The Fantasy of Getting Back Together - Will It Ever Go Away? Aleah Ava

fantasy of getting back together revival of relationship

One of my dear listeners from New Zealand sent me a message a couple of days ago and asked me some very important and specific questions: Does the yearning and the fantasy of getting back together ever go away? Does the pain subside eventually? And Is it wise to consider getting in touch with him after a couple of years when I have made progress in my recovery? In this episode Aleah answers all of these questions and she will also share her number one tool for how to deal with the feeling of yearning and longing when it comes up. Before you do get in touch with someone from your past, make sure to try this first!

—

If you want more on getting the best out of your life and relationships, check out our new brand The Royal Path where you find everything about personal growth, deep healing and emotional liberation.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

The Fantasy of Getting Back Together – Will It Ever Go Away?

Welcome back to Addicted to Love and happy happy new year to all of you! I hope you spent a couple of wonderful days with your family and friends and that you transitioned gently into the new year. I am so sorry it has taken me some time to create a new episode. I definitely needed some time away from my computer to recharge my batteries and come back to you with a new and more so valuable episode.

I am starting the new year with an episode that is based on a message I have received from one of my female listeners from New Zealand! I absolutely loved her questions because I asked myself that over and over again in my own process of recovery. She asked me if the yearning and fantasies of getting back together ever go away? Does the pain subside eventually? And; Is it wise to consider getting in touch with him after a couple of years when I have made progress in recovery? These are such important questions and I am so happy to answer them for her and for all of you today. Let’s start with the first one “Does the yearning and the fantasies of getting back together ever go away?”

Yes, the Yearning and the Fantasy of Getting Back Together will eventually go away, BUT….

I have good news for you here: Because yes, they do! I can say with sincerity that my yearning for the one that I obsessed over for the longest time has subsided. I no longer fantasize, obsess or long for him in any way. And trust me there were times when I thought this is never gonna happen, I will never be able to let go of him. And yet, here I am today, free of that emotional prison.

However, this did not happen by chance. I had to quite some work to get to the place where I was eventually free of him. And I am going to share with you what it takes to get there. I hope you stick around until the end of this episode when I will be sharing with you one powerful tool to help freeing yourself from the yearning and the longing.

By the way before I dive into that, I want you to know that you can send me your questions anytime! You can either speak your question and I get to hear your voice or you can send your question in writing. Hearing your voice will actually help me answering your question as your voice will transmit more to me than a written message and I can tune into you a little better.

What Is It That You Are Really Longing For?

Now, what does it take to get out of the longing, the yearning? This is very crucial because here we need to understand that something way bigger is connected to the yearning than simply the obvious yearning or longing for that one person. If you have been a regular listener of my show you know that overcoming love addiction has three crucial components: Creating a high level of awareness around the subject love addiction as well as your behavior so you can make healthier choices for yourself. Number two is to leverage the triggers that are presented to you related to your addiction, your obsession and your longing AND number three to feel the feelings behind your triggers.

This applies right here as well: If you want to become free of the longing, the yearning for a person you have to dive into the feelings behind that longing. Because what is it that you are really longing for in connection to that person? You can understand that better if you allow yourself in a moment of yearning and longing to sit down and deeply connect with that feeling of longing. You can start by sitting down, closing your eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths. Start connect with the feelings and sensations in your body. Then start drawing the face of that person very close to you. Allow the feelings to come up when you look at their face and then start talking to that person. It’s important to talk without any filter and in exactly the way you want to talk to him or her.

If you want to become free from the longing, the yearning for someone you have to dive into the feelings behind that longing. Click To Tweet

Make sure to not just speak the words but to speak the words with your feelings in it. This is crucial. You might find this challenging at the beginning but the more you practice that, the deeper it will go.

Use their name and address them: For example: George, I miss you so much. I feel so alone without you. I don’t know how not to think about you. You cross my mind again and again and I wonder where you are, what you are doing, how you are doing. I miss to look into your eyes, I miss to catch up and spend time with you. I miss talking to you. I fear that I will never meet anyone that makes me feel the way you did.

What Is It That You Really Miss? Is It Really About That Person? Sit Down and Dive Into Your Feelings Around Your Longing – It’s The Only Way You Will Truly Understand Where Your Longing Comes From.

Keep doing that for as long as you feel the need to. If you do not manage to connect the feelings to the words, go slower. Take a break, feel again. Feel that longing, that urge to reconnect deeply in your body. Let the tears come, let your voice get desperate and shaky, let yourself say whatever it is that you need to say and do it until you feel that you truly connected to the feelings in all of this. And when you do, keep going, keep feeling. Stay with it. Don’t stop. Don’t think just because you cried for a minute that it’s done. You want to stay with it for as long as you can. If we stay with a feeling for a prolonged period of time, something interesting happens in our nervous system because it starts to relax. The obsession, the longing starts to subside. Every time the longing and the obsession comes back, you just sit down again start over.

