....you take away the biggest part of me.’ Or so the song goes.

The hardest part about the end of a relationship is that inescapably empty feeling you are left with when it’s all over. It’s like a hole in your heart. And perhaps that’s what is meant by the ‘biggest part ‘ of ourselves.

We wonder how we will survive; how we will fill the gap that our relationship filled so that we never even imagined a gap, or what it could feel like.

Perhaps you have been in your relationship for years and wonder who you will be when you are not part of a couple. Hard to imagine going out alone, staying in alone, let alone going to a social event by yourself.

Sometimes even if we have chosen to leave, the pain of separation is no less painful. If you left after you believed you had given it ‘your best shot’ it’s not like you suddenly fall out of love and into dislike. You’ll probably be just as sad that it didn’t work when you so wanted it to.

Nearly two years down the line from the end of my own break up after 14 years of relationship, I came across some photos and cards today whilst clearing out my office to make room for a new project.

I thought I had filed and even erased a lot of memories, but still they came flooding back. I couldn’t help but wonder ‘what if’ and recall a little of the future we had spoken of together. The plan was for windy walks along a beach, wrapped in warm coats and scarves and back home for hot tea before preparing supper together in our cosy kitchen.

We all have our own plans for the future and when a relationship ends, that future seems to end with it. Well at least the future together does.

So what can you do to get over it and get back ‘the biggest part’ of you?

The most valuable thing to do is to change what you make it mean. What I mean by this is that if I believed that my future would be lonely and sad because my relationship had ended, I would add pain to the pain that I had already experienced when we split.

What’s truer is that whilst this future no longer exists together, it doesn’t mean that I won’t have it with some one else - a new love picked out of the thousands of possible people who would love a similar future.

It’s vital to keep life in perspective. This is just one person out of so many people you could have met and fallen in love with. That means if I picked you up and put you down in another country where you had to live for the rest of your life, its more than likely, that if love were on your agenda, you would find it right there were I had planted you.

When one relationship ends, it’s important to take the time to grieve it and understand what happened and why it happened so that you are more conscious of your behaviour in future relationships. Doing this work will give you the capacity to understand yourself and your ex partner and allow you to let go and move on.

The other alternative is to close your heart to love so that you never feel the pain again. But then you wont feel the love either.

So ‘if they leave you now or you leave them’, reclaim the biggest part of you bit by bit and stay open to the people around you who love you so that when the time is right, your heart will be ready to receive love from someone special once again.

Call me if you would like some wonderful skills and strategies to help you go from break up to breakthrough as easily as possible – its what I’m here for and there is the added bonus that having been there and done that, combined with it being my job, you will be wearing the t-shirt much quicker than your ex!

Lots of Love

Francine