Author Jay Cradeur shares 5 steps for transforming heartache and anger to love and compassion. It starts with saying three words you don’t want to hear.
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“That Fucking Bitch!”
This is how it starts. It starts with the acknowledgement that I am pissed off! This may not seem like a very evolved masculine response, but it is. We men can not and must not bury our feelings. We need to express them. We need to get them out of our body and mind and heart, and release the toxin. There isn’t a man I know who has not experienced the feeling of heartache that is most accurately expressed as “That Fucking Bitch!”
How do we move on from the experience of having our hearts ripped out of our bodies while some female is laughing and jumping up and down on top of it all the while pouring salt all over the wounds before walking away like nothing happened? |
We all know it. We all fear it. We all operate in a way that we can avoid it all together. It is this behavior that closes down our hearts, shuts down our natural self-expression, and limits our prospects for any real love and joy in our lives. How do we move on from the experience of having our hearts ripped out of our bodies while some female is laughing and jumping up and down on top of it all the while pouring salt all over the wounds before walking away like nothing happened? I am not saying this is how women behave. I am saying this is how it feels for the masculine when you start messing with his ego and his ever so sensitive heart.
I can tell you that I recently expressed these words. “That Fucking Bitch!” I spit those words out in rage and anger with as much venom as I could muster. I was hurt. I was devastated. I wanted revenge. I lied awake at night thinking of all the ways I could hurt her back. What could I say about her? What could I do to let her know that I hated her for her indifference? When would I ever stop thinking about my plan of attack? These are the 5 techniques I utilized to bring myself back to center, and arrive at a place of love and compassion. Try them out and see how you fare.
I Did Not Do Anything
Do Not React! Do not attack. Do not speak about it. Instead, breathe it in. It is hard to do but you can do it. This is a wonderful time to resume your meditation practice. Feel the degree of pain you are in. It is a rare space. While it does not feel good now, remember that your greatest lessons come from your greatest pain. If this is a doozy of a pain, then you will be experiencing a doozy of a personal transformation from this experience. Respond to your pain by feeling it. Don’t attack. Don’t eat or drink or drug or sex to ease the feelings. Stick with it while you can. This is your time of profound growth. Don’t throw it away.
I Wrote My Feelings Down On Paper
Get it out of your head. Put it down on paper, or type it into your MacBook Pro. As you start the writing process, you will start to make some general observations, and notice how point A connects to point B, and things will begin to make some sense. In my recent experience, as I started to right things down, I came to realize that the woman’s actions weren’t really personal. She behaved in much the same way I discount a woman in my life for whom I don’t have any feelings. It is not personal. The feelings just are not there. I discovered this by writing down my memories of our last time together, and what I remembered of her final words.
I Put Myself In Her Shoes
The first two steps should have you feeling some distance. Now, either in meditation, or you can close your eyes, put yourself in the woman’s shoes. How was she feeling? Did she display any behaviors that would have given you a clue as to why she ended it? As her, how do you see you? From her point of view, objectively, how did you (the guy) behave. Did you come on too strong? Were you too pushy? Did you make some assumptions that were too big of a leap? Did she really mean to hurt you, or rather was she in a space of self preservation? Did she chose happiness over you? Isn’t that a logical choice? What do you see when you live in her shoes?
I Asked Myself, Who Am I Really Hurting?
By now, your left brain should start kicking in. When you are spewing out extreme anger, who are you hurting? You are certainly not hurting her. If you believe in karma, you must realize all that anger will come back on you ten fold. When you start to evaluate your situation in the harsh light of day, all the anger is an albatross around your neck. Let it go. It only makes sense.
I Choose Personal Growth Over Everything. Period!
I could have written I choose love, or I choose forgiveness, but this isn’t about love and there is no one to forgive. There is, however, a huge opportunity for personal growth, expansion, spiritual liberation, and transformation. She did what she did, and you are reacting and responding to it in your own way. She is a catalyst for you to do some profound personal growth. It never feels like that when it happens. I got it. But as time goes by, you will grow by leaps and bounds because you chose to be vulnerable, and a magnificent life happens when you are vulnerable. You may experience some of the most beautiful feelings known to man in a vulnerable state, and you can also have your heart ripped out of your chest. All of this is so much better than encasing your heart in concrete and never letting anybody in. Playing it safe is for cowards.
Once I went through these five steps, I had only one more thing to do. I communicated with the woman, and told her how I felt. I told her that she hurt me. I told her that I had opened up to her, and felt blind sided and devastated after our final time together. I shared that with her so she would have some awareness around how she is in a relationship. I was not angry or vengeful, or spiteful. I simple opened my heart and shared. This completed the process for me.
Recently, I felt the sting that just won’t easily go away. It touches deep. In the end, it reunites me with me. It is a reminder of my powerlessness. |
If I am completely honest, I must acknowledge heartache is a permanent condition. It is not a popular thing to say, but it is true. How can I live in this world and not feel heartache? But I don’t. It’s easier to busy myself, distract with trees and gifts, boardrooms and blow jobs, temples and rice fields, and forget about the gritty real world outside of my home. Starvation, disease, poverty, violence, well, it’s just too much to bear.
However, occasionally, I can’t keep the heartache on the other side of the door. As I have shared, and you men all know too well, a woman elicits very powerful feelings. Recently, I felt the sting that just won’t easily go away. It touches deep. In the end, it reunites me with me. It is a reminder of my powerlessness. I know not to run from it. Soon enough, it will lift and life will resume its Technicolor dream quality. But for the moment, I must surrender to it while bittersweet melancholy breathes through me.
The article originally appeared on the Good Men Project Website.
