Debra Kunz

She declares she wants to move on and announces she’s ready to date. She states all the “right” things like “I have standards” and “I won’t settle” and “I am a busy woman who works hard and has hobbies and friends…” which she means “I have a life.”

I heard the words she used, but underneath it all, her tone felt much more like “I’m petrified of getting hurt again” and “I’m scared of my life falling apart.” Translation, she’s scared of herself falling apart and if she doesn’t ever sit still long enough to cope with what’s happened in her life and that her marriage ended, she won’t have to. Constantly outrunning your life, under the cover of “being busy” means you are avoiding the hurt, pain, anger, failure and frustration. The problem is this will permeate all of your life, not just your love life.

In this case, she’s looking for a breakthrough in her love life – like I have a magic wand that can take away the hurt and need for her to cope with it. (Wouldn’t that rock!) What she really needs is to give herself permission to feel all the emotions she’s trying to avoid, and allow herself to sit in her true reality – she got dumped in one of the worst ways imaginable. It’s a situation with soap opera twists and turns, though even if it was a simple breakup, the absolute truth is the basic recovery begins in the same way.

Stop. Stop outrunning your emotions and stop your avoidance. I didn’t say stop and wallow. I didn’t say stop forever. I didn’t say stop your life and then carry around your pain and hurt and shower it on everyone else you see. Stop, pause, breathe, and FEEL.

In this case, she’s built a protective shell around herself and has learned to live within it. It keeps out anything and anyone that will potentially crack her emotional façade and reveal the real pain she is in. It keeps her inside in the comfort of her emotional zone of denial where she believes she’s ok.

She’s not. In her most professional voice, she is confidently telling me all the right things about what she wants in her next dating adventure, but at her core she is so fragile that she can’t even talk with me about the possibility that she needs some time to cope. The vulnerability is too much for her still and she’s chosen not to deal with with her self-imposed suffering.

Someone just gasped that I had the gall to state self-imposed suffering. Yes, he dumped her. That’s his choice. The fact that she’s choosing not to deal with it is her choice. I didn’t say it was easy, that anyone wants to have to do it, or that it’s going to be fun. What I will say is that the woman she will become after she allows herself to heal will be an even better version of the incredible woman she already is.

Date Deliberately,

Debra