Kate confided in me: “We were so close for years, and suddenly it all disappeared. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I was sure what we had was real, but now I just don’t know anymore. Can love just stop like that?
It hurts so much seeing him so distant. I keep searching his eyes for that loving way he used to look at me, but there’s nothing there anymore. He looks at me as if I’m a stranger, with no feeling at all. It’s making me doubt who we were. Maybe it was all just a lie.”
Kate isn’t alone with this. I experienced it myself once, and keep hearing about it again and again. This painful gap between who we were, our deep connection and love, and the sudden distance and coldness after the breakup.
Today I want to share with you four perspectives that I found can help make sense of this painful gap. It doesn’t change the gap, but may help us feel better about it.
Were we close while together?
Did we love each other while together?
Were we happy together?
When we want to understand if our connection and love were real, the best place to look is at how we were when we were together. If the last part of the relationship was difficult, we can look before that, when we were connected.
This really matters, and it’s important to remember. It’s not fair to judge our relationship and the love we shared only by how things are after the breakup.
We may continue to feel love for our ex without the intimacy and closeness. But it is a different kind of love than the love we had for them as a couple.
Sometimes this is a love we feel in our hearts, like for a good friend we don’t see anymore. This kind of love can be with us always, but not seen or shared. It can be a love of caring for the other, and cherishing what we once shared.
The intimate and close love ends when we separate. In that way, as an active love that connects us, it does end, and sometimes abruptly, by decision.
The more connected we are up to the breakup, the more we need to do this in order to break up. It is like water and oil, breaking up and the feeling of love and connectedness, do not go together. At least for a lot of people.
When our ex completely cuts off, is suddenly distant and cold, it often reflects their decision to break up, meaning to disconnect. It doesn’t mean their love for us wasn’t real, maybe the opposite. It means now they have to actively cut off, so they can separate.
This gap, between how we were and how we are, is the essence of breaking up. It is cutting off the connection and the feeling of closeness. The closer we were, the more is needed to cut off.
Sometimes couples stay close and loving up until the breakup, and then this change is very sudden. Other times the separation occurs gradually during the relationship, and then the breakup isn’t such a sudden change if at all. And there are couples who were never very close, so in this sense, the separation isn’t such a change.
When we feel this painful gap, it can indicate that we were very close, and that’s why the change is felt so deeply.
If they had not been close to us, if they had not loved us, would we have felt a difference?
Now, back to Kate.
“Yesterday he called me. He said he was lonely and missed me. At first, I felt such a relief to be close again. But he doesn’t want to get back together. Now I get it, for him it’s all or nothing, so he has to completely disconnect, like we’re strangers. Maybe it’s better for me too, so I won’t keep getting false hopes. When he disconnects, it’s as if my whole being gets it, he really left. But it’s easier now that I know what we had was real, and that he really loved me.”
I hope you’ve found these perspectives helpful on your way to overcoming the breakup, letting go, and feeling good again.
Wishing you Love and Happiness,
Allie
Note: Kate is a fictional character created for the purpose of clearer illustration. Her words and feelings are based on my personal experience and that of hundreds of people I’ve guided through overcoming separation and divorce.