Wales Counselling offers counselling to help rebuild when your relationship ends

Starting over / Rebuilding when your relationship ends

People will say a relationship end is like a death, only trickier, in that there is no clear ending to grieve the relationship.

Feelings and hope can take time to die.

Communication will often continue as parents and this is difficult because although conversations may be trying to keep focussed on children, there may be an undercurrent of emotions you feel as an ex partner.

The stages of recovery are similar to the any other grief, and then some.

The process may include:

• shock / denial
• disbelief / denial
• feelings: fear / sadness / depression / loneliness
• guilt / rejection
• anger
• letting go, rebuilding self worth/friendships
• trusting again
• learning to love again / or accepting its okay to be single
• accepting yourself as a sexual person
• identifying personal goals and finding personal freedom (accepting)

To make things trickier each partner / ex partner may be at different stages in the process.

Counselling can help you:

• Understand what went wrong
• Explore patterns of behaviour
• Cope with emotions
• Manage continuing to parent and deal with the impact on your kids

This work is usually done individually or within a family counselling context.

Sources:

Litvinoff, Starting Again:How to Learn from the Past for a Better Future

Fisher and Alberti, Rebuilding when your Relationship Ends