Boundaried Breakups Archives - Baggage Reclaim with Natalie Lue

How To Tell Someone You’re Not Interested Without Ghosting

July 24, 2018 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

When I dated back in the day, one of my struggles, aside from not being interested in emotionally available men (cough), was ending relationships. Looking back, I wish I’d had a couple of handy break-up scripts.

As someone who balked at conflict and criticism thanks to my people-pleasing habit, ‘rejecting’ people terrified me. Aside from fearing confrontation and looking ‘mean’, I also worried about whether they’d spontaneously combust into a prince as soon as I cut them loose. The result? Staying in situations long past their sell-by-date or avoiding the guy. Or hoping that they’d take the hint from my awkward behaviour.

I’m not alone in my [old] habit, and a particularly challenging area of breakups is ending relationships that aren’t, well, relationships. Think dates and brief interactions, or quite simply letting them know that you don’t reciprocate their interest.

Calling or even messaging them can almost seem like an overreaction when all you’ve done is go on a date or few.

It can feel as if you’re giving the involvement more credence than it deserves or that you’re going to look ‘needy’ or ‘desperate’, making it oh-so-tempting to, well, disappear aka ghost.

Here’s the thing: Outside of those extreme circumstances where we need to disappear for our safety, there’s no need for disappearing/ghosting. It doesn’t help us grow, and it creates more problems than it alleviates.

People Pleasing & Breaking Up With Dignity Are Mutually Exclusive

January 9, 2017 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

One of the biggest barriers to making the decision to break up, staying broken up, or breaking up with your self-esteem in tow, is people pleasing in an attempt to influence and control the other person’s feelings and behaviour.

In this situation, you think that you’re being ‘nice’, ‘loving’ etc., but when you examine what’s behind the thoughts, feelings and actions that encompass your patterns and habits in this area, what becomes apparent is that trying to be The Good Girl/Guy, is a means of avoiding and running from other feelings that you’re afraid to confront.

Here’s why: People pleasing is about doing what are often theoretically good things, but for the wrong reasons. Until the hidden agenda is revealed, it keeps you stuck in a painful loop where you’re trying to get it met while also blaming that person directly or indirectly for why you’re still there and suffering.

Now, that’s not to say that this person isn’t potentially saying or doing things that play into your propensity to be liked at all costs, but it is this lack of awareness about what’s behind your behaviour that drives you to keep engaging or certainly delaying on doing the right thing. Basically, it’s not that this person is The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.

Are you being ‘nice’, ‘loving’ etc., because it’s a healthy connection, or are your pleasing activities motivated by the fear of confronting certain feelings/responsibilities and taking the next step and moving forward?

Here’s how you find out: What do you consistently feel about or around this person? Anxious, resentful, guilty, angry, vengeful, blame, shame, sad, victimised, powerless, helpless, owed, obliged, rage, or even depressed? If you’re experiencing reoccurring visits from any of these emotions, these are notifications that you are doing you a disservice and that the boundaries are very blurred or absent between you and this person.

You cannot make loving, caring, respectful, trusting decisions for you, never mind another person, if the boundaries are absent or blurred, because it makes you unable to distinguish your feelings, actions, personality and character from theirs.

Healing and moving forward with love is only going to happen when you are honest about the baggage behind these feelings.

When I struggled to break up and in some instances, do No Contact, it’s because I experienced feelings associated with abandonment, which I then fed with various thoughts and action habits that exacerbated those feelings further. It’s no wonder I struggled to have endings when I was responding as if I were running the risk of alienating a parent and experiencing a devastating wound.

Breaking up and letting go isn’t supposed to be easy but they’re a necessary part of life. Without loss, we don’t grieve and make space for something else that we didn’t anticipate. We don’t heal pain, fear and guilt and we’re often unaware of the impact that this emotional baggage has had. If we’re always clinging even when we know that a person and the relationship we have with them makes us less of who we are not more, we are settling for less.

Advice Wednesday: What do I do now that I’ve fallen off the No Contact wagon?

June 1, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 2 Minutes

I empathise with anyone who has to go through No Contact because even when you know it’s the right and necessary course of action for your self-preservation, worrying about what they or others think and the likes of alcohol or a vulnerable moment brought on by another stress, can have you falling off the wagon and feeling as if what you’ve accomplished so far is a “waste”.

It can be particularly difficult to keep your distance when you work with the person or they’re connected to your social circle because you become confused about what ‘polite’ entails, especially because you can’t just switch off and escape them. I worked on the same bank of desks as my ex plus we were in the same social circle and sometimes fear of making things awkward for others caused me to make things incredibly painful for me. It just wasn’t worth it plus our social group really didn’t care that much.

