I really admire how some couples can be such good friends after separating! WOW! It is RARE but so beautiful to see. I’ve asked myself “How is that possible, or is it even possible, to be really true friends and hold nothing against your ex-partner after you go your own separate ways?”
“If you break up, you can’t be friends” is the belief I have held until recently and have mostly seen lived out around me in the past. It was almost a ‘taboo’ to be friends after breaking up!
In recent times, and due to my association with Universal Medicine, I have seen an amazing way of being in a FEW couples who have broken up, and have been really amazed to see how wonderful they are with each other – just like good friends (and NO, this can’t be faked!). There is no bitterness between them and they are now truly good friends after separating. In fact, there’s mutual respect and an amazing sense of care for the other person. I have seen this very rarely in couples aside from those I’ve met while attending Universal Medicine events.
It’s like these people have let go of whatever was holding them together, but more so what they were holding against each other. It’s as though they now have a best friend for life – which somehow makes more sense to me, since they did know each other very deeply when they were together. These relationships now seem to be at a new, deeper level.
What’s more, they truly are joyful and OK with themselves, whether or not they are in a new relationship. It’s amazing to see that in someone, and see what unfolds inside me because of that. It’s the beauty in who they are, and how truly wonderful they feel, that’s so inspiring.
It seems to me that maybe for some, there is a time in a relationship where you don’t need to be together, and it doesn’t have to mean that you don’t care for or love one another. Learning to let go of someone, it seems, can be as loving as being together. It may seem strange but this different way of being and thinking feels beautiful and right to me. I’m OK with it – it’s been something to deeply ponder on!
In difficult times in my own relationship I’ve wondered, and also at the same time wished, that if my partner and I were ever to go our own separate ways – would there be a way we could still have a loving relationship (a true, deep friendship) that holds no bounds to the traditional ways of ex-relationships? Is it possible we could truly be good friends after breaking up?
In the past I would have wondered how we could do this without hurting or holding things against one another. But now I have a deeper understanding of relationships and of what love in a relationship actually is. Now, the well-known phrase ‘live and let live’ has a whole new meaning for me, and my understanding of it just keeps unfolding deeper.
As I see it now, it’s beyond being together. When you love someone, you are also able to set them free if it’s true for you both to part. It’s not at the expense of your being in pain and getting hurt, but rather it appears liberating to let go of those things that make you hold on and live in a need of being attached. How beautiful it is to not be pushy or imposing on another.
To love someone to me now means that you are able to set them free of any boundaries or limitations or impositions of being with you, and let them live a life of freedom, freedom of their choice! To love and let your love live is what makes sense to me now.
I can now breathe the freedom of what I feel love truly is 🙂 . I’m no longer scared at that thought of being together or not because I can see the living proof that being good friends after separating is possible; that there is another way and that way is so beautiful and loving.
Inspired by Serge Benhayon and the true beauty of the livingness and the way of life that Universal Medicine offers!
By Pinky Pancholi, Software Engineer, Brisbane, Australia
300 Comments
It’s really beautiful to be in and witness a relationship between two people that isn’t based on needing to be together out of desperation to live up to an ideal picture of how life should be.
We cannot own someone in a relationship, so when we let them go we are free of attachment and the relationship can deepen with true love as a foundation.
Beng in true relationship with someone brings with it the possibility for others to be inspired by what they see including the examples of ongoing loving relationships with past partners.
If we choose to journey along the path of life together with another for however long it seems crazy to lose the friendship as well as the relationship when the latter ends.
This can also be transferred to business situations and considering our relationships this way would be far more healthy for us as we would not carry around the bitterness of past experiences.
I cannot help but consider this live and let live approach is important for all kinds of relationships. We must not let ourselves be abused and the safest way to do that is to make space between what you feel you are dealing with and what you feel is abuse. Just giving that space offers each person or party an opportunity to consider what they brought to the relationship and just because another may not, it does not mean that we should not.
Actually it is a weird consciousness that tells us we can’t be good friends with someone after the relationship has finished. You can’t stop loving the other person even if you choose to change the form that was there. It is very hard work to not love each other more every day, but this doesn’t mean that people always have to stay together. Sometimes another constellation is on offer for your evolution.
