When an old relationship comes to an unfortunate end, it will require more mental strength and will take a longer time to adjust to the loss and all the differences that come with it.
If you spend enough time being in a relationship, you’ll forget how it feels to be single, notwithstanding the fact that you were actually single for such a long time before getting into that present relationship itself.
That's probably why when so much time and emotions and several other things have been invested into a relationship, one tries to do all that’s within one’s capabilities and even beyond to just to ensure that nothing goes wrong with the relationship.
One attempts to pull all the stops, try to say all that needs to be heard as well as do everything needs to be done, all in a bid to ensure that the emotional investment, time devoted, moments shared, and memories created don’t go to waste.
But if all the positive energy being poured into the relationship is one-sided, it won’t be long before all the efforts at patching things up become insufficient. It’s like trying to make one horse pull a cart designed and built to be pulled by two.
Despite the time and effort already spent on them, you need to realise that once a partner becomes irreversibly bad for you and the whole relationship has become unbearably toxic, leaving is your best bet. If dumping that man or woman will restore your inner peace, then it is a no-brainer that you need to drop them in protection of your space and your energy.
Having said that, we should state that the process of leaving a relationship does not end when you utter the words and deal with the emotions that rise in that moment right there and then. It usually spills over into the future.
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Especially for people whose relationships ended after a considerable amount of time, becoming used to that single life could be really trying and tough. That’s because being in a relationship restructures your life, whether consciously or unconsciously, in such a way that won’t be a problem until you leave the relationship and ind yourself single again.
You’ll realise that between the time the relationship began and the duration it lasted for, yours and your ex-partner’s lives had become interconnected so deeply that being yanked suddenly off them, and having to live ‘on your own’ is such untold pain and distress, like suddenly having to walk with one leg after living all your life using both.
There’ll be an inevitable emptiness created instantly in you, there'll be extra time in your schedule that no activity will satisfactorily fill, the way you go about your days will be altered, and some things that had become routine as a result of being in a relationship will cease.
This emptiness and required period of aching adjustment will happen, whether you initiated the breakup or the other person did.
One other thing you realise after leaving a long relationship to embrace the single life is how disinterested you’ll be in relationships, and how scared you’ll be to even try again for the risk of getting it wrong one more time. When you eventually do dip your toes into the pool of dating, you’ll find yourself inevitably comparing them with your ex. And you can’t blame yourself because you’ll only be doing so out of habit since you were going on dates with no other person than your ex for such a long time.
Overall, when an old relationship ends, it will require all your mental strength and it’ll take a longer time to adjust to the loss and all the differences that come with it but that’s exactly what needs to be done if one is to truly put the past in the past and move on to better things.
