Happily Never After: Healthy Break Ups & Reframing Love

Depictions of romantic love permeate our lives. It’s unlikely you can turn on the television or glance at your phone without coming across a “happily ever after” trope. Television shows cast on-again-off-again relationships as multi-season arcs toward true love. On Facebook, publications post “5 Ways to Keep Him Interested,” and on Instagram your high school friend is showing off her new engagement ring alongside a caption about finding her lifetime lover.

And maybe she has! But for a lot of people still searching for “The One,” the notion of happily ever after can seem downright mystical. Katherine Woodward Thomas, a New York Times bestselling author on healthy breakups and finding love, thinks we’re approaching the search in the wrong way. After a compelling conversation with her on Simplexity podcast, here are a few key takeaways.

The Origin of Happily Ever After

In the search for truth during our fake-news era, let’s investigate this notion a bit, shall we? Katherine explained that the sentiment of “happily ever after” was designed 400 years ago. It is connected to serial monogamy, which was hardwired into us from thousands of years ago (when separating from your tribe meant death).

Despite having an average of 3 to 5 relationships before meeting The One, this concept persists. For many, it makes breakups that much more difficult because people equate the end of a relationship with failure. It causes shame and societal embarrassment. More than that, very real chemical reactions occur in the body when a relationship ends—chemical responses that mimic the sensations of physical pain and compare with the reactions that occur when someone dies. Much like inner child wounds have lasting effects, these ruptured attachments can impact the way we show up in future relationships of all kinds, from romantic to platonic to professional.

Approaching Breakups as “Conscious Uncoupling”

That’s where Katherine’s genius comes in. She coined the concept “conscious uncoupling,” which takes the stigma out of breakups and helps people move on in healthy ways. One of her best bits of wisdom? Your next relationship does not begin when you meet the next person; it begins with how you ended your relationship with the last person.

We’ve all been there—you think you’re ready to start with someone new, but the baggage from an old flame is weighing you down. Conscious uncoupling is taking an active approach to your healing journey, whether you’re in the process of breaking up or you’re still feeling the pain months or years down the road. Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

1. Find Emotional Freedom: Meet yourself where you are. Learn to hold and contain feelings, to acknowledge your fear, anger, and sadness.
2. Reclaim Your Power: This is where you take responsibility for your part—even if the vast majority of the fallout was not your fault. Here, we ask ourselves where we were culpable in the pain we feel. Did you skip red flags? Did you allow someone else to define who you are? You make a commitment to yourself: I am going to approach relationships differently from now on. I am going to listen to my intuition. I am going to ask the right questions.
3. Recognize & Break the Pattern: Next, you look back at how this relationship fits into a larger story. Taking a holistic approach, you search for what Katherine refers to as a “source fracture wound.” This goes back into childhood. You uncover the trauma that affected you (like a parent leaving or an emotionally absent mother), and you look for the story you’ve connected to that trauma (“I am unworthy of attention”). Once you’ve done that, you look for new ways to show up for yourself and others.
4. Become a Love Alchemist: It’s not until step four that we begin to think about the other person. Every step prior, we’re taking responsibility for our own actions and stories. Now, you begin to clear the pain you feel when you think about or see the other person. You begin to appreciate them for who they are and what they offered you in the relationship.
5. Create Your Happily Ever After: Once you’ve cleared the pain, you can begin to set up structures that allow you to “call in” a strong, healthy partnership in the future.

How to Open Yourself Up to Meeting “The One”

Once we release victimization and admit that we do want to form a connection, we can call that into our lives. This is more than just mere manifestation. Rather, it’s acknowledging that we cannot receive anything into our lives that is inconsistent with our identity. If we repeatedly tell ourselves “I can’t trust anyone” or even subconsciously tell ourselves “I’m not worthy of a committed relationship,” then when a compatible, supportive relationship does show up, we won’t be in a place to nurture it in a healthy, sustainable way.

So…what can we do about it? It starts with intention. It starts with visualizing what a committed relationship looks like. It starts with placing yourself somatically into a future place where you’ve met The One and noticing what it feels like. Much like that future relationship, this takes commitment: you should offer a few minutes every day to this practice (#habits, right?).

There’s so much more to this, and I encourage you to give it a try because we all deserve to have a strong sense of self and a strong partnership (if that’s what you want). Katherine walks us through the questions to ask after you’ve envisioned that future relationship. Ready to call in The One and find your happily ever after? Give it a listen.