The No Contact Rule

by Natalie Lue

  Your feelings are yours but they shouldn’t be running the show.

  They’re feelings not facts and while your feelings are yours, they don’t come fully analysed and processed so if you don’t do the work to understand where these feelings are coming from and to also differentiate between how you feel and how things actually are, you won’t have enough self-awareness, never mind self-esteem, to support you through even minor difficulties.

  Not every thought, assumption or belief is a fact.

  The thinking and behaviour that you attach to these feelings needs to be addressed. You will not improve your position and more importantly your sense of self if you don’t inject enough self-control to actually think about what you’re thinking and differentiate between ego and facts. You’re preventing yourself from growing. You don’t have to chase after every thought and you certainly don’t have to feed the same repetitive thoughts with the same negativity. You don’t have to avoid a feeling as soon as it comes up.

  The reason you may have struggled to work through the pain before is because you weren’t actually working through it. You’ve been suspended in time and space, wondering if they’ll call, when they’ll call, what you’ll do if they do call, whether you’ll be able to resist them, what you’ll say, and willing, wishing, waiting and hoping your life away. You’ve been totally focused on this person, which is really an avoidance of not only feeling the pain, but also working on your own issues so that you don’t find yourself in this position again.

  BOOBY TRAP - I FEEL SO REJECTED!

  There are two key things that everyone desires and fears in life; acceptance and rejection, and where you don't get one, you get the other. One of the most pervasive feelings you may be left with, either while in the relationship and struggling, or out of it and trying to remain No Contact, is that you may feel the lure of the downward spiral when you believe that you’ve been rejected.

  You will go through a myriad of emotions in the weeks and months ahead, and rejection and anything that stems from it will feel incredibly hard to cope with. When you are feeling like you’ve been rejected, discarded or turned down by the object of your NC, it may provoke you to:

  -- Turn the perceived rejection inward and be full of self-hate/dislike and blame.

  -- Obsess about the finer details of your relationship, analysing it and looking for further reasons as to why you were rejected.

  -- React to the feeling of rejection by seeking them out to validate you so that you can feel less rejected.

  The first thing that I want you to keep in mind, and make part of your focus, is this: Instead of thinking about what you perceive as rejection, ask yourself what it is that you’re rejecting about this person or the relationship? Your sense of 'rejection' can often be very much tied to the good times and feeling that you must have done something really awful to scare him/her away or that if only you had tried harder, been better, needed less, been accepting, turned a blind eye etc, they wouldn't have 'rejected' you.

  The scary thing is that you may already recognise on some level that this isn’t somebody that you should remain involved with due to the sheer impact on your self-esteem, but the confusion and rejection kicks in because you can't understand why someone who doesn’t deserve your time would reject someone ‘like you’, because you know you're better than being with someone who would have you in this position in the first place... and yet you're not currently interested in someone who would actually treat you better because now the person who you perceive as rejecting you appears to be so much more ‘valuable’ because they’re rejecting you.

  There are a number of reasons why you may feel like you’re ‘unacceptable’, ‘not good enough’, ‘worthless’ or even ‘rejectionable’ but here are some of the most common that I’ve come across:

  -- Because you felt very deeply for this person and it wasn’t reciprocated or appreciated.

  -- Because you put up with what you would normally regard as unacceptable behaviour and it still didn’t get you the relationship you wanted.

  -- Because you feel like you dared to trust this person far more than you have anyone else and you got burned.

  -- Because you feel that you were very much yourself with this person and that it wasn’t ‘acceptable’.

  -- Because you weren’t yourself with this person and it still wasn’t ’good enough’.

  -- Because you changed to be what you think this person wanted or needed you to be and that still wasn’t good enough.

  -- Because you silenced your needs, expectations and wishes, even when your soul ached and you felt as if you were being suffocated and you still didn’t get the love and the relationship you wanted.

  -- Because you knew that this person wasn’t a healthy choice in relationship partner and you in fact knew that you were compromising your values and that this person wasn’t even worthy of your time and yet… they’re treating you like you’re not worthy of their time.

  --Because you tried very hard and it feels like nothing was good enough and this may even remind you of when you were a child.

  -- Because this person said things about or to you that cut right to the heart of your worst fears.

  -- Because this person said things that you know aren’t true and yet you’re doubting yourself.

  -- Because it feels like this person gave a better relationship in the past to someone else or that they’re now being the person or giving the relationship that you wanted to someone new.

  -- Because it reminds you of previous rejections and even though they may not be the same, you treat them all similarly.

  -- Because they’re similar to a parent/caregiver who rejected/abandoned you.

