“I am heartbroken and I really hope you can help me with overcoming rejection. I’ve been struggling for years with dating after my divorce and I was about to give up ever finding love again when I met a man online that I thought was “The One.”

I mean this like nothing before. We had so much in common, felt so good together, and we laughed and talked a lot before meeting via text, and on the phone. When we finally met in person it was clear there was great chemistry between us.

We dated exclusively for 3 months and I fell deeply in love with him. Then he started getting weird – not calling for days, being checked out when I was with him, lack of sex drive. Then the whole thing came crashing down. He told me he had met someone else and that he didn’t want to see me anymore.

I’m crushed! I really love him and don’t know what to do. I don’t understand what happened and I can’t seem to move on. Please help.”

Dear Mollie,

Thanks for reaching out to us about overcoming rejection. We can understand how you feel so hurt and crushed that this relationship didn’t turn out as you had hoped. It seems that you had the rug pulled out from under you.

Let’s start by letting you know that your feelings are valid. It makes sense that you are crushed and that you are having trouble moving forward in your life. When you’re in pain you want to find the source of the pain and simply feel better.

In this case, you have no control over another person so you have zero ability to bring him back and restore the relationship. Often when we are feeling these overwhelming feelings, we want them to go away so we don’t feel the pain anymore.

The first step to overcoming rejection is to feel your feelings.

You feel crushed. You probably feel hurt, confused, sad, and angry. All of these feelings are part of being human. Give yourself permission to go through your grief.

Grieving is not something you can rush. These feelings can feel overwhelming as if feeling them would kill you. This is not at all the truth. Allowing yourself to simply be with your feelings allows you to move through them.

We can assure you that you will not die if you allow yourself to feel all this grief. As a matter of fact, by feeling your feelings you may very well be saving your life by eliminating the build-up of dis-ease in your body.

You prolong the bad feelings by trying to stifle them. You’ve likely heard the saying, “What we resist persists.” This is absolutely true when it comes to our emotions.

Set aside time in your calendar to daily feel whatever you are feeling instead of making yourself busy and avoiding them. Set a timer on your smart phone and feel all the anger, hurt, and sadness. Be intentional about feeling your grief and releasing it.

This practice will free your energy up to get the things done that life requires of you.

Be extra kind, compassionate, and loving with yourself.

Treat yourself through this grieving period as if you are very precious and breakable – which you truly are. Cocoon yourself off so you can heal. Eliminate as much drama from your life as possible. Deep healing takes time so don’t rush this process.

Instead, focus on healing yourself and your broken heart. Allow yourself to feel sorrowful instead of sorry for yourself. Sorrow is a natural human emotion. Just because something bad has happened in your life doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you or that you are somehow broken.

Every adult person on the planet has had their heart broken. For many, it is a right of passage, and for you, it can be the catalyst to creating love in an entirely new way.

Purchase a blank journal book and on days you are feeling good about yourself write out the qualities you most admire about yourself along with your lifetime accomplishments and successes.

On the days you are not feeling so great about yourself refer to this journal book and fill yourself up with how awesome you really are. Remind yourself often that you’re in a grieving period and during this time you’ll want to take extra special care of yourself.

The next step to overcoming rejection is to take him out of your life.

We are stating a way for you to get through this painful period as quickly as possible. Since you reached out to us, we are giving it to you straight.

Change his name in your phone to “Do Not Answer.” Do not skip this step – pause reading here and change his name now.

Disconnect from him on social media. Block him so there is no way for him to find you there, or for you to be surprised by seeing something that would trigger you. This will eliminate the temptation to spy on him and his new relationship.

There is a part of you that is wishing and hoping that he will change his mind and come back to you. This hope keeps you entangled with him and his energy and it is the main source for your feelings of rejection.

Your big prefrontal cortex wants to find logical answers so his behavior makes sense to you. Unfortunately, there are no such answers that will leave you feeling better. It’s likely (and normal) that part of you hopes for reconciliation and your focus right now is to kill the hope.

