Have you ever talked to someone who’s getting over a relationship and as you talk, you can see more and more bitterness coming out?
Part of the bitterness might be caused by talking to you about it. Here’s what I mean…
People are very invested in their social image. They care a great deal what other people think of them. It’s something we’ve been trained into from birth.
Now when a break up happens, when we feel in some way that we have failed, that we might have lost face, we feel a need to salvage our esteem in the eyes of others. Not necessarily consciously, often it’s just a response that we aren’t even aware of.
Now due to the way we tend to look at relationships, the sanctity of marriage and so on, there is a lot of pressure on people to make them work.
So when a relationship breaks up, people often feel a level of guilt and shame that complicates an already difficult issue.
photo credit: garlandcannon
So there is a certain amount of defensiveness in the way we deal with publicly getting over a relationship. It might be that the Individual in themself does not feel that bitter, or it might be that they do and part of that bitterness is because they blame the other for bringing shame on them. For making them fail. For making them seem gullible or fallible.
But either way, now it has happened, they have to protect the image that people hold of them, much as a Politician has to spin stories to make them more saleable. It was by reading the work of Steve Duck, the pioneering Psychologist in the field of relationships that I came to understand this. His research found that the main impact of Relationship Counselling was not to heal relationships, but to give people a story to make them saleable in the dating market.
In other words, who wants to date a serial abusive, adulterer?
But I would go further and say that in publicly getting over a relationship, you are also concerned what implications this has, for the way people judge you as a person. Beyond whether they have any interest in dating you.
So as they come into contact with people they have to frame the story in a way that shows them in a positive light. Sometimes that will necessitate admitting their mistakes and so the story will show them as rehabilitated. And therefore now worthy of esteem and a second chance.
But often it involves putting themselves in a mode of victim. Rationalising why they were so believable. So sometimes, for the purpose of protecting their ego (or to portray themselves in a certain light to others), people will have to explain their experience, their history from such a framework.
However working from that framework, will cause the Individual to experience more bitterness and anger. Just as anyone who puts themself within any framework of being a victim, in order to make others pity them or to justify their actions, makes themself less and less capable.
It’s All About How You Frame The Situation
Every emotion and perception we have is caused by the framework we filter our experience through. So whenever something upsets you, stresses you and you want to change the way you feel, you just have to change the framework you look at the situation through. Let me explain a little deeper what I’m talking about when I say framework, so that it might make a little more sense to you.
You know how cultures are very different, right?
So someone brought up in a remote Amazon tribe will have a very different God. A very different way of life. A very different perception of nature and probably a different way of looking at relationships.
You can see these cultural differences in more subtle ways between the Eastern and Western world. Within Europe there are big differences between the cultures of say the France, Spain and Italy. Even in the U.K, the U.S and Australia, which essentially stem from the same cultural basis there are noticeable differences.
These differences clearly aren’t genetic, they are caused by our environment. This can be seen by people who have left one culture for long enough and immersed themself in their new culture. Their behaviour and standard of what is normal changes by the standards around them.
What is at the root of these cultural differences and standards is the framework through which life is seen.
What Is A Framework?
Life is too big for us to be able to perceive and digest holistically while we are involved with it. So like viewing an elephant that is right in front of us, we take in one bit at a time.
This is why it is so important that often we detach from the cut and thrust, to get enough distance to see the big picture and put each piece in perspective.
photo credit: quinn.anya
A framework is a way of structuring what we see around us in a logical, organised sequence.
Perhaps the most powerful and universal framework is of time. It is in fact so powerful and so pervasive that people forget that it is a framework. The past and the future seem to happen linearly. And so we place our experience in a chronological sequence.
Then there are geographic frameworks. Good and bad frameworks. Skills based frameworks. And so on and on.
The point is whichever framework we use, determines our emotional and behavioural response. Use one and the break up will be prolonged, bitter and painful. Use a different one and it can be amiable and a relatively positive learning experience.
In other words, caring what others think has a price. A big price.
You can either get over the relationship cleanly and with minimal stress or exacerbate the bitterness in return for the hope that you can show yourself in a better light.
Or in my own framework;
You can be right or you can be happy.
What do you think? How does your experience relate to this concept? Share your thoughts below and we can delve deeper into this topic.
