Advice Column: How To Not Dwell On What Could've Been

Advice Column: How To Not Dwell On What Could've Been
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Matheus Ferrero

Dear Chelsea,

I got dumped for the second time by the same person. The first time we met and started spending time together things were becoming serious and communication wasn't clear and each party wanted something that the other party didn't and the whole thing became messy. He announced he wasn't ready for a relationship and the relationship ended in a big, painful, and ambiguous mess that hurt quite a bit.

A month later and this man comes back into my life with flowers and chocolates and he's changed his mind, he misses me, he's been depressed, he knows what he wants and it's me. So we dive in, probably a bit quicker than we should have. I meet a parent and we make all these plans for the future, but we bicker here and there. One day we bicker all day and we talk about it, but only briefly. We almost end it but we don’t.

A week later out of the blue I receive a text message saying we need to talk and I know where it's going and it happens via text. Here I am heartbroken because I wanted it to work and it didn't because he ended it. I never got closure and I guess my question is how do I not dwell on what could have been if we had done things differently or, more importantly, if I had done things differently? I've had several epiphanies but it's too late, because the relationship is over and I'm just now realizing all of the things that I should have done.

Thank you,

Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

Dear Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda,

If you don’t want to dwell on what could have been, you have to let go of what could have been and trust in what can be.

This may sound simplistic, even spiritual, but stick with me. Let’s give into this whimsical possibility together.

If you want to make peace with your past, you’ll need to let go of this dream that your past could have gone any other way and trust that how it went is how it was meant to go.

What’s so bittersweet about heartbreak is that if you experience it enough, you’ll eventually sober up to the reality that the shelf life of an affair is largely in hands that are not our own. The best you can do is offer yourself up for the experience, trusting that wherever you end up is exactly where you always intended to be.

For three and a half years, I went to bed with every shoulda, woulda, coulda. And I did this while the man I was shoulding and woulding and coulding was in bed with me.

Do you think that brought us any closer together?

Do you think me lying in bed dwelling on everything he should be doing differently strengthened or severed our love?

What about all the thoughts I had about myself and what I could be doing differently, do you think those thoughts ever made me feel like I was enough?

Do you think dwelling inside every rift that was between us disguised any of the emptiness?

Do you think it made sex feel more sincere?

It didn’t.

It just kept him from kissing me.

In the beginning he called it lovemaking and in the beginning I was hopeful but, the reality is, sex with him was always a coin toss. I always held my breath and closed my eyes and wished for it to be what I called out for.

Do you think that holding your breath and wishing a man could be what you need turns you into what he needs?

That’s the heartbreak right there. That’s the delusion.

It's what you'll need to sober up to.

The reality that none of us can control what we are to each other. None of us gets to decide that we are who another person needs.

Take it from me.

If the person in your bed triggers question after question, they are not your answer.

Noah Hinton

So to answer your question, if you don’t want to dwell, you’ll have to let go of who you hold in question and trust that your answer is ahead of you.

You’ll have to live boldly, choose wisely, love easily, and let go quick.

I learned my lesson, that’s for sure.

That rather than dwelling, the better choice is to be brave.

The braver choice is to move when sinking feels so easy. The braver choice is to get out of your mind and into your life. Out of your doubt and into your dreams.

If you want to be brave, you must trust the men who leave you. That leaving you is better for you. You must soften around the chances, the chance that leaving you is better for him too.

Ask yourself why is it that to feel good about yourself, you must turn into someone’s forever?

To stop dwelling on what could have been, you’ve got to see that what you have been is what was needed. It’s what he needed at this particular time. It’s what you needed as you flesh out who you are when all the ideas you have for yourself melt and fade.

To stop dwelling, you’ll need to accept that what you did and who you are and what you gave was exactly right.

That it wasn’t supposed to go differently.

That it never was going to last, and not because you aren't worth committing to but because life has a reason to turn you loose again.

Get curious about that reason.

We are only called to be single when life isn’t done surprising us.

Don’t dwell on this, remember this. Remember, the better choice is to be brave, and the braver choice is to move into the surprise.

