Can You Benefit from a Breakup?

Have you found yourself thinking, 'I don’t think I can go through this again” after a breakup? Fear not. Breakups are a part of our evolution, and frankly, the only way to escape it is to lock yourself up in a room with no windows. Here, family court judge Michele Lowrance shows you can not only survive, but thrive, from your next split.

Whether it's divorce, a temporary separation, or the falling out of a friendship, the breakup of a relationship is always tough on one's psyche. But, there are ways to get through it.

If you can alter your "bad" perceptions of a breakup, you can change the way your brain processes it. You open yourself up to new lessons that can be learned. The wonder is that in the trenches of adversity, and disguised as devastation, we have come across the magic door. Through that door is the potential to view pain as an opportunity for expansion. Buddhist Monk Chogyam Trungpa said it best, "Living is a constant birth process rather than a wearing-out process. “

The question then is, what meaning can we find in relationships that did not last? Suffering is the by-product of breaking up whether you are married or unmarried, so the quest is not only for how to weather the turmoil, but how to make sense of it. Even though I was a judge in the family court system for years, it wasn’t until my own divorce that I realized what the people who stood before me day after day were going through.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “What really makes one indignant about suffering isn’t the thing itself, but the senselessness of it.” Like with any other difficult experience we find ourselves asking, what went wrong in this relationship, and how can I apply that knowledge to relationships to come?

My view of pain is that it is meant to keep the blood of wisdom circulating. As long as we see our suffering as senseless, it is eviscerating. If we continually lived in a state of bliss, we would never seek answers to questions about the meaning of life, because we would not want to tip the delicate balance of that state of well-being. We would always shield ourselves from being penetrated with life-altering questions.

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Change offers possibilities for transformation, so don't fear it. Otherwise you'll miss out on the nuances, the little lessons learned that might've otherwise been overlooked. After my divorce, I found the courage to write a book on the topic, and in my day to day job, I find myself a more compassionate judge. I’ve been there; I can put myself in the shoes of the husbands and wives standing before my podium. That’s powerful feeling that I was completely detached from before.

Look at it this way: you're already going through a struggle and experiencing pain, so you might as well use it. As philosopher and poet Henri-Frédéric Amiel put it: “You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.” Learning from love and the pain of the disintegration of that love is a valuable use of our time alive.