It will probably freak-out your partner if you get happy: real happy, real fast--as if your life is so much better without him/her and s/he did you a favor by leaving. What happens when you see a baby cry? You feel sorry for it, right? And you want to do something to help it, yes? And you treat a baby like a baby.
Likewise, if you act like a baby, you'll be treated like a baby. If you get angry, anger will boomerang back to you. If you get vindictive and try to make your partner pay, you'll accomplish nothing other than making him/her even happier not to be living with you.
There's a time to express anger, and by no means am I advocating not expressing your feelings or standing up for yourself. If a stranger did something that made you angry, you would either withdraw or confront. You partner has abandoned you and may have done or said some excruciating things in the process. Why would you run towards this person? Go and process your feelings with someone who can really help you.
If you remain vindictively angry or in baby mode, then your partner will know that s/he's got power over you. If you move beyond the anger and stop living in reaction to what s/he has done to you, then it will be clear that your partner's power has been undone. As they say, "nothing succeeds like success." If you are successful in moving beyond your partner's power to determine your emotional state, that success will breed more success as your partner sees that you have moved on. I began to understand this and started to apply it with my ex-husband. He would bring the kids back, dressed to the max, and after he left, I felt totally depressed and went to a wallowing like a fat old ugly pig in the mud. How he appeared reinforced to me that his life was better without me and that he had totally moved on. This would take place many times until I "got" what it did to me psychologically. |
Even though I was having a great day, I still had my pain to deal with, and if something picked at that wound, it would start to bleed. Seeing him looking and smelling good, and knowing that he was doing so well without me, shook me up inside. So I finally treated myself to the same freedom he had: I did for myself what he was doing for himself. And the result? It made me happy. When he would arrive to drop off the kids, he got an entirely different message from before: I have a life, I'm living it, and I'm doing just fine without you. And you know what? I was!
At first, I will admit, I made these changes and, deep down inside, a part of me hoped the "new me" would be attractive to him, would make him want me all over again. But that was only a partial transformation; it still had him as the focus, so it was not entirely real. The really amazing thing is that the very process of projecting this newer, happier image made me happier in time. So even if you're not yet feeling like you've entirely moved on, give your partner the impression that you have. Treat him/her like a stranger at the door. Be happy. Be quick. Walk away and shut the door. Don't initiate a conversation unless you have to. Make it clear that you have things to do and s/he is wasting your time. If s/he begins to chit-chat with you, be polite, smile, and quickly end the conversation. At first, your emotions are going to want it to keep going, to keep the connection.
Force yourself to move on and you will move on. When you act like you don't care, it makes your partner wonder how you can move forward so fast. But more importantly, it helps you to move forward faster--and that's what really matters. It took me quite a few months to get this practice down to a point at which I felt it inside. Being consistent will not only hide from your partner when your emotions are not yet under control, it will move you forward to the point where they are under control--your control.
It's time to get down to business, be the boss of you and get happy!