Did She Break Up with You? Here’s What You Need to Do

Relationships end – it happens a lot. Sometimes seemingly before they get started, they are over.

Endings come in all kinds of packages. Some endings are gentle and kind, but most are difficult and deeply painful.

Endings can be full of rejection for one woman in the relationship and full of relief for the other woman in the relationship.

Endings come through honest discussions or the discovery of a betrayal or an affair.

They arrive as text messages, emails and voice mails. They can take on the characteristics of a brutal cage fight with no holds barred and personal belongings being thrown in the street. Some just end quietly and silently.

You may believe you have no choices. In one sense, that is true.

You can’t make a woman take you back. You can hope, promise and even show up embracing the changes she demanded, but there’s still no guarantee you can fix what’s been broken.

As a lesbian exiting a relationship, there are decisions and choices ahead. Depending on the relationship, you may have to sort out personal belongings, cell phone plans and visitations for pets and children, for example.

If you’ve just been dating for a while, there are fewer decisions related to stuff but just as many related to taking care of your heart and your head for the near future.

Whether the relationship was short or long, there is a grieving process you’ll go through.

Grieving is how we adjust, transition from one life to another and release emotions. It is important, and it bothers me to see women run from relationship to relationship without taking a time out.

“Every relationship you

have is a teacher to you.”

It’s a season (whether short or long) when you step back into your inner self for self-examination and ask yourself questions:

• What lessons do you need to learn?
• What did your former lover or partner have to tell you that you didn’t want to hear but is true?
• What did she say that was just rubbish and you need to leave in the trash bin?
• What mistakes did you make?
• Did you compromise on what you really want in a relationship?
• Did you push her to move too fast?

Every relationship you have is a teacher to you. Your lovers and partners are in your life to help you grow.

Sometimes that growth comes with pain. Sometimes you can be so thick-headed that pain is the only way you’ll learn, grow and become your best lesbian self.

The next time you can do it differently, from your heart to your head, because of the relationship that failed.