In today’s Advice Wednesday, Sage is studying at the same small university as her ex and after successfully extricating herself from the relationship and maintaining No Contact, she’s fallen off the wagon at the birthday of a mutual friend and then proceeded to tell her ex all about himself and how she just wants to pretend as if it didn’t happen.

I always say that you can make a fall off the No Contact wagon as big or as small as you want it to be. Basically, don’t let it derail you and don’t write off your efforts up until that point. They’re not a waste–they’re something that you can build upon as long as you reflect and take responsibility for how you want to feel going forward, rather than seeing the problem primarily as being about the other party. That’s not to say that your ex might not be all of the things that you think but telling them about themselves without setting a boundary for you means that you would give away your power to evolve out of the situation.

The event in itself helps you understand what made you vulnerable to engaging with your ex and that self-knowledge can be turned into a powerful piece of insight that means that you won’t be vulnerable in the same way in future. You will be able to take command of you.

Have you struggled with No Contact or felt at a loss due to falling off the wagon? How did you evolve out of the situation? What would you do in this situation?

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What’s the Craic With Ghosting? (And no, it’s NOT the same as No Contact!)

January 25, 2016 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

When we need to break up with someone, there’s a temptation when we are faced not just with the prospect of acknowledging a partner’s position and how we might be impacting them, but also with the prospect of seeing and hearing them, to dodge the conversation. Some people feel this way but face it down. Some people drop hints in the hopes that by hinting at issues or behaving badly, that the other person will do their dirty work. And some people disappear or what is commonly referred to as ‘ghosting’.

Ghosting is when a person disappears because they would rather do that than 1) be honest and direct, 2) face their partner’s feelings and reactions or 3) be open to recognising either their part in things or that they can’t be Mr or Miss Comes Up Smelling of Roses.

Over the last few months, I’ve heard from an increasing number of readers referring to ‘ghosting’ or being ‘ghosted’ and it’s important to get something clarified right off the bat:

Ghosting is not a form of breaking up nor is it the same as No Contact.

Ghosting is disappearing. Breaking up is when a person ends the relationship and No Contact is for after a breakup when it becomes apparent that healthy boundaries are not possible and that remaining in contact is destroying sense of self and the ability to process the loss and move forward. The only exception to No Contact happening post-breakup is if it’s an abusive relationship.

Disappearing isn’t exactly a display of courage and we are most likely to do it if we’re not emotionally mature or available.

Sure, it’s uncomfortable to let someone down, to admit that this isn’t what we want anymore or that our feelings have changed or whatever our reason is, but it’s also necessary. It’s how we not only build up our being human muscles but it’s also how we develop our relationships.

People who disappear / ‘ghost’ learn nothing because they edit and erase themselves out of relationships so that they don’t have to confront anything. It’s not even necessarily about doing things from a ‘bad’ place (although there are some incredibly shady people who employ ‘ghosting’ so that they never face consequences and instead press the reset button); it’s about doing things from a place where fear, cowardice or excessive concern about how we look or our discomfort, trumps integrity and compassion.

I’ve talked to a number of ghosters and all reason that they didn’t want to hurt the person’s feelings. Really? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that granted, feelings do get hurt in a breakup but disappearing sucks.

What a ghoster fails to acknowledge is that they are motivated to cut and run because they don’t want to hurt their own feelings. They end up throwing their partner under a proverbial bus all so that they can box away their feelings and draw a line under things, on their terms.

5 Irrational Fears & Beliefs About No Contact

November 9, 2015 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

When you need to step back from an unhealthy relationship and employ No Contact (NC) after the breakup, irrational fears and beliefs which are used to try to control the uncontrollable but to also prevent you from taking real action, can often provide the trigger for you to either break NC or decide that there’s no point in starting it at all. I hear from readers who have been going back and forth with an ex from anything from a few months… to a few decades. Variations of the irrational fears and beliefs highlighted below keep them on the disappointment cycle and it’s only once they stop treating the irrational as rational and recognise where they’re opening themselves up to more pain and keeping further away from a healthy relationship, that they can finally stop torturing themselves and take the focus off their ex so that they can use boundaries for self-care and breaking the pattern. In this post, I share the first five and you can download the full ten – link at the bottom of the post.

1. If I cut contact, it will make them realise what they’ve lost.

If they have to lose you to value you, the relationship isn’t going to work no matter which way you slice it, not least because you shouldn’t have to be like the umbrella that someone keeps misplacing and damaging, for this person to notice the absence of you from their life.

When you cut contact in an attempt to what essentially boils down to coercing him/her into the position that you want, it’s an attempt to prevent them from not realising your value by messing with supply and demand. If you cut contact in order to make him/her want you more, you’re believing that the way to prevent your relationship from ending is to end it, although this means that you then have to keep ending it or at least threatening to, in order to generate the demand, which if you’ve tried this is exhausting work. It’s also important to point out that unavailable people respond to loss of control by chasing you…and get back in control by pulling back and managing down your expectations and/or exiting.

The lesson: Breaking up whether it’s done via the traditional route or you have to do NC, is to end a relationship. Don’t use it as a means of attempting to force people to do what you want.

2. If I’m eliciting responses / crumbs of attention it means that they’re thinking about me.

This is how you end up chasing them for crumb ‘top-ups’ and being chained to your phone checking for texts and emails. Avoiding NC and holding this belief is like having this idea that what can often amount to feeble amounts of effort from their end is keeping you front and centre. People who require NC often engage in this low-level contact and dribbling crumbs of attention with about as much effort as ordering a pizza. They’re very of the moment and what you actually need for a loving relationship is for the other party to show that they want you by being in a relationship with you and treating you with love, care, trust, and respect.

The lesson: Having a full-on relationship instead of trying to stay in someone’s mind is always the better option, something you’re not going to discover in a new relationship if you keep chasing crumbs. Also there are better ways to be remembered than emails and texts – someone doesn’t have to forget about you if they’re in the relationship with you.

3. Cutting them off will make them change or trigger remorse, which will in turn make them give me the relationship I want / that they promised me.

It might make them give it to you for a short period of time, but it’s important to remember that the type of person that requires NC equates desiring you with feeling out of control of you. Next thing you know, you’re getting hearts, flowers, and violins and a sudden change in behaviour and think, Oh, they really get my pain this time…, and you get back together and then shazam, it’s a matter of hours, days, or weeks before the rot starts to set in again. NC is to end a relationship not to force someone into giving what people in even moderately healthy relationships give without coercion.

The lesson: If the only way that you think that you can get them to feel remorse or change is to end it, this relationship is not worthy of your time. They are not a child – stop trying to raise an adult from the ground up!

4. Once I feel a bit better, we’ll be able to be friends again.

This ‘ole chestnut is the fastest way to send one of those lazy texts or emails to reach out, only to find yourself being burned again. How much better you feel is subjective and the idea of grieving a relationship isn’t actually for you to make way for their friendship – it’s for you to make way for you so that you can move on. Far too much emphasis is put on finding a way to be friends again. Friendship is organic! If you’re going to be friends, it will happen without being forced and when you’re both back in neutral territory. That said, if there are very shady reasons for why you have to cut them off in the first place, I wouldn’t exactly break your neck to be friends.

Be your own friend first. Focus on you. If you try to be friends before you are enough of the way along in the healing process to be too impacted if they don’t behave as you’d like, you will reopen your wound. If you’ve got friendship on your mind, it’s likely a sign that you need to refocus your energy.

The lesson: Friendship is what happens, 1) when you’re over them and 2) they have shown themselves to be friendship worthy, neither of which the object of NC is at this time.

5. They don’t realise how much I was affected and how inappropriate their behaviour was/is.

Yes they do. They might claim not to realise it on a conscious level but fact is, only someone who is incredibly emotionally immature and a responsibility dodger, would have no clue about how, 1) inappropriate their behaviour was / is or, 2) how affected you are.

If you genuinely believe that they don’t recognise this, you have no business trying to have an adult relationship with them.

As humans, we cannot bumble through life as if our actions have no impact on others – it’s called integrity, empathy, compassion, awareness, responsibility, and accountability. Let me assure you that if you mistreated them, you’d soon know all about it! They know! Stop treating them like a child!

The lesson: If they can’t empathise without you dragging them like a horse to water, you can’t have a relationship with this person. NC is the way of communicating that the relationship is over and that their behaviour has affected you, but it doesn’t mean that they’re going to do anything with the realisation. If you’re making excuses for your ex, you’re absolving them of responsibility, which also deals a fatal blow to any ideas you have for a relationship with them.

Your thoughts?

There are 5 more irrational fears and beliefs about No Contact which you can download below.

Download 10 Irrational Fears & Beliefs About No Contact

Understanding why an ex is spreading misinformation about you (or building a case against you to break up)

August 25, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Breakups, even expected and mutual ones, often feel like a kick a teeth, but a breakup feels like a mugging when it comes to light that our ex has been in effect, poisoning the waters by saying things about us that are not true or are certainly exaggerated.

Why would somebody who we shared a relationship with and who we believe that we were loving to, choose to spread misinformation designed to discredit us?

There’s a common misconception that breakups only happen to ‘bad’ people or where something terrible happened, which is akin to suggesting that breakups are an emergency measure reserved for the most horrific of relationship illnesses, when in reality, you could be The Nicest Most Fabulous Person Ever TM and short of only ever being in and staying in one relationship, you’re going to be broken up with and do the breaking. That is of course unless you’re one of those people who always gets in there first, but that’s the subject of another post.

Because of that misconception as well as another – we have to have ‘legitimate’ reasons about the other party before we can break – some people do the dishonourable thing and the moment that they feel in over their head, or the moment that they suspect or decide that they want out, rather than be a grownup and say so, they look to build a case around it, which is similar to deciding that a suspect is guilty with no evidence and then looking for ways to fit a preconceived agenda and conclusion around them. It’s shitty and lazy.

A person who is looking to make a strong case for an exit will manage their way out of it by looking for reasons to justify the decision that they’ve already made, a decision I might add that they’re free to make without having to drag your name through the mud. That’s why I hear from people who feel so damned confused, betrayed and blindsided because they realise that they were in effect set up to fail. This type of ex doesn’t give you a heads up as to what is going through their minds because they have already decided.

When this person shares their reasons with you or you hear it through the grapevine, you struggle to reconcile this version of them with the person you thought they were or the relationship experiences that you had. And of course you want to almost shout this at somebody but you don’t want to look as if you’re losing your marbles or ‘shrill’.

Are negative associations undermining your post-breakup and No Contact efforts?

January 27, 2014 By NATALIE Reading Time: 5 Minutes

Many people break up or even embark on No Contact with good intentions. On a number of levels and in many respects, they’re aware of some pretty compelling reasons for why they’re no longer together and sometimes, it’s even recognising their own reaction and how deeply embedded they’d become in someone, that makes them realise that they lost themselves somewhere along the way. Despite the good intentions and compelling reasons, many of these people will struggle to stay broken up or NC because often without even realising it, they’ve unconsciously slipped into habits that are undermining their efforts.

As humans, we do tend to give ourselves a hard time about life not living up to the picture that we had painted in our heads. With breakups, when we have an idea of how things ‘should’ go and then we (or they) don’t respond as we’d forecasted, we think, Ah feck. I shouldn’t have bothered with No Contact, or we think, This breakup was/is wrong. I need to go back.

People say to me, ‘Natalie, I really want to be done with this. Why do I keep going back?’ and ‘Why do I keep breaking NC?’

Aside from suggesting that they look at what else was happening or going on within them at the time when they went back or broke NC, I stress that it’s all very well going and doing the actions but if they associate certain things with their ex / being in a relationship / feeling better and this runs counter to their NC efforts, they’re highly likely to go back on themselves.

It’s all to do with associations, namely negative associations.

If you have negative associations with certain things that are lumped together even though certain situations in the group don’t actually belong there, when you try to act differently, it’s going to feel weird and wrong, even though it’s not. You respond in particular ways to those situations in the group even though the response may not be appropriate and reflective of the actual situation at hand. As a prime example (and subject of another post), lumping together conflict, criticism, and people disagreeing with your point of view and then having an associated response of feeling disliked, rejected and then lashing out and cutting the person off.

Let’s imagine that we’re going through a breakup and are No Contact (NC) for our own self-preservation, after recognising how badly we’re being impacted by our continued attempts to engage with our ex and win him/her over. NC is about replacing our typical responses to certain feelings, thoughts, or ‘triggers’ with no more responding to or initiating contact while practicing self-care at the same time. For instance, we find a healthier way to respond to stress/sadness/anger and talk ourselves through why we’re not responding.

Needing to go No Contact isn’t about being a ‘bad person’, immaturity, or punishment

September 27, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 4 Minutes

“I don’t want to look like a bad person or have them thinking that I’m immature. Won’t it look like I’m punishing them?” Said by many a person who has wound up in even more pain.

Every breakup needs some space so that each person can come to terms with what’s happened and essentially grieve the loss of the hopes and expectations for the relationship. Sure we could keep swinging out of one another, sleeping together, speaking every day, dipping in and out, negotiating, rehashing, poking around in each other’s lives and yada, yada, yada but…. we won’t get very far. We can keep trying to keep up a front for our exes or for anybody who knows us, or in fact for society at large but then it begs the question of what all of this image management is in aid of? Each time we pretend that what’s happened hasn’t happened or we deny our feelings and thoughts, we’re ignoring the very valuable and worthwhile people we are just so that we can preserve the egos of others and hold ourselves up to some sort of gold standard breakup.

There’s such a thing as boundaries, that vital personal electric fence that let’s us know our limits as well as what does and doesn’t work for us. They fit into our self-esteem which when we treat ourselves with love, care, trust, and respect, we then have an internal compass that puts a clear line between us and others as well it pointing us in the direction of our own boundaries and values. We learn what to walk towards and walk away from.

If we base the way that we treat ourselves and our choices primarily on another person, or a group of people, or even the world at large, that compass stops working and points us away from ourselves. And then we feel miserable.

Excerpt from The No Contact Rule: Dealing with ‘occasions’ like birthdays post-breakup

August 16, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 7 Minutes

Don’t forget that I’m on a ‘break’ until September (I can’t believe that it’s been 4 weeks already) so I’ll mostly be featuring some of yours and my favourite posts from the archives.

Today’s post is a new one and an excerpt from The No Contact Rule (2nd edition). I chose this excerpt because post-breakup and regardless of whether you’re NC or not, the way in which you handle occasions such as birthdays, Christmas, and anniversaries can end up inviting a great deal of unnecessary pain into your life.

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Birthdays, Easter, Valentines, Thanksgiving, Christmas/The Holidays, National Curry Day, the FA Cup Final, the birth of a baby, bereavements, anniversaries and the list goes on; there are clearly a lot of reasons we can find to get in touch with an ex.

These occasions can catch us off guard because they mark a passage of time that may highlight and even accentuate the differences between the present and where you were at that time the previous year. Sometimes it’s not that you’re remembering, more that you’re experiencing the grief that comes with the hopes you had for being with them for this occasion (it might have been the first) not being realised.

The disappointment is understandable but part of grieving the loss of a relationship and respecting boundaries – both theirs and your own – is recognising that you can’t pick up the relationship or restart contact for occasions. You’ve got to know where to draw the line.

Birthdays and various other occasions in the calendar don’t change. Start as you mean to go on because where does it all end with saluting them on each occasion? What are you going to do in year 2 or year 10?

No Contact means… No Contact and if you choose to make contact for any of these reasons, there must be no underlying motive, which there rarely isn’t. Feeling compelled to reach out on big occasions is code for looking for reasons to be in contact aka smoke signals. Some of these ‘occasions’ are symbols of aspects of your ex that form part of your connection which in turn you attach a meaning to. So, for example, when their team wins in a big sporting event, that can set off the temptation to reach out.

These occasions become opportunities to ensure that you haven’t been forgotten and to place yourself front and centre in their mind. Really, is a card or a message going to make this person change or regret missing you, race back into your life and sweep you off your feet?

Occasions can also represent waiting for an excuse or a bad situation to befall them that you can exploit. Hard to hear but if you could see my inbox! Really, you shouldn’t be waiting for the perfect excuse to try and get your agenda on the table. I get it and understand that you’re grieving and that you miss them, but this all goes back to validating the original reasons for doing NC and getting behind your decision. It’s a totally normal part of the breakup to be reminded of your ex by certain things – this dissipates over time as long as you don’t use these memories to inflate meaning or your hurt.

Take a bereavement for instance – I totally understand why you might want to reach out at this time but there a couple of things that reveal where you’re really at: your method of expressing your condolences and what you expect or do after these condolences have been expressed. Best way to express your condolences? Send a card and flowers, pick up the phone, or go around and pay your respects if there is an open house or a set time to do so. Sending a text or posting something on their Facebook page? Come on now!

Equally, if all you’re doing is a genuine expression of your condolences, there shouldn’t be any thinking about getting back together, sleeping with them, or feeling that you have to stick around to get them through this time because you’re not in their life anymore and you’re not the only person capable of providing support, especially because you’re supposed to be NC. If they try it on with you, don’t tell them all about themselves but do just say, “I’m sorry for your loss and that you’re hurting. I wanted to let you know this but it doesn’t mean that I want to restart anything with you. Take care”… and… move it along. With this in mind, here are some more tips for navigating these situations:

1. Don’t hijack the occasion. I’ve heard enough painful stories of exes that suddenly got back in touch around a bereavement, birthday etc, swooped in with a whole load of big promises and showboating, acted like they were The Most Supportive Partner Ever™… and then vanished off the face of the earth. There are too many people who associate the painful loss of their parent or a milestone birthday with an ex. You’re supposed to be NC so you shouldn’t be hijacking anyway.

