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I like reading these old threads and sometimes, I read them, just for the sake of reading them...

This was a good one.

And how things have changed for some people...

sometimes its good to hold on to the memories but perhaps not the other half of the relationship. it is quite useful for one's recovery (from the relationship) to hold on to these just to remind oneself why the relationship ended in the first place. i find that when i forget a broken relationship too quickly, i miss vital lessons which is essential for my next future relationship to work.

The key term is separation anxiety.

So what's the cognitive process in your opinion Captain? What causes and prolongs this separation anxiety?

Love the pic of The Doobie Brothers.

Well, depending from case to case, of course, it’s one of the following, or combinations:

There’s the one where you cling onto that ounce of hope, that with time you will be able to save the relationship and make it into something truly beautiful. Sometimes two persons would make brilliant friends, but are destructive in a partnership, and really should not be lovers. The fear of losing out on something that might be right drives it into a downward spiral of destructive, yet you do not see it that way.
The fear of losing someone that you will regret breaking up with, and when you regret it, it will be too late, makes you push it.
You might think it’s love, but it’s really a worry to miss out on the love of your life, which will never happen with this one.

There is the relationship involving abuse. I would use the example here of women living with someone who beats them, psychologically torture, and who still stay for years. One can wonder what on earth makes them stay. You may wonder how they can answer “but I love him” when they’re questioned for staying after yet another black eye.
I would think that that is a person broken down, made to think she can not survive on her own, that she thinks she depends on this other person to survive at all. She has been molested to the point where she no longer can see an enough capacity in herself.
The dependency on the abusive person is interpreted as love. A false reality where she’s been indoctrinated, forcefully brainwashed with violence and threats, with the total control having broken down her own sense of managing to control her life, her self-esteem, it makes her think that she will end up in an even worse state if she leaves, than where she is at, in the midst of hell.

Then there is the refusal to accept failure. You pursue to save the relationship because the anxiety is nothing to do with you losing someone you feel you love, but it’s you not wanting to admit having failed, and if you think about it, that’s one of the toughest for all of us to do.
As an example: How many people have you not come across who find it terribly difficult to say the words “I am sorry”?
Why do they find it difficult? Because it is admitting failure of sort.
With a relationship, you have the two of you, then you have your family, you have her family, you have your friends, you have her friends.
It’s an underlying struggle, covered in the false feelings and feeble hopes to save the relationship, it’s actually all about not having to be stood there, knowing you failed.
That’s why the immediate self-defence mechanism for many is to project all the blame on the other party. Sat talking with a mate who’s broken up, and I’ve done it several times, you’ll hear one wrong the partner has done during the years, after the other.
Just check out the threads on CS, the ones about some relationship not having worked out. 99% of the information you get is about the other having done wrong, the other having behaved terribly. It’s a rare one admitting: “Oh, well, I wasn’t perfect, myself, I contributed to it going wrong”

There are probably more examples for separation anxiety, but that’s the ones I can come up with now.

I hung onto my marriage for years wrongly thinking it would be good for my son to have his father and mother living together.

Excellent contribution Captain! You covered a lot of ground there in regards to fear, ego, insecurity, maturity, and taking responsibility for ones own actions in a failed relationship.

The ones who learn from their failures and accept blame for a failed relationship are the ones who are better prepared for their next relationship.

I missed this thread the first time - a pity, because it was a typically excellent one from Mr. T.

Sometimes we cling to the past because the future is uncertain, and for that reason frightening. Sometimes we're not sure if things had to happen as they did - or ought to have happened - and we lack closure. Other times, the past relationship still holds value, and we're reluctant to surrender that.

Hello you.

I agree and this was an excellent post from the Captain, although learning from failures I would not term it, T, I would say looking deep within ourselves and being honest and taking responsibility for our part in the breakdown of our relationship is something that I have taken on board. Acceptance is a wonderful thing and to fight that with anger and bitterness and blame is something that many people do, therefore hindering their own recovery.

An excellent point, and one that relates to the inability to feel "closure" in a relationship. However, I believe for one not to admit failure, there has to be some ameliorating factors which cast confusion on the question of whether we OUGHT to have failed.

In other words, as long there's some doubt that, given all our best efforts, our relationship would truly have failed, one has grounds for not wanting to accept that failure. Still, even if we have no doubts, and the causes were crystal-clear and inexorable, we still wouldn't necessarily find it easy to accept.

But again, I don't think we would find sufficient cause to cling to a past relationship unless we entertained some doubt about the inexorability of its failure.

Interesting thread, T. Sorry I missed it in the past. Interesting timing for it to resurrect, too. It takes time to let someone go, and it's not always easy, especially when the feelings you have for them are strong. Some people can never let go. The father of my children, for example...last month was 10 years since I left and filed for the divorce, and he still will do whatever he can to hurt me through our sons. He still hates me for leaving, and yet he didn't love me enough to keep me. Do I still wish it had worked out for us? Of course. I loved him very much, and we have two children together. But it didn't.

I've had a harder struggle letting someone else go. And he can't let me go. Again, doesn't want to keep me, doesn't want to let me go. And so, I've had to make the choice because it would be toxic for me to remain in whatever it was we had. I'll always love him, but I've accepted the fact that it won't work for us, we're too different and our needs are too different.

Love is not always easy, but it is always worthwhile.

You ask very good potent questions here. But you know, why did Eve eat that apple? These kinds of ponderings have been around forever. I don't know why people can't get over a relationship, guess Love just doesn't fit into a neat little corner where it can be manipulated in any way. Thousands of people like the ones you talk of see hundreds of therapists each day, police stations and crisis centers have never ending rosters of people accusing others of bothering them, relationships stick to the wall like superglue for some and there does seem to be a real problem with letting go. It would seem, as you say, better, healthier if people could just "let go" but apparently it's a problem. Countless books, poems, songs, movies have made a fortune off this "love" matrix.