There are so many ways in which relationships affect our overall health. Recent studies have shown how coupling can add years to your life, boost your immune system and even help with anxiety and depression. Naturally one might wonder what influence the end of relationship might have on your health and wellness.
Most of us don’t have to think too hard to conjure injurious feelings about a relationship gone bad. And while the pain and grief due to botched relationships vary from one individual to the next, we need to explore our baseline beliefs about everything rather than jump to overly simplistic ideology. “My relationship ended, it felt bad and now I am sick because of it,apostrophe is precisely the kind of unexamined thinking and superficial generalization that spins us into imbalance in most cases.
For example, most of us don’t take into account how we arrived to the relationship. Did we come healthy and balanced? Did we know who we were? What we wanted? Were we purpose-driven and spiritually and emotionally actualized? Did we know how to sleep alone, be alone, fulfill our needs ourselves and understand that we are responsible at all times for our own reality? Had we taken care to understand the complexity of human emotions and feelings and how to maintain inner peace and harmony BEFORE we met our beloved, would they have thrust the blade, turned it and left us for dead? I suspect, should you honestly ask yourself these questions, that the answer is No.
Most of us sidle up to our relationship candidates as seducer or seductress in full force, selling some version of ourselves we find acceptable and hopefully loveable so as to better secure our hostage: the person that will make it all better, soften life’s hardships, ease our fear, anxiety, help lift our depression, etc. in exchange for – well, whatever we sell it for. How much do we pay to have someone comfort us in the night because we are afraid to be alone, to walk our path alone; to have someone hear us, see us, love us, accept us, celebrate us? We rarely think of this, as we are seduced ourselves into the story of “Happily Ever Afterapostrophe and, hopefully, swept into bliss where we can hide or be transformed there, rather than in the suffocating truth of aloneness.
Yes, we are safe from many ailments in relationship for a while, but most of us come to find, “wherever you go, there you are.apostrophe Eventually, whether in relationship or not, whatever shadows you have run from, tried to camouflage or hide, temporarily derailed or quelled, return. Only, oddly, we look at our partner and think that he or she is now the culprit! The relationship ends and we pick up where we left off. The same anxiety returns, the depression, low self-esteem, loneliness, etc., etc. Our symptoms multiply in the wee hours of the night when we are unable to distract ourselves, until perhaps we manifest an ailment we can point at and say, “Look at this, I am alone, therefore I am ill and out of balance!apostrophe Round we go chasing our tail (or tale), not quite seeing that it is alone we must be to know we are never alone – it is with ourselves we must know who we are and not. It is in our own presence that we must ultimately embrace the truth; that the wound of separation, when not seen for what it is, keeps us “Chasing Amyapostrophe (illusions) and never knowing the freedom, balance or joy that is available in sickness and health, until death do you part.
About the Author:
Maryanne Comaroto is an internationally known relationship expert, talk show host and author. Maryanne is also the founder of a leading non-profit, The National Action Organization, a 501(c)3 organization committed to changing the way our culture values women. For more information visit http://www.maryannelive.com/. To see Maryanne talking about the need to “go where youapostrophere frightened,apostrophe watch this video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdjXzBzwFQo