Nobody wants to be a wimp or a whiner. The idea of being a high-maintenance complainer, running to friends with the gory details of every relational problem, would drive most of us to consider taking a vow of silence. Take it from Don Draper, the secretive lead character in the TV show Mad Men, who said to a psychologist doing research for his company, “Why does everybody need to talk about everything?” We are averse to airing our personal laundry in public.
You may feel like many people who, after a hard relationship, simply want to get it behind them and move on without a lot of discussion. In fact, some people are averse to talking about their painful relationship because they feel it gives the difficult person even more power and control over their lives; they don’t want to waste any more of themselves on the person than they have to. Having said that, however, if you fail to admit the hurt you’ve experienced and receive support, you will remain unable to fully reconnect with anyone else. It’s just that simple.
To have a hope of an intimate, healthy relationship in the future, you have to clean up the emotional wounds from the difficult relationship in your past. You don’t need to talk about every detail of what happened, but if the relationship was important to you, you simply must talk about it with a few safe people for some period of time.
When a relationship goes the wrong way, you experience some sort of wounding inside. It may be mild, moderate, or severe, but there is hurt. You may feel used, let down, controlled, or put down, depending on what has happened. But it is a thoroughly negative experience. In and of itself, the existence of the wound is not a bad thing. In fact, it is a sign that you are alive and that the person meant something to you. If the person you love most looked at you and said, “I don’t want you anymore,” and you thought, Oh well, that’s a choice you have a right to make, with no emotional response, that is a problem. Either you never really connected with that person in the first place or something is broken inside you. Problems with love and relationships should feel bad — and that is good.
But wounds should not stay wounds. They need to heal. A relational wound needs to be resolved so that you get back to normal life — that is, being in healthy connections, being freed from the past, and exercising your gifts and passions. And don’t depend on the old proverb that says, “Time heals all wounds,” because it’s not true. Time, by itself, heals very little. Broken bones need more than time, as do homes in disrepair and lives that have had a troubled relationship. What you really need in order to heal is support. If it is relationship that wounded you, it is relationship that is required to heal you.
When you let someone know the nature of your hurt, you allow yourself to open up and be vulnerable. By telling another human being the facts and feelings about what you experienced, you give up the perception of being self-sufficient and emotionally impenetrable. In the presence of another, you acknowledge the reality that you suffered and receive support.
Expressing weakness isn’t just an emotional download; it has a twofold purpose. First, it brings your hurts out of isolation, where they would otherwise fester and make things worse. Second, it draws those hurts into a relational sphere, where care and support can repair the damage.
This may mean that you may have to revisit the most painful parts of the relationship and not move on too quickly. If you are an action-oriented person, this may seem like a backward step. But in reality, it is a forward step. The process of revisiting the past enables you to clear the decks of the previous relationship so you don’t carry old emotional junk into a new relationship.
My friend Jennifer is the kind of person who is all about forward motion. A small-business owner who hits life hard and gets things done, her positive, high-energy approach motivates her employees and is key to her success. When her husband, Scott, out of the blue told her he had found someone else and was ending the marriage, Jennifer didn’t have the skills she needed to handle such a profound betrayal. So she tried to deal with the crisis in the same way she approached her work. She sat down and had extensive conversations with Scott, trying to dissuade him from the other woman. She even tried to negotiate and came up with a written plan for fixing the marriage.
However, it takes two people to reconcile. Scott was on his way out and was not open to Jennifer’s thoughts. After he left, she tried to stay positive and busy and threw herself into her work more than usual. However, she soon found herself unable to run the business at the same high-energy levels she had before. She began losing interest in her work, her concentration wavered, and she even made some strategic financial blunders.
As her friend, I finally said, “You can’t be the strong one here. You are simply going to have to unpack the feelings with someone.” Jennifer resisted this for a number of reasons. She didn’t want to bother others. She was concerned that she would get depressed and lose her positive outlook. She didn’t want to be seen as weak. But finally, after all her attempts to get back on track via willpower and trying harder failed, she agreed.
With a few safe friends, Jennifer opened up and shared how shattered she actually was by Scott’s leaving. It was no surprise to them. They had asked her how she was doing when the crisis began, and she had quickly minimized the pain. But not this time. And though it was painful to bring the wounds into her relationships with others, Jennifer experienced a great sense of relief, comfort, and companionship when she did so.
That was the beginning of Jennifer’s journey out of her failed marriage. Had she not allowed others in, she would likely now be a depressed, lonely workaholic instead of the vibrant person she is today.
If you’re like Jennifer, you need to get beyond the tendency to minimize, be the strong one, and go it alone. You are far better off when you allow the antibiotics of supportive relationships to salve those internal wounds where the infection resides. But I know it isn’t easy.
I once coached Allan, a businessman who had a broken relationship with his father. It was significant for his emotional life, and for his professional life as well. While Allan’s dad had been a hardworking man, he was also critical of his son’s success and even threatened by it. He did not want his son to excel beyond his own level of career success and was threatened by the accomplishments and potential of a bright and gifted boy. When the boy became an adult, any time he had a small failure in his business, he experienced intense shame and humiliation, a deep attack on himself. These experiences were so painful that Allan hid his failures from others and even from himself. Of course, this also kept him from learning from failure, dealing opening with it, and moving on successfully in his field. He was not reaching anywhere near his potential as a businessman.
At the same time, Allan remained loyal to his dad and all the training his father had given him. So it was difficult for him to admit negative feelings of hurt and anger about his dad. He didn’t want to dishonor his father. And when he occasionally did share something with others about the difficulties of his relationship with his dad, he inevitably cut them off if they expressed any empathy, saying, “It’s okay; things are fine now.” People were confused by this; they were drawn into his story but then felt rebuffed by his dismissals.
This teeter-tottering between acknowledging his pain and then minimizing it reflected the battle he experienced within. As much as Allan wanted to tell the truth about his relational hurt with his dad, he didn’t want his dad to be the bad guy. I brought this pattern to his attention and said, “You already do honor your dad. But when you avoid telling the whole truth, you dishonor him by creating a person that did not exist.” He got that and was then able to allow the whole story to come out. When he was finally able to share his experiences, the people in his life who cared about him were able to support and empathize with him. And in the course of time, Allan’s professional performance reached levels much closer to his actual abilities.
This is a hard step to take, but once you begin the process of opening up, you may find that it’s not as hard as it once seemed. You are designed to connect. It actually feels good to allow others access to the painful places within you. Admit the hurt and receive the support, and you are on the way.