—

No Filtering of Words or Thoughts, Allow Yourself To Express It All Fully

Sometimes when we connect deeply with the feelings, the focus might shift. That person that you thought it is about might no longer be in the picture. You might see new faces popping up. You might have a memory pop up. You might remember a situation from an earlier point in your life. Sometimes it even all goes back into childhood where you feel that the words that are coming out of your mouth are no longer for the person you started the exercise with but actually either are addressed to no one specific or someone completely different. Sometimes the feelings isolate themselves, meaning all that is left is the feeling in your body without any story or memory attached to it, without any person attached to it.

This is very possible. There is a reason why you have these feelings. They are a result of an early imprint you have received and depending on the age of when it happened, different regions of the brain were involved. The prefrontal cortex that would be able to remember a clear memory only starts to develop from around age 2.5 years and continues to do so until adult life. For this reason, it is normal that sometimes we have no clear memory of something but purely a physical sensation such as the heartrate going up or we start coughing when we cry, or we get really hot or cold. Sometimes we simply feel a feeling without a story. That depends whether the brainstem or the limbic system were involved when experiencing similar feelings in the past.

Drawing conclusions directly from a felt experience promotes sustainable change. Click To Tweet

You do not need to make sense of it at this point. All you have to do is feel the feelings fully and trust that whatever is happening needs to happen. I repeatedly went into these feelings of longing and yearning and I learned based on what I felt where it really came from. Drawing conclusions from my feelings helped me to integrate it and transform it. It especially helped me to no longer connect these feelings to the ex I obsessed over but to connect it to where it really happened. Kind of where that feeling was actually born.

After such a feeling session you can ask yourself: What did I realize from my feelings? What were they showing me? What did I learn about myself from having felt my feelings of longing, desperation and yearning for person x, y, z?

It’s Not About Your Ex, Trust Me! Getting Back Together Won´t Help

Trust me, it is mostly not about your Ex. We think it is, but it is not. There is a reason why this did not work out. If you miss them now, it is mostly not the person you are missing but what you would get if you were to engage with them again. What are you hoping to get or to feel if you were to engage with them again? AND more importantly: What do you actually have to feel now that you are not engaging with them? Now that you think about getting back in contact with them? What would you have to feel if you do not give in to contacting him or her?

This is a very challenging thing to do on your own. It has taken me months and months to learn to feel, to truly feel and without support it is even more difficult. I will list some ways of support for you later at the end of this episode as well but first I want to keep answering her questions.

Her second question goes hand in hand with her first one: Does the pain subside eventually?

The pain will subside the moment you have consciously felt enough of that pain. You will realize what this is really all about. When you are able to truly understand where that longing, that pain comes from. That is something I can guarantee you. I consciously felt these feelings over and over again to the point where I sobbed and cried and really allowed myself to say what I had to say the way I had to say it. It’s really like magic. It totally works but it takes practice and dedication.

People Are Mirrors

I want to repeat this one more time: It is mostly never about that person. That person is merely a mirror for us to see where we have been wounded and they remind us of a pain we have not yet consciously felt and integrated. Once you do that, you will no longer have the urge to connect with them. Instead you will truly realize that what you are actually missing is something independent of that very person. You might be missing a feeling of connection, of belonging to someone, or simply the way they make you feel when you are with them. This all goes so much deeper and if you are really interested in understanding the whole dynamic behind, listen to my show from the beginning as I cover the basics in the first 17 episodes.

Now let’s talk about her last question: Is it wise to consider getting in touch with him after a couple of years when I have made progress in recovery?

A straight answer from my point of view would be a clear NO. Only in very rare cases people get back together and they can make it work but that would mean that you both individually have done some major work on your wounds and traumas. However, the interesting thing is that if you actually did the much-needed healing work, you most likely would no longer want to get back in contact with them because you start seeing them for who they truly are as you stop idolizing them and the relationship.

—

Inquiring Our Motivation

So ask yourself this: What is my true motivation for wanting to reconnect with him or her and getting back together? Why? What am I hoping to get out of it? Am I idolizing them? Or do I want to reconnect because I really see them for who they are? You can make a list and note the positive aspect of that person and the relationship as well as the challenges meaning all their flaws and all the things that did not work in the relationship. List the reasons why it did not work out with them in the first place.

