What do you do when you meet the man of your dreams, and at the very apex of your relationship, when everything seems to be going so well, suddenly ends it with you?

As someone who has been through this, and who has counseled others through this, I’m going to tell you, it won’t matter if he gives you a legitimate reason, or if he tells you nothing. Understanding ‘why’ won’t give you the closure you need.

When you have shared intimacies with someone, it always hurts to lose them, especially if you were best friends before you became intimate. In my case, I shared things with him that I shared with no one, I trusted him like no one. So when he ended the relationship with me, it invalidated EVERYTHING we shared. It’s just too difficult to believe that two people could be as close as Siamese twins and then one of the people can walk away easily and not look back.

You feel you’ve been hit by a train. You feel sad, disillusioned, confused. You feel under appreciated, used and taken for granted. It makes your self-esteem plummet and you begin to question your judgment. Every moment you shared with that person leaves you wondering if that moment was real or fake.

I read somewhere that standard formulas for healing aren’t effective when you are grieving over someone that was closer to you than anyone else you met in your life.

We have to move these important people out of the center of our thoughts, suspend our beliefs about them and our relationship, and move them to into another place. We need to box them up in our hearts, in our minds to review when our feelings are less raw and more stable.

It’s very difficult and painful to do this because we have a particularly strong attachment bond to them. Losing that attachment is very painful. We go through many different emotions from denial, anger, depression, sadness. Finally we move to acceptance and adaptation. But it doesn’t happen in this sequence. It often cycles back and forth through these stages. Just when you feel like you are “OK”, then something triggers pain, and you feel like you are starting again. It takes a very long time to work through this kind of grief, and loss.

For me, the minute we met we clicked. The electricity between us was always there. Others noticed it far sooner than we did. We went from being acquaintances, to friends, to best friends to lovers over a very long stretch of time. This was someone that I could tell anything without shame. This is someone who shared his deepest secrets with me. This is someone who shared so many common interests that even WE were shocked to discover our compatibility. We never ran out of things to talk about and conversations were both fun and stimulating. I didn’t get romantically involved with a stranger I got involved with my best friend, someone who I had known for years. So naturally my heart was less guarded. I trusted him with my heart so much that I never thought he would hurt and deceive me the way he did. Your best friend would never do this to you.

I gave him the best parts of myself. I gave him my devotion and my support. I gave my inner self to someone who didn’t treasure it. I was worth fighting for, and holding on to. He didn’t do it. I respected him far more than he respected me. I loved him more than he loved me. It was only after external circumstances made things rough, and our relationship ended, that I learned these feelings “we” shared were not mutual.

Let’s not even talk about the betrayal of the heart. How does one get over such a profound betrayal of your friendship? The problem was that he wasn’t fully committed to choosing me to be in his life, but he didn’t feel compelled to tell me this when we became involved. Instead he encouraged me to see hope when I was cynical. He faked a future with me telling me what I wanted to hear, which only made things more devastating in the end. No one wants to be lied to in any way, but especially on that scale.

I hate to think of him as a bad person, a person who lied, controlled and manipulated me, during possibly every moment of time he shared with me. I hate to think he was selfish and self-centered. I hate to believe that everything we shared was an illusion. I can’t believe this because what does it say about me and my ability to size up a person and a situation? I believed every word he said, and so when he didn’t deliver, my world went crashing down.

Obviously I misjudged the strength of our bond. The worst part about this is that despite understanding the very complex reasons of why, it still doesn’t make the situation feel better.

It can take a lot of time to go through the phases of healing following a breakup of this kind of love. The pain, anger and suffering are very normal in the aftermath of such devastation. Time will pass and time heals all wounds.

We usually get over something like this because we let go and start forgetting about it or get involved in something else that occupies our time and mind. These are the normal steps in the process of letting go, but are not necessarily the healthiest way to deal with it.

This crisis of the soul is an opportunity to personally grow in ways that assure you that you never have to go through it again.

There are three areas of personal growth that will best serve you at this time. (1) Emotional. (2) Lessons Learned. (3) Cleaning House.

1. Emotional
   This is a time of severe distress, pain, anger and anguish. These emotional states are particularly intense. How you respond to these emotions can make a huge difference in self-healing, self-nurturing and self-loving. In dealing with these emotions there are two directions you can go. The first is to focus on your lost partner and how they brought unwanted feelings into your life. The other, is to learn to better care for your own feelings and bring them to a state of inner healing. It is very easy to expend a lot of energy focusing on the hurt caused. This kind of suffering is almost addictive. Take this pain and seize it as a opportunity to change and focus. Learn to do some inner healing. In the end you be a stronger person better equipped for future relationships. You will also be less susceptible to emotional manipulation.
2. Lessons Learned
   Often we learn the wrong lessons. We learn not to trust people and protect ourselves the next time around. This ultimately messes up new relationships and holds us back from the love and joy we truly desire and deserve. These erroneous lessons will only hurt us and keep us suffering in the future. The important lessons to learn about having healthy successful relationship is to not repeat the mistakes just made.
3. Cleaning House
   This is an opportunity to gain clarity and discover your role in this relationship. Healthy relationships are a matter of each partner taking full responsibility for how things are now, and where they are going. By not taking responsibility for your part of the relationship, you turn yourself into a victim of the person who abused your trust. You disempower yourself.

It might be hard to think about the future in a positive way immediately. But the only way to assure a different kind of future is to use this situation to learn, self-heal, grow and change yourself.