Moving on means forgetting about your ex-partner

DEAR EPPY,

I am a woman in love with another woman.  The woman I love and I were together for four years.  That was two years ago.  Then someone came into her life.  I continued renting our home so she could go back anytime she wanted to.  I still keep my partner in my prayers and pray for her to be happy.  Today, after two years of waiting, I decided to move on.  But it’s difficult.  How do I speed up my moving on because it is hurting me so much already to be in love with this woman?                         WOMAN LOVER

DEAR WOMAN LOVER,

The authors Tara Marshall, Kathrine Bejanyan, and Nelli Ferenczi in a published study entitled “Attachment Styles and Personal Growth Following Romantic Breakups: The Mediating Roles of Distress, Rumination, and Tendency to Rebound,” looked into the effects of one’s attachment style in dealing with breakups and discovered that the attachment style will determine the condition of a person after breaking up.

Everyone will always hurt after a breakup.  However, not everyone will be able to let go of the person they are in love with as easily as others because their attachment styles differ.  While growing up, a child needs to have a caregiver who is consistently present and available when the child needs someone to take comfort from.  Responsiveness is necessary in the caregiver in order for the child to feel secure. When this has been given, the child will develop into a secure adult.

If the caregiver is not responsive and available when the child needs someone, the child will end up being insecure and will develop fears that need to be handled constantly.  One could become highly anxious when nurturing was not given the right way during childhood.  A person can also be highly avoidant in response to a caregiver who was not able to be consistently present and provide a responsive interaction with the child.

Individuals with anxious attachment style usually doubt themselves.  Even if they behaviorally fault their partners, they usually blame themselves.  When a breakup occurs or when there is a threat of separation, their first impulse is to bring back closeness with their partners by crying, threatening, begging, and throwing tantrums.  Even if there are no conflicts, these individuals seek closeness and togetherness, making it extremely uncomfortable for the partner.

Individuals who employ the avoidant attachment styles emotionally distance themselves from their partner whenever there is a threat that the partner cannot give the emotional closeness they need.  They depend too much on themselves and show others that they don’t need help and they don’t get to trust people.  These people try to avoid intimacy as much as they can or develop responses that make people think they are being rejected.

You seem to manifest a highly anxious attachment style.  This attachment style is very painful for you.  You will always find a partner that will prefer to isolate himself/herself from you, making you more anxious, clingy, and dependent on that partner. 

You need to stop pretending you are the epitome of care and magnanimity because you are just fooling yourself, not others.  Your claim that your act of keeping your unit is for the sake of your ex-partner is not wholly truthful, half of it is for the sake of luring your partner in.  If you want to stay in your unit, decide on it because it will help you save up on money.

Praying for your partner is unnecessary.  She will have so many blessings already because of her new partner.  Praying for her and thinking that she will need your home is a way of forcing yourself into thinking of her every day.  Not praying for her does not make you a cruel or mean person.  Moving on means forgetting about your ex-partner.  The less you think of her, the faster you will find someone else and be happy sooner.

EPPY

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Email address: eppygochangco@gmail.com