Keep inquiring and ask yourself; Did I get my most important needs fulfilled? Was I truly happy? Why have I been in a relationship with them in the first place back then? Because you were in awe of who they were and what they stand for? The values they had? The way they truly saw you? The way they wanted to be there for you? The way they allowed you to blossom into your full potential? The way they supported you? Was there basically only little drama but a lot of love and compassion? OR was your overall emotional state often not so well? Was drama part of the relationship? Were they maybe not very supportive and you compromised on levels that made you lose yourself in any way?

It is so tempting to make something up in our mind - denial is often just too strong. Click To Tweet

A Way Of Regulating Our Uncomfortable Feelings

These are some tough questions and I get it, it is so tempting to get back together with someone you know. It is so tempting to make something up in your mind and denial is often very strong. We play around with this idea of getting back together for a very good reason: We want to regulate our feelings. We want to not feel alone anymore. We want to belong. We need to be loved. I hear you. And I agree but to make false compromises just to get that little shot of love from time to time is simply not worth it in the long run. Trust me. There is a hole other level of relating and loving available to you if you can wait just a little longer until you healed yourself and until the right person comes along. There is always massive amounts of pain behind whatever we are doing and if we do not look at it, we might never heal from it. We might keep engaging in relationships that give us merely breadcrumbs because we think that these tiny breadcrumbs are still far better than feeling alone, isolated, disconnected where we yearn for the opposite so much because we truly need to be loved and cared for FINALLY.

Bottom-Up Approach: Real Conclusions Come From Actual Felt Experiences That Enable Sustainable Change!

So, no do not call him or her. Become aware that there was a reason why it did not work out. The only moment you can actually get back in contact with them is if you have truly understood everything about the why’s and how’s of your relationship and your behavior and if you have done solid work around your pain, your trauma and your feelings. But again: If you did, you most probably would not want to go back together. There would not be that longing anymore. You’d be so clear and willing to choose the right person for you and you’d be willing to wait for them. Your life has meaning without them. You have developed a loving relationship with yourself. You would have other bowls of nourishment that you can draw from if you feel lonely and desperate for love and connection.

Basically, as recovering love addicts we have to get really good at saying NO to what does not feel 100% right! Click To Tweet

Your NO’s will be rewarded, I can guarantee you that.

Now it is up to you to decide whether you will be contacting them again or not and if you finally get back together. My words are not the absolute truth. I am only sharing with you my thoughts from my very own experience. And, there is only this much I can do over an episode but if you are serious with your healing and you want to do the work, here is what I can offer: You can book me as your personal coach to learn more about your feelings, to step into your power and to finally be able to wait for the right one. You can also join my community “The Trigger Transform Hub” where you learn in more detail about how to leverage the triggers and feel your feelings instead of acting out. Just check it out and apply today!

A Great Tool To Use In A Moment Of Longing To Ease The Yearning Of Getting Back Together

Now here is one of my favorite tools I used to leverage when the feeling of longing and yearning came up where I felt the need to reach out to him: I went for a long walk in the nature where I knew most likely I’d be alone. I opened a voice mail, you know where you can record yourself on your smartphone. And then I started talking to him, I recorded my entire conversation. Recording it makes you feel like you are actually taking to them. I basically did what I advised you to do in the beginning of this session: to talk to them with your feelings in it without any filter. Often, I would start sob and cry and after about 30 minutes or so, my nervous system started to relax and the wish to contact him subsided. That fact – that I no longer felt the need to get in contact with him to me was proof that it was not about him, I just needed to do more healing through feeling it all entirely.

With this you are giving yourself full permission to be the desperate girl or boy who longs so much to be loved, seen and who feels that we belong to someone. Doing that consciously just like when we record it, does wonders. Once you feel that particular trigger has been felt entirely, you can stop the recording and simply put your phone away. Do not send them your voice note. This is only for you. The recording gives you also a feeling of exposure. Exposure is key in all of it. It’s something I talk about as well in my show. The power of exposure. After the recording you keep walking in nature and simply feel how much more at ease you are now. The space that has been created inside yourself feels lighter and more at ease. These moments after such sessions were so blissful for me. Doors opened in my emotional prison for me to walk out and the more I did that, the freer I became. Try it out and do not give up. It takes time to work through these issues as they are deeply rooted in ourselves but it is possible if you keep doing the work. And this show, myself and my community can help you along the way.

Here is my last question for you:

Who would you be and how would you feel if you were not chasing after someone or love in general? Click To Tweet

I bet you are a confident, beautiful radiating soul who accepts nothing but real compassionate love and connection because you know that you truly deserve it because you are so worth it.

With this question I will end today´s episode. Thank you for tuning in and I wish you true love and magic for 2019. A new year with new possibilities for you to create a life you always wanted.

Be well,
Aleah.

—