Dreaming of breaking up and what you can do

If you had been dreaming of breaking up, this is what you can do. You have to decide if you wish to investigate the causes for your dream, and whether they have any basis of truth.

Here is Part 1 – Dreaming of husband’s mistress. This is Part 2; on breaking up after you verified your husband has a mistress. Or maybe you wish to break up for any other reason like incompatibility.

What’s the meaning of the dream that your husband has a mistress? Or more than one mistress? What comes next in your dream? Does your dream continue with breaking up with him? If you have done your own investigations and found that its true that he has been unfaithful, there are several steps you can consider.

1. Talk to him. Ask him if he still loves you. Ask him if he is interested to save the marriage.
2. Discuss with your estranged partner about attending couple’s therapy with a qualified marriage counselor.
3. Even if he agrees to attend therapy, he might still decide to split because he has developed his extra-marital relationship. You have to accept this change and prepare to move on.

Before breaking up with your boyfriend/ father/ brother/ uncle/ husband, read the following letter.

Dear Women,

If you don’t appreciate protectionism, you should know the opposite. Which is not freedom, but blatant ignorance of your domestic work, outside work, home study for upgrading, childminding and other domesticities.

If you can see yourself ageing with your crown of pepper hair, would you still grudge your menfolk for taking care of you? Do you know you have to work from the moment you wake up, to the minute you lie in bed waiting to fall asleep? Do you still desire to hold your own job, come home to attend to housework and children, study for upgrading degrees and do whatever else that calls for your time and energy?

You have a roof over your head. Do you know it costs money to live under a roof? Even if you worked from morning until night, would you make enough money to pay for a small home and food? A woman’s salary does not command the same pay packet as a man’s because there is no gender equality. By their own nature and faults, women have baggage that discriminates against themselves.

If you become homeless, you can’t live on the streets. You become a container for sexual abuse, robbery, and all manners of manmade and natural disasters.

If you walk unaccompanied by a responsible man, other men will cat call you, shout vulgarities and allege you’re a bad woman for being unattached. What do men shout as profanities?

“Woman without man!”

“Woman looking for man!”

“Man has the right to tackle prostitutes!”

“Hookers should be robbed and left to their fate on the road!”

“We should all gang up to throw hookers out on the street!”

All Women, tell me you can fight back against verbal abuse and sexual molest. Tell me you can earn enough money to pay for your primary needs.

Yours sincerely,

Me.

Breaking up

Sometimes, a dream about breaking up with your boyfriend or husband, may come true. How does this foretelling come true? Your brain probably has processed facts and data that suggested a split could happen. The brain invents a dream to warn you of this impending event.

You thought he was gonna propose but he broke up with you instead. What went wrong? Let’s do a postmortem.

Breaking up is hard to do but don’t let him enjoy the satisfaction of seeing you cry. This would inflate his male ego and make him more ruthless for his next breakup.

If you’re dating or married, here are some signs that not everything is going well.

Signs of breaking up:

1. He prefers to spend time alone (or so he says). He may be spending time with his side chick.
2. He reduces his communication with you.
3. He’s uninterested to talk to you and doesn’t pay attention to you.
4. He kicks up trivial fights over nothing and blames you for everything.
5. He seems worse than the last guy you dated. You actually miss the previous guy.
6. He isn’t interested to join you for activities.
7. He wants to borrow money.
8. He wants to work overtime.
9. He has to attend business meetings after office hours.
10. He sleeps with his cell phone under his pillow.
11. He wants to sleep in a separate bedroom.
12. He promises a movie night but instead ditches you after a quick hello.
13. He whines for an expensive showy Rolex and sends you to the bus stop when you don’t buy it for him.
14. He only meets you when he wants something.
15. He doesn’t return money he borrowed from you. He shouldn’t have borrowed money from you in the first place.
16. He doesn’t celebrate your birthday or anniversaries of the day the two of you met each other.
17. He doesn’t call you at least once a week. What boyfriend doesn’t call you at least once a day?
18. He doesn’t take you to his social circle’s functions. You aren’t his trophy.
19. He doesn’t pay for dates, for you or himself.
20. He doesn’t pay you compliments.
21. He talks about getting engaged but doesn’t buy you a ring. He hurts you with false promises.

What if he begs you to give him another chance? Have you already given him infinite chances, only for him to fail miserably? Maybe he pleases you but he says you’re not what he’s looking for? Maybe he’s using you and doesn’t really love you.

What do you do now that its over? Breaking up is hard to do.

You should try for a clean break. Don’t look back. Don’t nurture self doubts or regrets. Breaking up should be absolute. You have thought about this and you should maintain your course.

Things to do for a clean break:

1. Pack all his things in a box.
2. Pack his presents to you in a box. If there are any.
3. Tell all your friends and family you have broken up with him and they are not to act as his intermediary to wheedle make-up chances from you.
4. Stop receiving his calls and stop seeing him.
5. Spend some time detoxing from this toxic relationship.
6. Make new male friends, but don’t make them your boyfriends yet. Proceed slowly with caution. Once bitten, twice shy.

Don’t be afraid to break up if the person is not the right one for you. Don’t cling. You might fear the immediate loneliness and sadness, but these will pass. If you dwell on losing a relationship for more than two weeks, you might be satisfying the criteria for clinical depression.

What are your immediate goals if you had been too dependent on your partner?

You can help yourself by sorting out your fears. What’s your main fear? Is it money to sustain and maintain your living? Can you get help to tide over this emergency while you sort yourself out? Write down a list of your resources. You might like to try familiar and unfamiliar ones to avoid straining any one single resource.

