“There is a kind of love that is so deep it consumes our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls.
There is a kind of love that is passionate, intimate, and connected.
Sometimes it’s that kind of love that we’ve never felt before that leads us to believe we’ll never feel that way again with another person in the future. And the thought of not having it ever again is almost too much to bear, like a sick joke that’s being played on our hearts.”
Sharon Pope, Soulful Truth Telling: Why Can’t I Get Over Him?
The greatest heartbreak of my life was at the hands of a narcissist. I let that man further into my heart than I had any man previously and when he left after months of lying, hiding, cheating and manipulation, I was left crying what felt like an endless stream of tears.
I wasn’t a life coach then. I didn’t have the tools to move past the heartache quickly and unfortunately I repeated the painful pattern for awhile.
But your journey doesn’t have to look like mine.
You can heal and you can make sure that you never allow another narcissist into your heart again.
To quickest and surest path to healing is to gently see your role in the creation of the experience.
Once you identify that your ex was a narcissist, it’s too easy to point the finger and lay the blame at his feet (he likely deserves much of that blame).
But if you stop there, you miss the opportunity to heal and to create a different experience going forward. By focusing only on his role in this experience, you can actually attract to you another, similar narcissistic experience.
When you’re brave enough to look for your role in the creation of this experience – even if it’s only 10% of what happened – you can heal quickly.
Maybe you’re like me and you didn’t set good boundaries.
Maybe the initial whirlwind romance made you finally feel passion and romance and adored, something you’d never had before.
Maybe you listened to his words but overlooked his actions and behaviors.
Maybe you held on far too long to the hope that it would get better and he would go back to who he was when you first met.
And maybe you saw what he could be rather than the truth of who he actually was. Maybe that pedestal you placed him on was far too high.
When you can see what you allowed or accommodated or overlooked in the relationship, you can make the intentional choice to never do it again.
When you can take responsibility for the role you played that led to heartbreak, you can see what’s real and true, rather than the story that runs over and over in your mind endlessly that sounds something like, “How could he do that to me?”
When you tell the truth to yourself, you can create a future that looks and feels dramatically different than your past.
You can make a commitment to yourself to not ever do that again so that you never allow another narcissist into your life or into your heart.
You can end the pattern and soften the pain.
Complete these sentences:
My role in this heartbreaking experience was that I allowed or overlooked __________________.
I promise and commit to myself that next time I will ________________________________.
