Will You Ever Feel Happy Again After a Breakup or Divorce?
After a breakup or divorce, it can feel like happiness will never return. Putting your life together again seems like an impossible task.
However, before we answer this question of whether you can ever be happy again when your relationship ends, we must understand what happiness is and, more importantly, what it means to you personally.
In my book, How Did I Get Here?, I talk about real happiness and start like this:
"When The Dalai Lama was asked what the purpose of life is, he replied, ‘To be happy.’
In early 300 BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote the Nicomachean Ethics, in which he described his view on the purpose of life. He concluded that to be an excellent human, you must be good at living life.
He went on to explain that our highest aim is eudaimonia (happiness) and that to achieve eudaimonia, you need to have a good character and apply ethics."
I then go on to ask the question,
‘If happiness is a universal desire, why are so many of us unhappy?
Even when we do finally find happiness, it doesn’t seem to last long; it is very fleeting.
Finally, I conclude that the reason we struggle to find a more stable state of happiness is that we are addicted to pleasure and not the conditions that cause a more permanent state of happiness.
Now, if your relationship has ended, of course, you will experience the feelings and emotions that come with that loss. However, your capacity to put your life back together and ultimately start feeling happy again relies on your overall outlook on life.
Quite simply, if you look at life from the perspective that you can only be happy if you are in that relationship, or if you are in any relationship, then you will be coming from the perspective that you need something or someone else to be happy.
Very often, after a breakup, especially at the beginning of the grieving process, you may find yourself behaving unpredictably and even out of character.
This is natural because you are trying to distract yourself from the pain you are feeling. It is at this time that you may find yourself accepting relationships or encounters with people that are clearly not good for you. In a sense, you are trying to fill a hole, to find a missing piece.
However, it’s like putting a plaster over an open wound; it’s not really healing, so eventually, the real problem will surface. In other words, if you are serious about being happy, the answer is to understand the difference between the temporary relief of the pain you are feeling by filling it with pleasures, such as pointless sex, overeating, overspending, or even the pretence of happiness.
So, How Can You Be Happy Again After Your Breakup or Divorce?
The first thing you must do is understand that real happiness is not reliant on external conditions but your state of mind.
I can’t stress this enough because if you rebuild your life as it was before without healing the wounds and habits of the past, you will rebuild your life on very fragile foundations, ready to crumble at the first thing that doesn’t go your way.
The work I do with my clients and the process I have designed in my signature programme, The Break Up, takes them through a journey of inner healing.
We do that by:
Examining the Past: Looking at how the past has impacted their relationship with themselves and, therefore, their relationships with others.
Breaking Patterns: Working together to break those patterns and replace them with new, healthy approaches to themselves and to those in their lives.
Creating a Future Plan: Developing a plan for the future that is more self-compassionate and healthier emotionally.
The overall purpose is to rebuild ourselves with strong foundations. The only way to do that is to develop a sense of inner peace that is not easily disturbed by the events in our lives. Controlling what happens to us is near impossible, but controlling how we respond to those events is within our control if we know how.
In my programme, The Break Up, we work through really important aspects, such as acceptance. If we cannot find a way to forgive ourselves for making choices that led us into an unhealthy relationship, it will eat at us, and happiness will not be possible. Remember, I am talking about real happiness, not temporary pleasure!
You see, the most important relationship we must nurture is the one we have with ourselves. When we are able to sit in complete silence with ourselves and feel at peace with all those thoughts that inevitably begin to surface, then we are happy.
When life is challenging, and yet we are able to stay firmly rooted in ourselves without being dragged off into overwhelm, anger, and sadness, then we know we have found real happiness.
Now, I know this isn’t an easy task. That’s why we spend our lives chasing pleasure rather than happiness. However, if you are serious about your life and want to cultivate a more stable sense of happiness, then I’m here to help you do that.
I’d recommend that you start by booking a free taster session with me, where we can talk about what is causing you the most difficulty right now and come up with a way to work through that so you can finally find a more stable sense of happiness.