HOW TO LET SOMEONE GO
3 FEBRUARY 2023 (15 MIN READ)
We’ve all been there, at a point in a friendship or romantic relationship where the person in question doesn’t seem to serve the life you are trying to create anymore. A part of us wants to abandon this person and ride off into the sunset with our middle finger up, but another part wants to latch on to this person like a baby and never let go. How can we make sense of this duality? At its core, this dilemma is reflective of the battle we constantly face in our human experience: staying in our comfort zone or entering the uncomfortable, dangerous territory of a growth zone. And on another level, letting go of someone we love triggers some of our most sensitive human biology—the part of ourselves that needs secure attachment for survival. So, considering the fact that we face the challenge of entering an unfamiliar growth zone and losing a desperately needed secure attachment, making the decision to let someone go is often never actually made, out of a deep fear of encountering those personal obstacles. Even though we feel that screaming instinct to go guns blazing into a new adventure, that fear is eventually what always holds us back.
The first step to bypassing this fear is recognizing the fear itself. Most of us remain oblivious to this unconscious fear and allow it to keep us in that comfort zone, which in this case is a relationship that might not serve our highest interests anymore. Once we become truly aware of this fear, the next move is to become disidentified by it, as if the feeling does not serve your intention for your life anymore. To get there, visualize your life if you never end the relationship, versus if you take the chance to end it and go down a potential new path that can lead to great things. When you begin to feel the power of a new horizon, full of growth and different stories, you will start to prefer it to staying in the same friendship or romance that is keeping your life where you don’t want it to be. At this point in time, acting in spite of the fear will feel like the best step to take in your eyes, as the potential beauty of a new opportunity feels more enticing than staying in the same painful spot. However, you will still be left with the arduous task of dealing with the fear itself and nurturing the pain of severing the secure attachment, which are necessary steps to take if you don’t want to leave the situation bleeding uncontrollably.
Now that you have done your part in disidentifying from the fear pulling you back to your comfort zone, let me do my part in teaching you how to move through that fear of ending the relationship and heal the wounds caused by it.
SEE THEM IN YOU
When we are at a point where we want to let go of a friend or a lover, we incorrectly believe that only they themselves played a role in our demise. For example, believing that a friend who always talked you down was responsible for you never chasing your dreams while you were friends with them. Therefore, by cutting them out, you can now follow through with taking action on accomplishing your dreams. WRONG. That friend served as a mirror as to what you tolerate in yourself. It actually had absolutely nothing to do with them. Someone with a close friend who constantly brings them down tolerates that behavior because they love to bring themselves down. The friend is only whispering what they unfortunately love to hear in the first place. Because of this reality, once you begin to feel distant from a friend, it’s most likely a healthier side of yourself recognizing that you need to let go of an unhealthier side, which a friend may symbolize. In this example, feeling suddenly disillusioned by someone who brings you down is actually your higher self telling you to let go of the side of yourself who believes their words.
In terms of how this plays out in actuality, next time you begin to feel repulsed by a friend or romantic partner, try your best to pick out what they represent in yourself. Find the thing that bothers you the most about the way they treat you and reflect as to how you may treat yourself the same way. By following this process, you will not only let go of someone who does not serve you anymore, but you will also let go of the side of yourself that is holding you down. If you do not let go of that side, which most do not when parting ways with someone, then you will attract someone in a different body who speaks to that same side too. This will keep happening over and over again until you learn to rid yourself of that side of you. But how can we actually let go of that part of ourselves when we are ready?
Figure out where the story started, have compassion for that younger version of yourself, and start to feel into how much better life would be by no longer having that painful history control you. Returning to the example, if you figure out that you frequently talk down to yourself and you believe those harmful thoughts, then try and remember who made you believe those words in the first place. Whether it be a strict parent or a bad coach, go back to that point in time that broke you. Now, envision yourself holding that younger side of yourself and let them know you love them, as well as how sorry you are that you couldn’t be there to stand up for them. However, you are here now to stand your ground for them. So next time you start beating yourself up, picture that parent or coach yelling at you, and hold your younger self, telling them that those words are not true. Pay attention to how much better it feels to handle that side of yourself in this manner, rather than allowing it to rule your life unconsciously and not let you do the things that will make your life better in the long run. The more you keep coming back to how much better that feels, the more your body will start to do it automatically.
Although losing someone often comes with needing to lose a problematic side of yourself, it can also come with having to hand yourself back a good side that you depended on someone else for, which can actually be a much harder, more painful process.