2. When it’s their birthday, it’s not your birthday. If you’re mostly thinking about your own internal drama, you’re not really thinking about him/her and you are in fact projecting. It being their birthday is not a valid reason for breaking NC because it’s like trying to give yourself some sort of birthday present in the form of validation and possibly attempting to rekindle the relationship. Birthdays only last for one day but the effects of misplaced expectations and unhealthy habits last far longer.

3. Avoid starting NC within a few days to a couple of weeks of their (or your) birthday because the likelihood is, you’ll reach out. In fact, this really applies to most occasions but birthdays in particular because they’re personal. If it’s your birthday and you start NC and they don’t get in touch and it’s only been a short time since starting NC, you may feel compelled to tell them all about themselves or go attention seeking. If it’s their birthday, you may feel “bad” about not being in touch. Have an honest conversation with yourself – if you think that you’re highly likely to knee-jerk into contact if you start NC and then a birthday happens later in the week, wait until afterwards and spare yourself (and them) the drama.

4. Be careful of feeling compelled to reach out on anniversaries. I understand it, believe me, especially if you were together through something difficult like a bereavement, but working through this anniversary without them and possibly with the support of others, is grief work that you need to focus on. Yes they may understand you and you them and yes, you may feel bonded over this difficult situation, but it’s not enough to cancel out the reasons why you’re doing NC. You have to find a way to start dealing with this.

5. You don’t need to send a card. Whether it’s for a birthday, Christmas or whatever, the fact that you’re even thinking about sending a card demonstrates that you are still too concerned with how you look and so-called ‘protocol’ instead of putting your energies into NC.

6. Remember that sending messages to their friends and family on big occasions may be perceived as you sending a smoke signal to your ex. I appreciate that you may like their family for instance, but be careful of not only crossing your ex’s boundaries, but also of inadvertently maintaining a connection between you both.

7. Your message, whatever guise it takes, may be disruptive. It’s bad enough when they mess with your head, but actually, being NC and then reaching out sends mixed messages. There is also the not-so-small matter of the possibility that they may be involved with someone else and that you sending messages as if you have some sort of claim on them even though ironically, you’re NC, may create friction and cross boundaries.

8. Don’t send a gift. ‘Nuff said.

9. If you’re thinking about sending a text, email or tippy tapping out a Facebook message, you’re just not that serious about sending a message. Yes I’m sure these feel ‘easier’ but again, if you’re that worried about avoiding conflict and not opening yourself up to hurt, stick to NC.

10. Think ahead. NC is very much about getting conscious, thinking ahead and planning for success instead of planning for failure. Each year has occasions in the calendar – how are you going to deal with these? They’re inevitable so there’s no point in being surprised by them. Put a message in your diary or calendar to remind you to stick to NC and if you know that you get card angst, put reminders in your phone in the days running up to the date to keep you on the right track, like “Remember! It’s not my birthday” or “Make plans on _______ so that I don’t feel lonely and vulnerable”.

Your thoughts?

You can find out more about how to navigate your breakup with your self-esteem in tow in my book, The No Contact Rule (2nd edition).

Holiday Update

I’m back from a whirlwind couple of days up t’north in Hull with one of my ‘bezzy mates’ and godmother Nikki Nac. Oddly, I woke up ridiculously early each day (around 5.30am) but I also slept like a log too. We ‘birthed’ her new baby, Blanket Row, which is her new business designing handcrafted leather bags and iPad accessories). We had one near panic session and I could tell she was going to meltdown so I had to get tough while at the same time worrying the big drama was about to go down. The reality, which unfolded within an hour, was significantly different, so I’m relieved we stayed calm and didn’t do anything silly. The trip was also a really good opportunity for us to catch up about some really deep stuff as we had quite similar childhoods and she was with me through the ‘dark years’. We’ve come a long way!
I slept for nearly 90 minutes on the train back to London this morning. It would have been so easy to be on my laptop or phone but instead I unplugged, read magazines for a while and next thing you know, I woke up with my head lolling backwards and forwards. Thank goodness I wasn’t drooling!
We’re off to a festival on Sunday at the Olympic park. Four energetic kids plus two ‘big kid’ grandmas, two partners who get on our nerves within minutes because they get all ‘bromancy’ plus myself and crackerjack mate Tash, and it’s bound to be eventful.
I need a dress for this wedding that we’re driving to Italy for. I’m getting a bit excited about our holiday via France, especially as it’s not me that’s driving… haha! Lots to organise though – must write those lists!

