Keep Your Breakup Emotions in Check

Right now, you might be feeling hurt, helpless, and confused. It is perfectly reasonable to feel like your heart is in a million pieces from the shock of a breakup. Not only is your heart and brain causing havoc, but as a woman, your deepest needs to be wanted and loved aren't being fulfilled.

When we feel rejected we start asking ourselves, "What's wrong with me?" and "Am I not good enough?" Suddenly being single can feel sickening and heartbreaking. The emotions that come with a breakup manifest themselves in our bodies. These negative feelings prevent us from being able to feel confident. While you can't switch off these feelings, you can decide how you respond to them and you can have the upper hand in this situation.

Recognizing your emotions after a breakup is the first step to changing your situation. You are trying to figure out precisely what you feel. It is normal to love your ex and hate him at the same time. To feel betrayed by him but want him to hold you in his arms and make it better. To make him suffer but also be the one to make him happy. It is important to feel these emotions, acknowledge them and then move past them.

There are two major roadblocks preventing you from succeeding during this breakup.

1: Fix it Instinct

Your fix-it instinct is led by your insecurities and fears. It makes you think that if you could convince your ex into believing how much you love him, then he would come back. So you apologize, jump through hoops, overcompensate and go out of your way to make him happy. There's nothing that validates being more desperate during a breakup than becoming a love martyr. The fix-it instinct foolishly encourages you to make personal sacrifices for a man who openly disrespected you. Sacrificing your dignity, integrity, and self-esteem will not make you appear valuable, and it will not make him love you. Groveling and flattery will only add to your humiliation and be the cause of his ego receiving more prominence than it already has.

The fix-it instinct deceives you into thinking that when he is happy, he would feel that he couldn't live without you. The problem is that it has the opposite effect. Men don't respect women who overcompensate to get their affection, loyalty, or approval. When a woman submits and crawls back, hoping for another chance, she gives away her power and her leverage. Vulnerability is what he expects you, and predictability to him means you are unappealing and vulnerable.

Men are masters at interpreting a woman's weakness and using it to their advantage. Whether it’s for sex, attention, money, or support, he will prey on your frailty. He knows he can live the single life while he still has you on standby.

Your behavior is showing him that he won't have to lift a finger to get you back. You are doing all the chasing and accepting all the blame. You are making it easy for him. Men are competitive; they love a challenge. I talk in-depth about a man's competitive behavior in my book This Girl's Got Game. It is so important to understand why men behave the way they do and how this information can give you the upper hand.

2: Force it instinct

Your force-it instinct has one goal, to protect your pride. It does not care about being logical or the consequences. “It urges you to be reactive and to respond to the attack on your dignity, but it also permits the loss of emotional control.

You will start to feel the insatiable need to get everything out in the open. Resentment will engulf you, and you will jump at the chance to criticize, degrade, or even humiliate him on social media. You feel frantic convincing yourself that the price you paid for this relationship has to be worth it. That all those moments of forgiveness, compliance, and defending him had to be worth it. You might think guilting him into coming back would work. So, you remind him about all the times he hurt you or that you feel suicidal without him in your life. You cannot bear to feel disregarded so easily, so you try to force him into recognizing your worth. Your embarrassment is understandable, but an ex who is "guilted" into coming back will resent you and ultimately end things for good.

Trying to fix or force the relationship will not work. It will have the opposite effect by feeding your man's ego. You will only appear clingy and desperate. Your ex has to decide to come back on his own.

If you want to reposition yourself in his life, you have to conduct yourself in a way that commands respect.

Preserve your dignity. It's the most important move you can make.

xxx

Leandra

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