These days, I focus on what I can learn from my failed relationships and take with me for next time. Doing this has helped me realize that with pain and disappointment comes so much more.
- Pain is always information. If you’re in pain, you might go to the doctor for a diagnosis. The doctor will ask you all kinds of questions about your level of pain, the type of pain, when it started, how frequent it is etc. All of this information helps the doctor diagnose your condition and help you heal. Diagnose yourself! Try looking at your failed relationships from this perspective and I believe that you’ll be able to figure out how to heal yourself from emotional pain caused by failed relationships. It’s worked for me!
- Hitting rock bottom is a fresh start. We always view rock bottom as this horrible, scary place to be. We have nothing at rock bottom and yet we have everything we need to rebuild. It means that everything that you’ve tried doing in a particular situation has failed. Nothing is working because nothing is left. There is no salvaging even one iota. It’s dunzo. But this means that you can start completely brand new. You can reinvent yourself and your situation. You can get a fresh start.
- Each ‘zone’ has a different lesson. I said that I see each of my failed relationships as zones. That’s because they each have a different set of information that I can use to better myself and my next relationship. While one zone taught me about my resilience as a person, another taught me about how selfish I can be. All of this helps me to become a better me.
- Learning from your mistakes is a skill. No one teaches us what it means to learn from our mistakes or how to do it. Since looking at my failures like information zones, I think I’ve figured it all out. For me, it means reflecting, examining the root cause of a situation, and coming up with a solution so it never happens again. Sounds complicated but it’s actually pretty straightforward.
- The more you understand, the freer you are. If you can identify why something happened to you, you’ll be able to step in and run interference before it ever ruins your life again. You are freer because you can take risks, you can challenge yourself, you can love fearlessly but you also know when to shut something down. You’ll be ready for anything.
- Regaining power after a failure is everything. When you lose power during a storm surge and your entire home goes dark and you’re stuck like that for a while, it sucks. When the power comes back on and the lights illuminate your space again, you’ve never felt more gratitude for light bulbs and electricity and wires. Your failed relationships are the same way! Failure sucks and you might be in the dark for a spell, but when you emerge and you get your life back on track because you’ve been able to learn and heal from a horrible situation, you come back stronger and more powerful than ever.
- If you’re your biggest critic, no one can ever hurt you. If you know your weaknesses and your flaws better than anyone else, no one can hurt you because no one can spring on you and make you feel bad about yourself. Know thyself. Study thyself. Understand your role in your relationships. Be critical (but forgiving) of yourself. It’s one of the best ways to protect yourself from harmful people.
- You can reverse the damage. You have the power to reverse the damage caused by failures if you can learn from them and understand why they happened. By tracking the failure and finding the root cause, you can nip it in the bud and move on with your life.
- A great way to prepare for your future is to recognize and understand your past. Adequate preparation requires a look into the past. If you want a beautiful, loving, committed relationship, you have to understand why some of the ones you’ve been in never worked out. The future that you want is, in part, up to you. Don’t let failed relationships hold you back from going after the future that you deserve. Use them to your advantage and start living the life you want to live!