Have a great weekend and thanks for all of the well wishes and congrats! xxx

Revisted: After The Breakup – Hold tight to your self-respect & stop trying to be friends with the ex that mistreated you!

July 24, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Don’t forget that I’m on a ‘break’ until September so I will mostly be featuring some of yours and my favourite posts from the archives.

Yesterday I read this wince worthy article, All My Exes Live In Texts: Why the Social Media Generation Never Breaks Up (this could have been me!) and it reminded me, not only of why it’s critical to avoid collecting exes if you don’t want to be managing numerous crumb relationships in Never Never Available Land, but it also reminded me of why it’s even more important to stop this whole let’s be friends bullsh*t that we engage in after we break up with a shady ex. This post is one of my most read posts on being friends with your ex.

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One of the issues that is frequently discussed and debated in dating and relationships is the whole issue of trying to remain friends with your ex. I’ve written about it so many times over the years and yet I continue to be baffled as to why, particularly with women, we seem to have a hardcore desire to throw ourselves at the front line of pain with exes that mistreated us.

The reason why we want to remain friends with our exes, even when they have treated us ‘less than’ with an absence of love, care, trust, and respect, is because we want to feel valid. We often spend so long feeling invalid, that friendship is like the last chance saloon.

We’ve expended emotions and energy on the other person and are heavily invested.

Bad enough to feel rejected because they cannot (or refuse to) be and do as we would like them to, but we then convince ourselves that if we don’t continue to be a part of their lives after the breakup, we’ll feel even more rejected and invalid because we’re not even ‘good enough’ to be kept around on the periphery zone as a friend.

It’s not just feeling valid though that will have you itching to offer or take the hand of friendship; it’s hoping that they’ll miss you enough to come crawling back on their hands and knees and beg to be taken back.

It’s wanting to be there on some terms rather than no terms. It’s trying to be The Good Girl (or The Good Guy) because you don’t want to seem as if you’re being immature. It’s a willingness to accept a downgrade because you think you can shag your way back up to being the girlfriend/boyfriend. It’s wanting to keep tabs on them and to have a hand in their lives.

More importantly, remaining friends with your ex, aside from being some sort of validation of your worthiness, the act in itself makes the process of letting go somewhat less painful. Call it ‘putting off the inevitable’.

However, when someone has treated you with an absence of love, care, trust, and respect, attempting to remain their friend in any capacity is a grave mistake that those who attempt it learn about all too quickly.

When you choose to remain friends with someone who didn’t treat you well, you actually validate whatever negative ideas that they have about you plus, it’s akin to giving them a Get Out of Assclown Jail Free Card.

You see, in life, there are universal societal norms that exist whether you live in a big city, tiny town, little village or a mud hut in the middle of a jungle and it’s this:

When we break up with somebody, if we really have treated them without genuine love, care, trust and respect, they will not want to be our friend. If they do offer or accept the hand of friendship, then it equates to ‘I’m Not That Bad’, after all, I’m good enough to be considered a friend.

In the hands of someone who has at best, taken advantage of you and at worst, abused you, you are screaming with your actions ‘I DON’T RESPECT MYSELF ENOUGH‘.

Whatever deluded ideas they have about their reasons for not treating you decently in the relationship, you just legitimised them.

They just got off scot-free and should you ever find yourself in the position of telling them all about themselves, some will have no shame in reminding you that you either offered or accepted the hand of friendship.

Life requires consequences and it is the only way that we learn from our actions and get to connect the dots with what results.

Shady folk, and yes assclowns, don’t experience enough natural consequences. If they did, they’d have to address their issues.

Instead, where one person won’t put up with their assholery, someone else will. Even worse, too many people take responsibility for their behaviour and then hunt them down for validation.

If the consequence that you create for someone after they have used you up in a relationship, is to not only offer or take the hand of friendship, but to continue to be there for a shag, an ego stroke, or a shoulder to lean on, or hanging around, waiting for scraps of attention and behaving like a dutiful friend, the only ‘consequence’ that they are learning is that they can continue to reap the fringe benefits of your misguided affections. There are certainly no negative consequences.

Let me say, as I’ve said many times before: If someone didn’t treat you with love, care, trust, and respect in the relationship, you can be damn sure that they will not make a friend of any reasonable level once you’re out. The same person that doesn’t give a damn about your feelings isn’t going to give a hoot when it’s over. They’re not thinking about you; they’re thinking about themselves.

