How I’ve Changed and Grown Since My Separation

Separation is often talked about like it’s a single moment: a decision, a conversation, a door closing. But for me, it hasn’t been a neat event. It’s been a process — messy, layered, and honestly, deeply revealing.

When my nine-year relationship ended — a relationship marked by emotional betrayal and relational harm — I didn’t just lose a partner. I lost a version of myself I’d built around endurance. Around holding things together. Around believing that love meant staying, absorbing, fixing, and making it work no matter the cost.

And that’s the real shift: I’m not just “over” something. I’m rebuilding.

In the immediate aftermath, I found myself in a contradiction.

I initiated the separation — but I still supported him emotionally. I still helped practically. I still kept myself within reach, as though the relationship had ended but my role hadn’t.

At first glance, it looked like maturity. Like emotional strength. Like: Look how calm and evolved I’m being.

But when I sat with it properly, I realised something harder:

I had a long-standing belief that my value in relationships came from my ability to endure and repair.

That my love was proven by how much I could tolerate.

Before the separation, I confused loyalty with persistence.

I treated discomfort like something I should manage internally — as if the instability wasn’t a relational issue, but a personal weakness I needed to overcome.

There’s a wider social script here too, particularly for women: emotional availability, accommodation, and being “understanding” are often positioned as moral virtues (Gilligan, 1982). So instead of recognising harm as harm, I normalised it. I minimised it. I internalised it and I kept going.

Viktor Frankl wrote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space… in our response lies our growth and our freedom” (Frankl, 2006, p. 77).

That quote didn’t magically fix my life — but it became a turning point in how I paused.

That “space” helped me stop reacting from panic, guilt, or habit and start asking:

• Is this response aligned with self-respect?

• Is this safe for me emotionally?

• Am I choosing this… or defaulting to my old role?

Instead of automatically trying to repair, I began evaluating whether repair was even appropriate.

If I’m honest, some of my post-separation behaviour was classic anxious-preoccupied attachment: a heightened sensitivity to loss and an urge to maintain proximity even when there isn’t reciprocity (Bowlby, 1988; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016).

That showed up as:

• staying emotionally available

• trying to keep closeness alive

• tolerating ambiguity because “at least he’s still here”

It wasn’t about logic. It was about my nervous system.

But if I’m being raw, it wasn’t maturity. It was conditioning.

It was the old belief I’d carried for years:

My value comes from being the one who stays. My love is proven by how much I can tolerate. If I stop helping, I’m cruel. If I walk away fully, I’m “bad.”

So I kept doing what I’ve always done — I tried to hold everything together with my own nervous system.

This period also exposed something that sounds noble but is actually dangerous:

I was carrying disproportionate emotional labour.

I wasn’t just regulating my own emotions — I was managing his too. And in doing that, I delayed dealing with my grief, anger, disillusionment… all the feelings I needed to actually process.

That’s when the concept hit me: empathy, when unbounded, can become a form of self-erasure.

Tony Gaskins’ line became a practical anchor:“You teach people how to treat you by what you allow, what you stop, and what you reinforce” (Gaskins, 2013).

Because my continued presence — my support, my availability — wasn’t just kindness.

It was reinforcement.

One of the most significant changes in me has been how I understand boundaries.

I used to think boundaries were cold. Like emotional withdrawal. Like punishment. Like: If I set limits, I’m being cruel.

Now I see them as ethical structures — the very thing that makes healthy connection possible.

Prentis Hemphill says boundaries are: "The distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously” (Hemphill, 2020).

That sentence reframed everything.

Because boundaries aren’t rejection. They're integrity.

Reducing my involvement in his emotional and practical affairs initially felt like another loss. In a way, it was.

But it also created the conditions for something I hadn’t had in a long time:

space to become myself again.

Healing didn’t come from controlling the narrative or staying close enough to monitor what was happening.

It came from learning to tolerate:

• absence

• uncertainty

• discomfort

• the fear of him moving on

• the ache of not being “needed”

And that tolerance built capacity. Slowly.

A huge tension in my growth process has been this belief that I had to become “stronger” by becoming less emotional.

But that didn’t actually heal me — it just made me harsher towards myself.

Carl Rogers challenges that approach beautifully:“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change” (Rogers, 1961, p. 17).

So instead of treating vulnerability as a flaw, I started treating it as information.

Not something to eliminate — something to listen to.

My stability is becoming less relationship-dependent and more internally anchored.

It’s coming from:

• routines that support me

• professional identity and purpose

• creative expression

• self-respect as a daily practice

• internal coherence instead of external validation

This aligns with self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, and relatedness as core psychological needs (Deci & Ryan, 2000). For me, the key shift has been autonomy — the ability to choose myself without guilt.

When I engage with this separation critically, it stops being a single emotional rupture and becomes an ongoing site of reflective practice.

I’m not just a person who experienced harm.

I’m a person learning how to disrupt the patterns that kept harm possible.

This doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t minimise betrayal. It simply places my growth inside a broader ethical framework — one that acknowledges structural influence and personal agency.

Because healing isn’t linear. It’s not a finish line.

It’s ongoing boundary negotiation, values clarification, and relational accountability.

This separation became a critical juncture in rebuilding my self-concept.

I’m emerging with:

• a deeper capacity for reflexivity

• a more ethically grounded approach to intimacy

• a redefined understanding of love as reciprocal, safe, and sustaining — not sacrificial

And maybe that’s the clearest evidence of growth:

I still have empathy. I still love deeply.

But I’m no longer willing to disappear inside that love.