I experienced after my recent break-up how, after completing how we were together, something new could emerge. We both experience now what true love is, without any expectations, investments, pictures and impositions placed on each other. And boy, there has never been more love than we experience now. A beautiful gift that keeps deepening every day.
It sure is a rarity to find couples that have broken up that remain good friends without any resentment or bitterness towards another. I have personally experienced breaking up with a partner before and after having attended Universal Medicines presentations, workshops and courses and living in a way where I am working on practising the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom all my relationships have changed for the better including a relationship where we were a couple and now remain good friends and only have love for each other just not in a couples sense. The love stays the same just the expression is not exposed in a physical way.
Having drifted so far away from Love our nearest starting point is gentleness, which will then develop into Self-Loving-Ways, and as we deepen our relationship with-in our own essences this is then the reflection as we re-develop the Love that resides within our essence.
True love never has ownership or rights over another person, true love knows it is there for everyone equally so.
Thank you Pinky, even if the configuration of the relationship changes the love doesn’t need to – it can even keep getting deeper.
From my own lived experience, I know that it is absolutely possible to break up with someone and eventually re-build a loving friendship. It took me a while to realise I was just as much responsible for what lead to the breakup and once I had acknowledged that, the doorway to the waiting healing was opened wide. And what an amazing healing it has been, one I never imagined for one moment was possible but one which is now a very lovely reality.
The real question is how is it possible to love and live with someone and then not be great friends when you break up. In fact how do we manage to not be love and great friends with everyone, when love is our natural way?
Could it be we are so lost that Love seems like a distant memory, an old friend that has to re-acquainted by starting with being gentle?
This really comes down to bringing understanding, allowing space and not imposing your own needs onto others and in this you are both held and the harmony is there between you.
I recently observed two of my ex-partners move into new relationships. One of them chose a truly loving relationship and the other chose a needy and very capped relationship. To see an ex choose love was very beautiful and I also felt lifted up by this, I found it difficult to see what the other who did not choose love experienced- even though we are no longer together it hurt to see them choose something less than what they are.
Such wise words ‘When you love someone, you are also able to set them free if it’s true for you both to part.’ So often we cling on but if we are able to let go of a relationship when we recognise it is no longer true to be together there is no reason why the love that brought us together cannot continue.
Yes wise words, if we hold on then surely that is coming from a need – which is never about love, and means we have to deepen our love for ourselves.
Sometimes the arrangement we have with another needs to dissolve so that a true relationship can be lived in its place. Therefore nothing breaks, it simply cracks open so more truth can be lived in its place.
Could it be that our relationships are always evolving and we need space so they can deepen and thus no resolution needed only True connection to our essence?
What you share here Greg makes sense, that we are always evolving, and so our relationships will be too.
It feels totally natural to separate in a relationship and still hold each other in love. This is what I am experiencing right now in my relationship ‘break-up’, there is no blame, anger or resentment, just simply being honest, open and loving.
Love this blog Pinky. I feel like I wasn’t really ready for a relationship until I was ready to let go of it. Your blog helps me see why this makes so much sense. If we make relationships about love and evolution it’s impossible to compromise and the end of an expression in a relationship does not mean the end of a relationship.
This is beautiful and wise words you’ve shared Leonne. This is what I am experiencing that ‘the end of an expression in a relationship does not mean the end of a relationship.’ Breaking up in a relationship can feel like a new beginning and it opens the opportunity to re-imprint the relationship with love as we let go of what was not true or loving.
We can hold on to hurts, or we can choose to start to heal… The thing is we do have the choice.
A beautiful testament to the fact that when love is at the foundation of our relationships, the nature of the relationship may change but the love remains, and in fact guides us to evolve through which our connection to love deepens.
To love another in a way that allows them and you to be free of any attachements is an absolute gift, whatever the relationship.
The same can be applied in the opposite way. Not having a relationship with someone and deeply loving him without the need of being a couple. This is what I’m experiencing recently with a very dear friend. I’m free of loving him with the greatest depth and grandness, something that in the past I would have associated with the need of establishing a couple relationship. What I feel now is the freedom of not reducing this love to something that I only live with him, but the opportunity of living this quality of love with everyone, not holding back, feeling what I feel and let it expand in every interaction I have during the day. In the end love is love, free in its essence.