Have some self-respect because trying to be friends with someone who has little or no respect for you will rob you of your dignity. That’s you robbing you, not them.

Every.Single.Time you play happy clapper friends with an ex that mistreated you, you’re saying I love you more than I love myself and you didn’t actually treat me as badly as you know or I know you did, because if you did, there’s no way in hell I should be giving you the time of day let alone anything else. That doesn’t actually mean that what they did didn’t happen, but it’s you that’s watering it down by trying to massage your ego with friendship. You’re marginalising yourself and you’re also marginalising what you experienced. You want them to have even an iota of an idea of what they have put you through? Cut.Them.Off. Let them miss out on you. Let them go and mess with someone else.

It is not your job to fix/heal/help or teach them a lesson so that you get to be ‘right’ and validated.

In life, when it comes to breaking up, we all have narcissistic tendencies. We want to feel less rejected or feel like less of an asshole. But it’s best to keep your ego in check because if you let these desires overwhelm and hijack you, you will make friends with the wolf or if you’re the assclown, ‘friendship fake’ to make yourself feel less of a creep.

If you broke up with someone because they couldn’t give you the relationship you want and they treated you without love, care, trust, and respect, your only option is to distance yourself from them so that you can grieve the relationship and move on. Don’t try to be their friend so you can validate yourself and be ‘right’ because you’re doing it at the expense of your self-respect.

Use No Contact for several months and put a complete focus on you, and if after you have genuinely spent 100% of your efforts distancing yourself from the source of your pain and doing everything to let go of the relationship, heal, and move on, you still feel a burning desire to be their friend, go ahead and put your hand in the fire. Trust me when I say it will still burn, but it’ll be a lesson learned.

There is another universal relationship norm that many people believe in which is that you ‘should’ attempt to be friends with your ex.

What is forgotten is that you need only attempt to be friends with an ex that 1) treated you well and 2) where enough time has passed and you have both gotten over the loss of the relationship. Let me assure you, for those of you hankering for friendship with people who didn’t treat you well, this is not you and it would serve you well to remember how poorly you were treated instead of trying to magic up a friendship out of thin air.

Your thoughts?

Holiday update:

I’ve painted the girls’ bunk bed, something I’ve been meaning to do for nearly a year. It was fun! And messy.

I must need my sleep as I haven’t been able to keep my eyes open long enough to watch the rest of Orange Is The New Black or to read more than a few pages of a book.

I did start watching a film called ’10 Years’ this morning (check me with the lie-in) with Channing Tatum. Lots of ex tension in this. It reminded me that I want to watch 500 Days of Summer again.

The house looks like we’ve been burgled as I’ve been on a decluttering rampage. Thank feck the cleaner’s coming tomorrow although I tidy in advance of the cleaner coming. Yawning already…

Been doing lots of arts and craft stuff with the kids. When my back was turned they splattered the wall with paint… Bejaysus!

I’ve replenished my underwear drawer, something else I’ve been meaning to do for months.

I get a pain in my finger every time work related stuff – hilarious! My body is saying ‘Hurry the eff up and get back to your holiday!’

It’s Not A Waste – An excerpt from The No Contact Rule (2nd edition)

June 24, 2013 By NATALIE Reading Time: 3 Minutes

In a mini excerpt from The No Contact Rule (2nd edition), I talk something that many of us have struggled with after a relationship or when looking back – this sense of it all being a ‘waste’.

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The difficulty with ending what may have come to be a very painful involvement or with trying to let go of your feelings is that you don’t know what to do or how to feel. When you lose someone you love to a bereavement and it’s been a healthy relationship, you grieve over the happy memories and even some of the tougher times, you feel mad about being robbed of this person and for whatever they’ve gone through and for the future that they didn’t get to have. When you grieve a relationship that never got off the ground or was unhealthy, you’re up against a myriad of emotions. You’re not sure how to feel and as you start to try to recall the good times they may completely cloud out the not-so-good times for a while, which may actually cause you to feel an even greater loss because your mind ends up being tricked into thinking that this person was exactly how you’re portraying them in grief.

Being truthful about your experiences, how you’ve felt, what you and they have been and done can, when you tot it up, seem so big that to now have no relationship and to need to cut contact can seem like an enormous waste. It can mean so many things whether it’s about them or what you’ve got to sort out in your own life that you may attribute all sorts of negative meanings, which in turn may make you feel like avoiding the loss and going back to make it all mean something else entirely.