Hope is the first feeling that enters a relationship and the last feeling to leave. In order to move on you must kill the hope that he will come back and you two will live happily ever after.

You live in the real world and not in a fairy tale. Ask any two people who have been in a relationship for any considerable amount of time and they will tell you that lasting love is a choice.

Your ideal man will stand by you through thick and thin and you don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t see you as the sun in his world.

This heartbreak won’t kill you, it’s simply emotion that must move through you. When you mourn him like he’s dead to you, you will free yourself to grow through this painful experience allowing you to create the soul-satisfying, long-lasting love you desire.

The little girl inside of you may think if you could get him to take you back, that would prove that you are loveable. There is no magic formula for getting him back so avoid the desire to look for ways to “win him back.”

Only you have control over your lovability.

Your lovability does not come from outside of you. Another person does not have the power to say you are worth loving or you are not. You are worth loving just because you exist. You were born as the physical embodiment of the energy of love and that is your true nature.

Take the time to reconnect to yourself and the little girl within you who just wanted to feel loved and safe in the world. Take her on an Inner Child Date and let her choose the activity. Sit with her and let her know that you will never abandon her. Let her know that she counts and matters to you most of all.

Take time to nurture the relationship with the little girl inside of you and to love her like she is the most important person in your life. The only person’s love and approval you require is your own. Shower yourself with love and approval.

Pay attention to your inner dialog. What do you say to yourself about yourself? Change the negative thoughts to positive ones. Treat yourself the way you would like your beloved to treat you.

There is nothing wrong with you because this guy decided he would rather be with someone else. He likely rushed in with her just like he did with you, and will move on from her in about 3 months’ time. A man who behaves this way is not your guy. Make your focus to love yourself no matter what!

The love you seek is inside of you.

You don’t get love from another person. It is the love you have for yourself that is reflected back to you through the eyes of your beloved.

Stop looking for love outside of you and instead nurture the love you have for yourself. Self-love is not about getting massages or mani-pedis. Self-love is learning to love and accept all the parts of you – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Focus on loving those parts of you that you most wish to change. Whether it is parts of your physical body or aspects of your personality, your “flaws” are the parts of you that make you unique.

Your beloved will love the things about you that others left you over. When you can love those parts of you that you most want to change about yourself you’ll be in the space to call in your “One.”

No one completes you. You don’t live in the movie Jerry McGuire. That is a co-dependent relationship. What you’re searching for is to feel whole and complete so you can come together with another whole and complete person. The two of you come together and create a third entity: The Relationship.

This allows each of you to make deposits and withdrawals from the relationship and creates a balance. Healthy relationships are interdependent. This is the natural ebb and flow between two people.

Ultimately overcoming rejection requires that you take a look at your past relationships to rework what triggers you into the feeling of “falling in love.”

Discover your relationship patterns.

During this time do some self-reflection on your patterns in intimate relationship. In what ways is this situation similar or different to your marriage? Did you play a similar role in these two relationships? Can you see that you are the common denominator in all of your relationships and how does that inform your selection process of the kind of man you find attractive?

Perhaps these patterns are reflected in your family of origin. Can you identify a similar dynamic between you and your parents? Or what your parents modeled for you in your childhood home? Your core wound in your intimate relationships is formed in early childhood and those patterns play out throughout your lifetime.

We call this system Your Love Imprint and the key to overcoming rejection is to understand how your feelings are part of a lifelong pattern. You can end this pattern but first, you need to identify it.

Your Love Imprint is the subconscious belief system that comes from your family of origin and it is running the show in your love life. This system includes your limiting beliefs, your mental and emotional patterns, and your behavioral strategies for giving and receiving love.

If you want to get clearer on your patterns in love and how to break them, join us for a complimentary Soulmate Strategy Session. During this call, we’ll help you create an action plan for the lasting love you desire and deserve.