FILL YOUR CUP
When my mother passed away, I unconsciously transferred onto my girlfriend at the time a lot of the need for feminine, maternal love that I could no longer receive from my mother. I would latch on to her at all times, cuddle her, and ask for more verbal affirmations of love than I did before the devastating event. Once a couple of months passed and I had moved through a lot of the grief, I stopped feeling as needy towards my girlfriend, but knowing I had her feminine love was the biggest stepping stone in what kept me grounded. Unfortunately, due to the unpredictability of life and the choices we make to maintain individual freedom, my ex-girlfriend and I had to part ways. Once this split occurred, I started to feel my mother’s death deeper than I had ever felt before. I would wake up howling in the middle of the night, deep in the pits of grief. Since I felt like I had moved through the death of my mother well before then, I was so confused as to why it felt so damn intense again. I remember looking at a picture of my mother and a picture of my girlfriend next to each other, and feeling so broken that all I could do was curl up in a ball and weep. I can veer on to the side of a rigid, stoic form of masculinity, so this expressive sadness was a complete rarity for me. Once the storm of my chaotic emotions passed, I sat down and thought for an extended period of time about what was exactly going on. I came to the conclusion that I had depended on the love of women to be able to love myself.
No matter how many times I failed at building my business empire, got sick or injured, got humiliated online, or even struggled to accomplish the goals I said I would, it wouldn’t devastate me because I always knew I had the unconditional love of my mother and my beautiful, kind girlfriend at the time to go back to. Without this backbone of provided love, I felt lost in a world of masochism and perfectionism. Where was the tenderness I went back to when my day was full of battle scars and a wounded ego? It faded to black, along with the sweetness that it brought out in my own heart. However, being the unrelenting self-improver that I am, I realized that I had to philosophically figure out how I could gain back what I lost. The time for soppy victimhood was over and I needed to turn over a new page in my life. The key question that had to be answered at that time was, how can I provide myself the love and tenderness that I depended on my mother and ex-girlfriend for? In other words, how could I fill my internal cup of love myself that I previously needed other people to fill for me?
To do so, I picked apart what my mother and ex would tell me when I was being hard on myself or when I felt ashamed about my abilities. Put differently, I had to figure out what they would exactly do to continually pull me out of my own darkness. What they provided me was a combination of an unwavering belief in me to succeed, as well as showing me that I was worthy of love for just being. Left to my own devices, I would try and come up with thousands of ways I could fuck up my success, rather than accomplishing it. Additionally, I would only hand myself love for how well I performed a task, loving myself for doing rather than being. So, to hand myself what my mother and ex handed me, I needed to start believing in my own abilities at all costs and learn how to love myself for just existing. Of course, I can never find the same amount or type of love my mother had for me or my ex-girlfriend did, but I firmly believe that I can hand myself a high percentage of it, which reduces my chances of devastation by a lot in the long run.
To zoom out a little and provide a more practical formula outside of my own experience, figure out what you depended on the person you are letting go of or have lost, and find a way to try to give it to yourself. Since the power of grief is dependent on the degree of absence you feel, try and reduce the amount of sensory absence by feeding yourself the beautiful emotions that they gave you. Compared to wallowing in the misery of the absence and feeling like you will never get back a glimpse of what you have lost, this strategy is not only more effective at leading a more fulfilled life, but it also creates room for hope in a very dark time.
Although figuring out how to provide for yourself outside of the relationship is a key step in the process, we need the love of other people as well during this tough time.
RETURN TO SECURE ATTACHMENTS
Unless you are part of the vast minority of people, you probably had a complicated relationship with a parent growing up, where you could not tell if they always loved you for just being yourself. In other words, it felt as if they only loved you if you fit into a box they wanted you to be in. For example, a tiger parent only showing their kid love if they got an A+ and scolding them if they did not. This experience can be devastating for a child and have terrible effects in the long run. The reason why it’s so tough is that kids need a secure attachment from a parent or parental figure to develop healthy self-esteem. They have to know that someone will love them no matter what, so they can feel safe in exploring themselves and feeling ok if something goes wrong. Without a secure attachment, a child constantly feels on edge and does not feel safe following his intuition, because it could land them in a painful absence of not receiving the love they desperately need if they make one wrong move. With regards to the long-term effects of this sort of upbringing, children who didn’t have secure attachments tend to become adults who always second guess themselves in relation to other people. If a romantic partner or friend is exhibiting any sort of negative emotion, then this person would often feel like they did something wrong to make them feel that way, which can make them feel unworthy of their love.