If I had trusted in the likelihood that such surprises do arrive, I would have let go sooner. If I had known I could make myself this happy, I would have left my ex long before he lost interest in kissing me. I never would have allowed that torture into my life.

Listen to me, I never would have stayed in bed for three and a half years with a man I was not convinced by. I never would have let him break up with me, only to then continue showing up for him as if I were his girlfriend. I never would have made allowances that did nothing to help me feel any bit more powerful.

This is what that heartbreak taught me. This is what I learned. I learned love will never feel so difficult, so backwards, and cruel if you let your ex go when he lets you go the first time. Love will never feel so painful and you so pathetic, if you let go when you first feel that the pleasure and integrity of your romance is a coin toss.

You see, these are some of my own epiphanies. Like you, I had several after my relationship was over as well. But none of them were ever too late. They were always just in time.

Epiphanies take time, that’s what makes them so striking and special. They happen in the space between what we could have done and what we can do. They happen in the space between regretting ourselves and exonerating ourselves.

The power of an epiphany is not that having one will resolve the past but that it will redeem our future. Epiphanies are the fireworks of dating. My God, they are the whole point of what we put ourselves through. Having them is how we enable ourselves to date better, to love greater, to choose wisely. It’s how we put some of love’s power into our own hands.

Hold onto these epiphanies of yours and make sure they are less about him and, for the most part, are epiphanies centered in you. Let them embolden you. Let them accelerate you into the magic just ahead, into the surprise. Let them challenge you to do better, to want better, to be better for yourself. Have your epiphanies be the reason you look for more with the next man, like less ambiguity and bickering and more clarity and conversation early on. My advice is come up with prerequisites and have your epiphanies be the reason you crave more for yourself and expect more from yourself, too.

Mohammad Farugue

I want to tell you a story about what can happen if between one love and another you live in this way. I want to tell you what happened when I stopped dwelling on my shoulda, woulda, coulda saga with my ex and chose to brave my way into a world I felt too insecure for. I’m telling you this because I think it might surprise and excite you. I think it might make you look at loss in a new way.

After my ex broke up with me that first time, I did something I had never done and that something went on to become my signature move. Instead of dwelling, I did the opposite. I initiated an experience. I went on a date with this gorgeous man and it got me out of my house and near the ocean. It was casual and light and laced with intrigue and the whole day made me giddy by the end of the night.

It was the first time in over two years that I fell asleep smiling and woke up in the same way. That I made that day happen was the greatest takeaway, greater than if I had gotten a second date.

It turned out that gorgeous man was in love with his high school sweetheart and it turned out that my ex boyfriend came back to me, missing me, needing me, just like yours. I did what I said I’d never do. I got back together with my ex. Of course, quickly after we fell into our old ways and old habits and old love.

I stayed with my ex for another year, and during that year I kept crying and I kept dwelling and I also kept having these dreams where I would see that gorgeous man. Of course it was strange to be dreaming of another man while sleeping next to one I supposedly loved but I guess that’s what happens when you dwell. You grow deeper into your discomfort and become reliant on how you feel when you close your eyes.

Eventually my boyfriend went missing again and I was exhausted with being left and I knew from his silence that I’d rather miss him than ever let him return.

I made that promise to myself.

I promised to never bring him back into my life and freed myself once and for all and I flew to New York.

On my way to the airport I realized that I had not packed the tea that he had given me. Listen, I’m not even much of a tea drinker but as soon as I landed in New York tea was what I had to have. And so there I was walking down this random street and I saw a teashop. I went in and I was joking around with the guy behind the counter about God knows what and this guy in the teashop, the only other person there, started laughing at me and as soon as I looked up at him, he took his tea and walked out.

He looked exactly like the man in my dreams.

It was startling. I couldn’t get over it. And so I told the guy behind the counter about the gorgeous guy and our date and my breakup and the dreams I had been having for over a year. I talked a lot and twenty minutes later, the guy behind the counter said turn around, quick, that guy who looks like the guy in your dreams is walking by.