For the mid-term to long term, you draw out a plan to handle your primary needs, you will be relieved of the stress of daily living’s needs. Every human has primary needs like physiological requirements like basic food, shelter, air, water, clothing, time to sleep and facilities to perform basic human needs like toileting. Once your primary needs are satisfied, you are free to proceed to your next level of needs, which is your safety needs. In this way, you will upgrade your path towards secondary needs like love, esteem and self-actualization.

After the break-up:

Healing your heart:

1. Give yourself time to heal. Be prepared to deal with the aftershocks of breakup.
2. If you relive through your hurts, try to analyze them and know that you could not have done anything better. If you accept this, you can forgive yourself.
3. It is alright to cry once in a while. Weeping eats up stressful energy. You’ll feel calm and peace after the storm of tears.
4. If you’re busting at the seams and can’t hold it in, look for your BFF to rant.
5. You might feel lonely or strange now that you’re newly single. This feeling will pass.
6. Make yourself feel better. Upgrade your work skills. Invest in a hobby to improve your life. You will meet new people naturally when you’re doing positive activities.
7. Sometimes, change is due and necessary. Accept this change.
8. Exercise releases endorphins, a type of hormone that makes you feel positive and happy.
9. Join a therapy group. Therapy may not be expensive in the form of a support group that meets weekly/ fortnightly or monthly.
10. Talking to people with similar experiences validates yours. You will feel less isolated.
11. Make a list of your goals. As you nurture hopes, you work towards them.
12. Take care of yourself. Reward yourself for small accomplishments.

It takes time to get used to your new norm. Slowly, you’ll get so used to it that you’ll not miss him or think of him.

How to fill the void that was formerly occupied by your ex-partner?

You have to fill the gap. When there is no void, you won’t think or feel the emptiness. Plan your day. Plan your weekdays. Plan your weekends. There! You have activities to do and places to go to. You’re not sitting around mopping for him.

If you remember memories, just honor them. They were there for a reason and now that they are no longer required, you have moved on.

Often, we ask ourselves, what did I do to deserve this? Nothing.Events might have happened for a reason. You might think it was grossly unfair, but trust God. He formed you in your mother’s womb. He knows you thoroughly. (Psalm 139: 13-16) One day, you will understand why. Many times in my life, I have prayed and wished fervently for requests that never saw the light of day. I was very upset. For one particular petition, I had spent almost four years chasing a particular job. There was insufficient money to hire me. I was told to volunteer, to work for free. Four years of my life were wasted. I was also publicly humiliated for showing my desire to look for work in somebody else’s environment.

You are not alone in your grief. Everyone has their fair share of suffering. Others have also spent years of their life chasing after a vague dream. Now, six years later, I finally understand. That “opportunity” denied to me, was actually to save my life. Had I been given the job in the hospital, I would have been in the thick of caring for psychiatric patients during Covid-19. Trust in God and in the greater scheme of things.

If you work almost every day, you’re too busy to miss your ex. However, on public holidays, when you have a whole load of time on your hands, you might feel the nostalgia of emotional security, when you had the false sense of well-being with another human being How do you handle public holidays? How do you fill the void? Plan ahead. Choose to spend time on a hobby or two. You don’t need to spend money when you can read books for free by borrowing them from your public library. You can think and write down, a list of activities which are free, almost free, or very low cost.

Why do men, women and people behave badly in abusive relationships? The crux of using abuse is to exercise power on another being. Some people enjoy the feeling of power when they dictate control over another. Abusive relationships can happen with partners, spouses, siblings, relatives, and literally anyone who has regular interactions with you. The abuser enjoys being a dictator.

1. If you have suffered from an abusive relationship, you need to stop this.
2. You should help yourself by getting to a safe place.
3. You should report the abuse to people in authority who are designated to help you.
4. You have your own power to stop abuse, and recover.
5. If you’re a minor and abused, you need to speak up to your parents, teacher, counselor, or authority.
6. Abuse is not your fault. It is the fault of the abuser who has violated boundaries of personal space.
7. If you talk to survivors of abuse, you may find some common experiences. This may help you to understand that abuse s a targeted tactic to bully, demoralize, brainwash and take advantage of the victim.
8. Abuse targets a person, to isolate, alienate and render them more susceptible to more abuse.
9. The abuser has their own motives for indulging in their behavior. You don’t need to figure out why. Concentrate your energy on your healing.
10. When you received abuse, it made indelible imprints on all your states. Your physical state may heal, but your mental, and emotional states will bear the brunt of violation. You are not to permit the ill treatment to define you. You are a survivor and you’re beautiful.
11. Recovering from an abusive relationship can be a life-long journey. Its because you might be triggered by old memories and other factors.
12. Don’t be afraid. You are precious in your own right. You deserve a proper life that is free from abuse.
13. The abuser might spread gossip as propaganda to discredit you. People may believe in the lies and ostracize you for being the bad person. Stay strong.
14. This is what you can do to counter the point in number 13. Talk to one or more people who believe in you. When you debunk the myth of the abuser being a good person, their power over you is decreased.
15. Secrecy, shame, blaming, labeling and other psychological weapons are among common tactics used by abusers. When you break secrecy, expose and share your story, you remove the tools of the abuser.
16. You should choose to disclose only what you are comfortable with sharing. Sharing should not lead to more stress. You don’t need to talk about topics that make you uncomfortable.
17. You might like to seek a psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor or therapist, to discuss any issues.

To be continued.

Reference.

Part 1 Dreaming of husband’s mistress.