Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Saying the words, "I want to break up," whether with respect to a marital relationship or any other committed romantic relationship, is one of the hardest things a human being ever has to do.

Making the conscious choice to end one of the strongest bonds we have ever made frightens us to our very core. We fear that we'll never meet anyone else. We fear the possible financial burden, the loneliness, the unknown. We feel guilty for being disloyal, abandoning a loved one. We dread seeing hurt or rage on our partner's face.

Many teachings suggest that we should never break up. There are loyalty oaths, responsibilities, social stigmas. There is the suggestion that we are immature, lack tenacity, are being selfish.

I've found that for a certain kind of person--a person who is considerate, emotionally generous, fair-minded, and understanding; someone who is seeking cooperation, yet has symptoms of low self-esteem - it is possible to be taken advantage of in relationships.

It is this sort of person who is the most afraid to break up, because underlying these positive qualities, there is often an emotional immaturity and dependency that produces a feeling of insecurity and inadequacy.

But it is just this sort of person who benefits from dissolving a partnership that is not working because it is an opportunity to be true to themselves; to put themselves to the test of being more independent; developing resourcefulness and self-sufficiency; and, eventually, if they so desire, insisting on a more compatible mate, a true partner.

I speak from experience. After agonizing for years, I finally left a husband who wasn't truly in partnership with me. In the process it felt as if I was losing everything that mattered to me--building a life with someone; having children together; developing lifelong relationships with family and friends.

Thankfully, my spiritual studies sustained me through the pain. I learned to focus on the healing power of our relationships with others. I had a growing understanding that, whether we are aware of it or not, we are all facets of the same diamond, all beating in the same heart, all thinking through the same mind.

A Sufi proverb puts it this way, "When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found."

The lyrics "breaking up is hard to do" are so true. But spending a lifetime in a relationship that you resent is far worse. I learned a hard, but invaluable spiritual lesson from this experience--I gained a deep and abiding trust in God, a deep 'knowing' that being completely dependent on God, rather than on any human being, was the answer. What a perfect solution to codependency!

Paradoxically, that dependency guarantees the most empowering relationship in which we will ever be, because it is an awakening of our original relationship with God, from which all other truly loving relationships spring.

© 2009 Amy Torresr
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