On the other hand, another common response is to avoid the situation at all costs. For example, if any vulnerable emotions surrounding connection and love have the potential to come up, a person who didn’t have secure attachments growing up can run away from the situation, in order to protect themselves from all the pain they felt as a kid. Although both expressions are different, we all tend to fall on either side to some degree. But why the fuck am I saying all of this? Because when you end an adult relationship, that part of your brain that either wants to feel like it’s all your fault and you're unworthy of love or the one that wants to just run and avoid feeling vulnerable will come flying out. And if you’re not careful, then that part of yourself can land you in a dark hole of either serious self-loathing or mass repression that can cause trauma to stay stuck in your system. The way out of this situation is to run into the arms of someone you know you are securely attached to. Whether it be your best friend, your grandma, or that childhood friend you always feel safe around, it’s crucial to spend time with someone who unconditionally loves you, because you will start to notice that there’s nothing wrong with you and you are worthy of love, rather than beating yourself up over and over again, feeling unworthy, and returning to the childhood patterns that hurt you so much.
At that vulnerable moment of ending a relationship, it’s easy to start believing that we are not worthy of love and we will never find it again. But when you spend time with people who truly love you and help you feel that nothing is inherently wrong with you, it sends a message to your nervous system to relax and process the pain of ending the relationship. Because when you are in the energy of the wounded little boy or girl who just wanted their parents to love them as they were—which will get intensely triggered after a breakup—it’s impossible to feel safe. Since creating a feeling of safety is what the body needs to heal, what better way to do that than to be with someone who loves you unconditionally? By allowing someone that you have a secure attachment with to stand by you while you process your pain, you rewrite the script in your mind that once told you about how unlovable you were if you did not please someone, giving yourself space to heal in the process.
TAKE THE HERO'S JOURNEY
At its core, the hero’s journey is a mythological formula showcased in movies and books where the protagonist takes an adventure into an unknown territory, where they had to leave the past at the door and battle the monsters stopping them from getting to the destination. When we pick this apart symbolically, the hero’s journey is reflective of the journey we as human beings have to take sometimes onto a new way of living. Whether it be sacrificing a relationship to go all in on a job in another country, or leaving a friend group to potentially find one that is more kind, we have all had moments in our lives where we had to let go of a comfortable past in favor of a potentially better future in the unknown. The reason why this is called a “hero’s” journey is because leaving one’s comfort zone in favor of a better future requires heroic attributes. For instance, if you have been comfortable with a romantic partner for years and things feel good, but deep down you know things could be a lot better somewhere else, then taking that leap into following that potentially dangerous road requires courage and bravery. Even outside of relationships, as human beings, we are always asked to use these heroic attributes to leave our comfort zone, because that is the only way to grow. Overall, the journey after letting someone go is reflective of that of a hero’s journey, where you have to muster up the courage to leave what was once so comfortable and enter a scary new path that could eventually lead to a pot of gold.
Going deeper into the symbolism beyond the surface level, the hero’s journey actually has more to do with the internal adventure one has to take, rather than it being external. Yes, deciding to leave a relationship or a friendship and figuring out how to find a way of being outside of that definitely has an external component. However, if we remove the externalities, then one can realize that it all really has to do with figuring out a new way of being internally. For example, if you have depended on a romantic partner to help you love yourself and feel confident, then the hero’s journey once the relationship has ended boils down to finding a new part of yourself that can provide love and confidence. And the monsters that show up on that path to steer you away are the insecure loops or shadows that you have been too scared to face.
Contrary to the hero’s tales in movies, please do not brutally decapitate the monsters on your path to freedom. You actually want to do whatever you can to love them and make them feel loved. The only heroic tale I saw get this right was, Everything Everywhere All at Once, (SPOILER ALERT) where the protagonist realizes that to beat the villains holding her back, she actually had to kill them with kindness, instead of the violence she was using before. By making them laugh or putting googly eyes on their weapons, she defused their charge of hatred and allowed them to come forward with love. Similarly, when you are confronted with a mental loop that is keeping you back from progression, try and find a way you can make that side of you laugh or try to understand where it’s coming from with love. Compared to getting out the machine gun and violently attacking it with shame and guilt, treating our internal monsters with love is a much more healing way to go about the process. Applying this rationale into our healing process, when that insecure little boy or girl starts desperately asking for love, give them that love and crack a good joke for them.
