I Don’t Want to Be in This Relationship Anymore
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
I don’t so much have a story. I have a whole saga. For my entire adult life, I have experienced the same romantic relationship over and over and over again. Starting with the man I married at 26 and divorced at 32. Followed by the one in California who nearly left me in the middle of Paso Robles, four hours from home without a ride. The one in Suttons Bay who got up from the dinner table at a restaurant in Northport and left me during an argument. The most recent one who broke up with me two days into our two-week vacation in New Zealand. “I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore,” he said, while we were 30 hours from home and traveling in a motorhome.
I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore. The words that he said to me have now become the words I’m saying to myself, but with a slight amendment. I don’t want to be in this type of relationship anymore. A lot of things died in New Zealand. Our relationship, yes. But with it my patience for this repetitive behavior. My disdain for being single. My tolerance for being treated poorly. My habit of people-pleasing. My anxiety over abandonment. As much as that trip was painful, it became the catalyst for me to make some drastic changes.
Below, you can hear the story of how the breakup happened in New Zealand, should you so desire. It was an emotional shitshow. I shared this at a local storytelling event in Traverse City with 125 people. Sharing our stories can be so healing. It helped me process, understand, and remove some of the power the story had been holding over me. I’m no stranger to sharing some of the messiness of my life. I strive to. I think it’s what connects us as humans—our shared experiences, even if the details are different. What I didn’t get to share is what happened after New Zealand.
If you listen to the story, you’ll know that I came home early from the trip. I still had time off work and I kept it that way because I couldn’t move from my couch. The emotional hangover from that traumatizing breakup forced me into a cocoon within my home where I took a deep dive into my psyche with the intent to understand why this happened and how I could avoid it happening again. The only times I left my house were for a trip to my therapist, to get a massage, have a craniosacral session, and get groceries, where I had a very public breakdown complete with alligator tears in the yogurt aisle. Grief.
After following The Holistic Psychologist for a few years, I decided to buy her book, How to Do the Work. I am a big believer that the right resources will fall into your lap at the moment you need them, and that’s exactly what happened here. I tore through this book, getting a backstage pass to my patterns and habits that had been formulated over the years and keeping me stuck. When I returned from New Zealand, my sister called me, treading lightly, knowing how devastated I was but also balancing her compassion with the likely desire to say, “I told you so.” She knows me better than anyone else and knew from the get-go that this relationship was not the one for me. It’s something the book discusses, how we can be so blind to what’s happening at the start of a relationship because of the actual chemical reaction in our brains and bodies when a trauma bond is forming. But other people, however, are not blind to it. And my sister was not. As we spoke on the phone, after getting permission to tell me what she really thought, she said, “You probably don’t want to hear this, but I think you knew from the beginning that he couldn’t give you what you were looking for. And you pursued it anyway. You’ve done this before. You self-sabotage.” Initially, I was so angry at her for saying that. But as I peeled back the layers of the onion, I saw some truth in what she said. It wasn’t until I read this book that described how the stuckness happens that it began to make sense. And not only did it make sense, it also gave concrete ways for me to change these patterns and get unstuck.
For the past six months, upon return from that horrific trip, I have been on a healing bender. Well, let’s be real. For the past six years, I have, since getting divorced. But New Zealand is what lit a fire and got me examining my past relationships from a microscope. I have started taking small, consistent actions daily to build trust in myself. My biggest learning lesson sounds ridiculously cliche. But what I noticed I had been doing was seeking out others to put salve on a wound that only I could stitch up. I was approaching romantic relationships like the end-all-be-all for my happiness in life, kicking and screaming against my singleness and ticking biological clock, causing me to make the wrong choices in partnership. Going with the “good enough” mindset and ignoring my true needs and desires. I’d been telling the world I was happy on my own, but in reality, I was harshly judging myself for not being in a long-lasting relationship, putting a ridiculous amount of stock into how being in one raises my value and worth as a woman. There is so much to dismantle there, and I am working diligently to do just that. My relationship with my body, my understanding of past trauma, my connection to my inner child, my nervous system, my deep-rooted beliefs…it’s all part of the healing journey and relationship to myself. And that’s the one that I want to put the most effort into these days.
My storytelling feature at the Here:Say Storytelling ‘Fantastic Voyage’ event in Traverse City
Hi, I’m Jenna.
A yoga instructor, trained pastry chef, major book nerd, and former graphic designer. I have a zest for life and am passionate about continuously upleveling my growth – and bringing others along for the ride. My aim is to guide individuals in discovering themselves fully so they can walk through the world
100% self expressed.
Blog Archives
