We usually associate pain and grief with the death of a near and dear one.
After all, death involves having to say goodbye - forever.
But there's another kind of goodbye that some of us have to say that brings equal sorrow in our lives - your companion decides to leave you.
Alone you have to cope with separation.
Coping with a relationship that has ended is a tough call that might or might not crop up in one's life, but if it does - and who can tell? - we must know how to handle it.
Separation that could well have been unilaterally ordained by your partner brings with it a welter of emotions.
The experience can be devastating because all these emotions are negative.
A happy relationship involves building, nurturing, and creating positive emotions.
Breakup, divorce, or separation involves smashing up this lovingly built superstructure of happy emotions.
Naturally, it means deep disappointment in the quality of one's spiritual competence to be a loving person as against a bitterly selfish human being.
One's sense of self-esteem is killed and this makes coping with a relationship that has ended so full of hurt.
Blame mongering is no way out either.
After all, it's quite likely that you were the main cause of the breakup.
Please do consider that the other person's grief and hurt could be more than your own.
A relationship, however long it might last, involves an emotional investment on both sides.
Just as you can't clap with one hand, a relationship cannot have a one-sided breakup.
However heart wrenching it might feel, you must be mature enough to accept this.
At the same time, remember that the world hasn't ended.
Your life hasn't ended either.
It will and must go on.
Here are a few handy tips on coping with a relationship that has ended.
Spend as much time as you can with close pals and sympathetic relatives.
Don't mope.
Allow them to wipe away your tears, both literally and metaphorically.
With the benefit of their advice try to understand the reasons why the separation has happened.
This will also help your heart search for and find an answer to that all important question: do you want your Ex back or are you "happy" it's all over and done with, emotional pain notwithstanding.
If it's the former, i.
e.
you want to have your Ex back, then keep some space for him/her in the post separation phase.
That's step number one, albeit a tough step, in coping with a relationship that has ended.
In case your Ex too is having second thoughts about letting the relationship collapse, this mature attitude gives him/her breathing space to reconsider.
And that's truly wonderful, isn't it? If it's the latter, use goodwill from your pals and relatives to find new dates.
However, be warned you shouldn't be desperate to get one of these new relations going.
A successful relationship involves both give and take - there can never be a one-way street to happiness!