I don’t know how I did it but I just did. I ran out of the teashop and got the guy’s attention from the other side of the street and we went back inside and sat down together. I had never stopped anyone on the street before. But there we were and by the end of our talk, he picked me up and spun me around and I swear to God I felt like I was spinning for weeks.

That man changed my life.

Alex Lambley

To this day, I’m not actually convinced that I wouldn’t have gone back to my ex if I had not met that man and spent a night with him. He showed me what was possible. He showed me what was immediate. He was everything that I had been shoulding and woulding and coulding on with my ex. The beauty was, he was all those things on his own.

We didn’t end up dating but I did move to New York and we lived on the same street and we became close friends. I could have dwelled on why we weren’t together. It did often feel perfect. But for the first time in my life, I just accepted that we weren’t. I accepted that that wasn’t what we were meant to be for one another.

And trusting in that, trusting and not controlling who we could be for each other freed me enormously. It freed me from rejection and self-doubt, pity and disappointment. It let me appreciate who he was and what I was and what that had already done for me.

You see, by not focusing on forcing him to be more than he was, I was able to let my life become more than it was.

I was able to let go and trust.

I was able to move toward my answer and surprise.

And move toward it, I did. One night I was on the phone with a different man and he told me that if he came back in ten years and found that the only place my writing had been published was Facebook, he’d never forgive me. I remember crying on the phone because I knew that I wouldn’t forgive me either.

He disappeared soon after. And I let him. Only instead of dwelling over all the promises he’d made and all the plans we had and the parents that I’d met and the mystery surrounding him coming and going from my life and what did that mean, I decided to stop making his disappearance about him and I and, instead, start making it about what not having to show up for him could allow for me.

You see, if he had never disappeared, I may have never shown up for myself as I began to. I may have never wanted to get published so bad.

To my surprise, I finally made that happen. I took my writing beyond my Facebook wall and I forgave myself for waiting as long as I had even if it was less than a decade. I forgave myself for what I put myself through, for all the years I dwelled on my writing not being good enough yet. I forgave myself for all the ways I had rejected myself before any publisher even got the chance to.

And guess what? The man on the phone came back and I did not take him.

Instead I put all my heart into my writing and I wrote my way into the answers for the questions I’d always had but had never been brave enough to ask. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and suddenly I had published over 50 articles and readers were writing me with questions of their own and suddenly, at just the right time, I had the most beautiful epiphany of all. I saw that I had moved myself into a new realm of my life where the questions were no longer only my own. I saw that I had become a woman who no longer needed to hunt down her answers but was in a position to give them.

Eduard Militaru

That’s how this column came about.

It came about because of my breakups and because of those men and all of my heartache. It came about because of each chance I took when I chose to no longer dwell.

That’s why this column exists and it’s also why I’ve fallen in love.

Today I’m in love with a man who wrote into my column, whose letter I answered because I felt like women needed to know that this kind of man exists.

Never could I have expected that the man in that letter would exist for me.

Never could I have imagined that a man looking to me for an answer would pull me in and put every question I’ve ever had about why I had loved and whether I could love to rest.

But that is how powerful the surprise can be.

That is the magic that meets us when we trust that the magic will come.

You see, everything that breaks us manages to maneuver us toward the people and passions and purposes that won’t.

Everything that breaks our heart encourages us home.

Everything leads us to the place where all the questions we’ve ever had are answered by a person we could never hold in doubt.

Trust, if you teach yourself to let go of what could have been and could never be, you will have more than what you are even after.

You will meet the man who shows you why it never could have worked with anyone else.

You will kiss the man who makes you feel new, who makes you feel pleasure and integrity and thankful.

And you will not question him or yourself.

You will not question whether you are making love because you will be too immersed in making it.

Trust me, this will be magical.

And it will be magical because you will be ready to receive it.

You will lie there with him for the better part of your life and you won’t need to hold your breath or close your eyes because your love will be what you want and it will be what you have and it will feel true and real and this will make everything you lost so worth losing.

So get good at losing.

Let yourself lose your ex.

Let yourself lose all your could have beens.

You can do it.

You really can.

Love,

Chelsea

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