Going through life it is not often that you think about couples splitting up until it happens to you.  Only when you are the one experiencing it, it turns out that many around you are in the same boat and you had no idea!  It is similar to when you buy a red car and start seeing an influx of red cars on the roads, or when you fall pregnant and all over sudden everywhere you go, there are pregnant women surrounding you.

Our generation is the generation of second chances.  More and more, women and men in their 30s and 40s are finding themselves having to rebuild their lives all over again.  It is like surviving a derailed train crash in the middle of nowhere and then, with all your bags in hands, trying to find a way back home, which, when you finally arrive, is no longer there.  Lost, confused and angry, you try to find a new happy place somewhere else.  You have the urge to justify your existence and to rebuild your life.  However, moving on is a long and burdensome road. It entails a lot of heart ache, tears, negative thoughts and finding that coping mechanism in yourself, which dulls down the pain.  Rob Estes said that “if you are going through hell, keep going”.

In your search for a better place, many questions race through your head, the main one being “what went wrong?”  Unfortunately, there is no easy answer.  There is no universal explanation for why people, who at some point in their lives wanted to spend every minute together, no longer wish to even look each other’s way.  There is never one reason.  If, in the past, the main and almost always only reason for a split was due to unfaithfulness of one party, these day it is much more cynical.  More often than not couples just grow apart. It is like two cars racing side by side along the road until they get to a T-intersection, where one turns right and the other one turns left.  People change and that is just a fact of life.  Such change often shifts priorities, general outlook on life and what is important in the present, often meaning that what used to be acceptable becomes an issue.  As they say, it takes two to tango and sometimes the music just stops.

How do you deal with such loss and confusion? How do you rebuild your life from the pieces of broken glass that your life has become?  The most logical way is to take it one day at a time.  Occupy your mind and become busy. Surround yourself with a good support network of family and friends.  Work through the negative emotions towards your ex-partner, yourself and your life.  Make arrangements so that you can move on both emotionally and financially.  Then, commence the rehabilitation process of finding yourself again and giving yourself a second chance to be happy.  Like a survivor walking away from a train rack, learn to feel and trust again.  Learn how to allow someone else into your life and into your heart. Do not over-think, just let life take its course and make your best attempt at enjoying the journey.  Break up of a long-term relationship or a marriage is one of the biggest shake ups in life you will get.  However, everything happens for a reason.  You were meant to do what you have done in the past and it will bring you to your future, your destiny.

“Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is. The way you deal with it is what makes the difference” – Virginia Satir.  Thus, go and make another attempt at “happily ever after” as, due to the lessons you have learnt from your first attempt and the change that occurred within you, second time may actually be what you have been searching all your life.  Allow yourself to take another chance!

“It’s possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems.” Nicholas Sparks.