The Big Question on the homepge of AOL today under “Yedda’s Ask and Answer” was this: “LOVE: I need advice about getting over a break-up.” And she added that her ex-lover wanted to be friends.
It seems that a 24 year old speech therapist was head over with a man she wanted to marry. But after the break up she discovered that her ex-lover was cheating and even had a MySpace page. She is devastated, but look what she says about him, “He was a nobody and through the years (4 years) I loved him and fought for him to become somebody.”
He wants to be friends: Apparently he became a somebody, even got a job with the airlines, but instead of staying with “brokenhearted” he is now living with another women who has a child and “who depends on him for a place to live.” But he still wants to be friends, calls begging, and insists he is trying to get of the mess.
The woman beneath her: What she find upsetting is not just losing this man to another woman – but to a woman whom she indicates is manipulative and beneath her and who calls her as well. Needless to say the reader’s advice was “no calls, no contact.”
Non-judgmental: It is difficult to be non-judgmental, but Deepak Chopra reminds us that in The Course on Miracles there is a passage, “Today I will judge nothing that occurs.” And by that he also means, “I will judge no one.”
It is so hard to do, believe me. But women who have given this a try find that it helps them acknowledge their feelings of anger and thoughts about their ex-lovers, but rise above it. Some are grateful to lose what in this young woman’s case was “a millstone around her neck.” Many others simply become wistful because of the emptiness.
Can ex-lovers be friends? I think in some cases they can and should be — next week we will explore this further. Also coming: “Manipulation and Co-dependency” and “Getting Over and Ex-Love” and a reader’s question, “Therapists, what’s going on here?” See comments from May 9th and 10th.
(A NOTE ABOUT EDITING –In most cases, comments are not edited. But one reader signed off “Damaged goods” and I requested that our administrator “the comment sign-off guru” delete the signature. It made me feel sad. It’s my blog. And I didn’t want to feel sad. But in reality, we all have little cracks in our personalities. Some heal over time. Some need to be patched by friends. Others just become a part who we are. Yet every one of us, despite a few dents and cracks, has a unique gift deep inside our hearts that will be a blessing to someone, somewhere. / Rita E)