I recently did a reading for a lovely woman who had a relationship end badly.
She was still hurting and working to figure out how to move on.
But here’s the thing.
The relationship didn’t end because he was some terrible asshole who did her wrong.
It ended because she messed up and deeply hurt him.
This woman needed to move on and heal, but she couldn’t fully do it without taking responsibility for her share of the breakup.
She betrayed his trust and he didn’t want anything to do with her.
She felt awful on many levels.
First, she felt awful because she’s a lovely woman and it was never her conscious intention to do harm.
Second, she felt awful because his reaction was appropriate. She violated his trust and it was actually her that was at fault.
Of course, relationships are complex and they both contributed to the decay of the relationship that led to the fateful violation.
But at the end of the day, her actions caused intense pain to a man she loved and caused him to reject her.
Listen, we are all human.
At some point in our lives, we’re going to mess up in a big way.
It’s important to know how to navigate it.
When it happens, there three steps I’ve seen the guides recommend over and over again.
- Ownership
- Healing
- Preparation
Let me walk you through each of them.
Ownership
Before you can really heal, you’ve got to own what happened or didn’t happen.
Own what you did wrong and do the shadow work, accountability work and integration work necessary to fix the flaw.
Make amends when possible.
Apologize.
If there’s an action that you can do that will help the person you wronged, do it.
If they put a boundary in place for their well-being, honor it without justifying, explaining or defending yourself.
This was your mistake.
It’s wise and fair to honor the other person’s healing process.
Healing
This is step number two for a reason.
Forgiveness is appropriate and healthy when you’ve worked through your shit. It’s premature if you haven’t yet owned it.
If you try to forgive yourself when you haven’t owned what you did, all you’re doing is burying it. It becomes a cosmic lesson that will come up and bite you in the ass again, probably louder.
But, once you’ve owned it fully, forgive yourself.
Practice compassion. Everyone is going to make mistakes.
I’s inevitable.
It’s a part of being human.
When you’ve done your inner work and owned it, you can fully forgive yourself and move forward.
(If you need help with forgiveness, check out the Forgive the Shit Out of Your Life course I made. 30 days of forgiveness work for free. Click here to join.)
Preparation
And finally, it’s time to prepare for a new love relationship.
It’s time to actively visualize and call in the one who is perfect for you and who you can fully honor as the wonderful, loving, messy human they are and vice versa — someone who makes you feel like a million bucks, and you love making them feel the same.
With the preparation step, the guides usually recommend some form of visualization.
(Visualization isn’t always visual in nature, so honor what it looks like for you.)
Take the time to sit down and feel out what your new ideal relationship would look like.
What would it feel like?
How would your significant other treat you?
How would you treat them?
How would you both handle miscommunications, mistakes, etc with one another?
Visualization is a type of spiritual mental rehearsal.
You are practicing in your mind and heart what you’d like to experience here in the physical plane, so make sure you honor that you incarnated as a human and will make mistakes and so will the humans you are human-ing with.
The 3 Steps to Forgiveness
Again, those steps are:
- Ownership
- Healing
- Preparation
A final note…
There are times when you can do these “out of order” or simultaneously.
Do a check in with yourself to see what resonates with you.
And, my friend, be free to love.
Love yourself.
Love others.
Love the (messy) process.
Interested in getting helpful advice from your own guides?
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