How to Get Past My Past

I have been separated from my ex for almost three years. He moved out nearly three years ago and has never returned. Although on many levels I feel so much more peaceful, still deep inside of me I miss him. After reading some of your articles, and your blog, I am no longer sure if I miss him, or maybe just what we had, or just my old routine I called life with Jack.

I met a wonderful man recently, and I am so afraid I might mess this opportunity up. He has mentioned more than once that he is uncomfortable with the fact that I am not divorced yet. When he asks me why I haven't started official divorce proceedings , I can tell he grows impatient with my inability to justify any reasons I might have. I am not an unintelligent woman. I am an attorney, and intellectually know what it is I need to do. I just can't figure out what is holding me back.

If I don't learn to get past my past, I am going to lose out on a potentially amazing relationship with an amazing man. I have grown tired of the obsession I have with my past, and truly want to embrace what God has sent my way. But how do I do that?

Carol from Orlando

Dear Stuck in the Mud Carol,

We all have one; a past. Like chapters in a book we've already read, our past is a part of our whole; the story that is us.

Who you are today is very much the result of what has happened in your yesterdays. Your marriage represented all your old childhood programming. Your separation represents the dysfunction of earlier conditioning, and your hesitancy towards what could be, represents your fear of the unknown. You cannot control what is the unknown, but you can control what you are used to, even if what you are used to doesn't serve you.

None of this is about your ex. It is about the way that you "perceive" life.

Just open your mind, and follow my train of thought outside of the box your mind is conditioned to living in, and take a ride with me to some place new.

When you were a little girl, perhaps you were taught that it was necessary for you to be perfect in order to feel "seen". Maybe you were taught, as I was, that good little girls took care of others no matter what, and even at the cost of taking care of yourself. Maybe you were programmed to deny your own feelings, so not to hurt the feelings of others. Maybe you were taught to fear the unknown, instead of embracing newness and approaching life as if it was a smorgasbord of opportunity. These are questions you will need to begin asking yourself.

If you don't know why you married your ex, chances are you will attract into your life the same type of personality. Modern psychology suggests that marriages and other long term relationships often represent unresolved childhood issues. It is within interpersonal relationships that inner conflicts get played out. So, if you were raised to care for others in spite of the toll it might take on you, you won't be the one initiating a divorce. Instead you will be the woman who hangs in there long after her partner has checked out emotionally, just so not to upset the apple cart. Holding on is what you may have been taught to do.

My best advice to you is to begin understanding why it is you attracted your ex into your life in the first place. If you ever felt like his mother instead of the woman in his life, chances are you took on the role of caretaker and as a result assumed responsibility for his feelings along with the status of the marriage. You may be irrationally assuming you failed because the relationship did not work out. The truth is, if the relationship taught you anything at all, it served its purpose for you. You just have to learn to see it that way.

Once you have figured out what role you were playing out in the marriage, surrender to the fact that for whatever reason your ex left and never returned. Maybe he got tired of his role as the child in the relationship. Maybe he needed to break his cycle of dependency on you. Maybe his feelings for you changed. He is gone, out of your life, and you need to get on with yours.

Three years and no divorce proceedings have begun? Girl what's up with that?

That is so your issue and has nothing to do with him. You have lost three years of your life to something that broke a long time ago. How many more years do you intend on staying stuck in the emotional mud that is oozing through the walls of your mind? How many amazing men do you think you are going to run across in your life time? If you were diagnosed with a terminal disease today, how would your thoughts about your ex, and a potential future with this new man change?

Don't fight your feelings. If you fear the unknown, then embrace that and see it for what it is. It's just a feeling. Feelings don't kill us, but they do stop us in our tracks and paralyze us emotionally and cause us more self induced trauma than is necessary.

Learn to talk about your feelings to people you trust. Express them and release them to those around you that support you. If this new man is as amazing as you say he is, he will support you as you sail out onto these new uncharted waters.

Learn to see your past as a learning experience. The first part of your life is where you got to bump into walls, make mistakes, and learn from them. The second part of your life is where you get to apply all that you have learned from your past experiences.

Understand that negative thoughts, and lack of ones own thought patterns keeps us stuck in the past. Like a taped recording that is on auto pilot in our minds, all day long these thoughts repeat themselves silently in our brains, as we do our best to go on with life. As we move through life going through the motions of our every days, the truth is our spirits are stuck somewhere in an abyss in our minds. We fail to recognize we are not present, and our life begins passing us by day by day.

Every problem in life is a chance to think higher, and learn to adapt, rather than try to change what is going on in our lives.

Before you , you see a future with an amazing man who has stuck by your side in spite of the fact that you have not started divorce proceedings from an ex who left you three years ago. Behind you, you see a life that has been, and has been lost. You stand somewhere in the middle of these two worlds, like a child stands on a picket fence.

Denial will cause you to fall backward. Fear of the unknown will keep you stuck on that fence. Faith however, can change your fate forever.

What you lack is faith in your hearts desire.

And although you fear you might miss out on having an amazing relationship with this new man, the truth is, that unless you start learning to jump into the future chapters of your life, you will miss out on having an amazing relationship with you.

The fantastic thing about life is, we get to write our own ending. We just have to be aware enough to appreciate who and what we are attracting into our lives.

Carol, this is your chance. You don't have to stay stuck. You can move forward, but you must decide to first.

Call one of your attorney friends, and let's start getting unstuck. You are the author of your own story.

Good luck girl...

Lisa