your property and navigate the legal process to ensure that all involved are set up to win moving forward.