We understand that if your relationship has ended, your separation journey is one of the most difficult and complex things you will ever have to navigate – if you’re reading this and experiencing huge waves of hurt, sadness, pain and anger because you and your partner have separated and you aren’t coping, you can be assured our therapists have boundless compassion for your situation.
Our therapists understand the depth of loss, grief and anger that comes with separation. This kind of loss is often invalidated by (well-meaning) people around you, sometimes you just need to speak with someone who is skilled and trained in this area and who can help you work on a way forward.
Separation and divorce as a common outcome in marriage is historically a fairly new phenomena. It is only in the past 20 or 30 years that married couples have felt relatively free to separate if they were making each other miserable.
It feels that we haven’t really worked out as a society how to fully come to terms with the idea of separation and divorce. Those in cosy happy relationships can be judgemental (or worse, those in terrible relationships can be even more judgemental!) “Someone must have been at fault” or “You should have tried harder”. Of maybe they just like running down your ex because they didn’t see the better qualities that you fell in love with, and it is easy for them to disconnect and move on.
Even if you have lots of lovely well-intentioned friends and family, you can often feel like they just don’t want to hear you talk about it again, or they just don’t understand the pain. It’s often seems that you will receive considerable amounts of sympathy if your partner was to pass away, but if your partner leaves you, or worse, if you made the hard decision to leave, you get the feeling eventually that you should just “get over it”.
It is much harder to “get over” losing the person who you were attached to, loved, had children with – your lifeline and support, when you must keep seeing them again and again. You feel like you’re feeling a bit better, then they drop in to pick up some stuff, or email you about a bill, and all your composure and togetherness instantly drops away.
Our therapists can talk with you about your loss, for as long as you need to do, and hopefully help you make some kind of sense of it. Together you can work towards helping you find a way to go forwards with your loss in a way that helps you feel held and supported, but also able to keep your life on track.