Abandonment feels like death or worse
In fact; for many of us, death sometimes sounds like a better alternative than abandonment. When our partner betrays us or leaves us for someone else, that often feels like the most devastating abandonment of all. Some of us have even felt that burying our partner would be easier than watching him leave for someone else. Being a widow attracts sympathy and dignity, and honor. Being the discarded partner, we feel, strips us of every bit of our worth.
Abandonment is so intense that the pain is almost physical, like a withdrawal from that which sustained us. We actually believe we might die. On some deep level, we believe we cannot survive without this person.
It isn't so - we can survive
When this person is out of our life, we will continue to breathe in and out, to eat and sleep and wake. In fact, the truth is that when this person is out of our life, we can finally learn to do more than survive. We can learn to live again. We can make room for our spirits to grow.
Preliminary results of a more recent discovery trauma survey appear consistent with Steffen’s research. The partner’s of sex addicts in this survey reported that their discovery earthquake registered a 9.64 (out of 10) on the emotional trauma Richter scale. To put this in perspective, the strongest earthquake on record, the Chilean earthquake of 1960, only measured 9.5.
Today I will remember that others may take themselves out of my life, but that does not mean I don’t have a life. It does not mean that I have been abandoned by all that is good and worthwhile in my life.