  -- Because you’re convinced that you did something to ‘make’ them behave a certain way or for the relationship that you thought was on offer to be retracted and that you’ve not been given enough of a chance to make amends.

  -- Because your entire life and identity was based around this person or what you hoped that your relationship would be and now it feels like you have nothing.

  -- Because you sacrificed your family/friends/

  health/work/aspirations/interests and hobbies.

  -- Because you were willing to discount your own perception of things and may even have cut off or even attacked anyone who challenged it or your ex and you.

  -- Because you’re hurt and disappointed and you associate and equate these feelings to rejection.

  -- Because you don’t like and love yourself (self-rejection) so if they don’t, it’s a double-whammy.

  No Contact neutralises/minimises the compulsion to react to the perceived rejection because if you don’t feel your feelings, process the loss and use the distance and space to gain objectivity and perspective, responding to this sense of rejection will open you up to further pain. The horrible thing is that the 'rejection' can always be minimised, but in continuing to engage in the hope they will change, that they will finally recognise your worth, it instead gets compounded.

  Think about this: If you allow every single interaction with partners and dates to inform your identity, and those people are unhealthy partners who may take advantage of or even abuse you, you’ll be left with very little self-esteem. In taking on their baggage along with your own, they end up leaving you with some of theirs when they go. This is why it will feel as if you’re losing a piece of you when it’s over because they’re the source of your value and until you learn to like and love yourself, perspective is missing. It’s also critical to recognise that the type of person who tends to require NC isn’t rejecting you but they are rejecting what they don’t want to be or do, including:

  Having to love

  Having to communicate

  Having to be emotionally available

  Having to care

  Having to empathise

  Having to recognise someone's needs other than their own

  Having to trust or be trusted

  Having to be relied upon


  Having to be respectful

  Having to recognise and respect your boundaries

  Having to be committed

  Having to be expected or needed

  Having to deliver on the words that come out of their mouths

  Having to make an effort

  Having to think and be conscientious with integrity.

  Can you truly say, hand on heart with no equivocations that this person has rejected you? How did they get this power? Why do they have this power? Every single one of these reasons I listed earlier for why you feel rejected point to either the other person’s behaviour (which isn’t about you), or people pleasing behaviour (which would mean you weren’t being you anyway), or giving someone power that they don’t have and aren’t entitled to in the first place.

  If feeling rejected is about the other person’s behaviour which belongs to them, they’re not rejecting you. Their actions are not an indictment of your worth and you’re not ‘provoking’ it. I’m not suggesting that you haven’t possibly at times provided a fertile ground for them to overstep the mark, but this isn’t new behaviour orchestrated specifically for you; it’s character driven and in existence.

  If feeling rejected is about this person not being or doing what you expected, wanted or needed in spite of you engaging in people pleasing behaviour, they’re still not rejecting you because you weren’t being you anyway. How can somebody reject who you are and were, if you weren’t being this anyway and were effectively wearing a mask?

  If feeling rejected is about you deciding that this person has the power to determine your worth or is about giving away power, they’re still not rejecting you in the way that you think because the only place they have the power to determine your worth is in your mind where you attach meaning about your worth to their actions. Self-worth is self-worth.

  Now I’m not saying that there isn’t an element of feeling rejected when a relationship ends, but for the sake of your own self-esteem and keeping the amount of bullshit in your life to a minimum, don’t get things twisted and assign your power and perception to another party. Disappointment, which is your hopes and expectations not being met hurts, but it’s important to realise that disappointment is not the same as rejection; they’re two entirely different things. Your hopes and expectations are yours and ultimately we all have these going into and during a relationship, but the fact that reality doesn’t live up to them is not about your worth as a person and is very much about whether the relationship had the content and the legs to go the distance.

  BOOBY TRAP - SEEKING VALIDATION & UNDERSTANDING

  If you’re struggling with rejection, you’re also struggling with validation, which is seeking confirmation of something. What you have to be asking yourself though is: Why does this person have all of the power and understanding to prove your validity, your worth, your perception of the relationship and your truth?

  If you look closely at where you’ve taken a detour from your identity and personal happiness, you’ll see that where there’s been struggles, there’s also been a consistent thread of trying to be understood and validated via people pleasing and being over-empathetic. The result: you probably feel misunderstood, invalidated and are living off crumbs in an atmosphere of never feeling sure of yourself, all while hunting for something that can be found a lot closer to home.

  A people pleaser and an unhealthy relationship are a toxic mix that poisons your life especially when post-breakup, you’re still trying to please this person in some way so that you can feel better, which might give you a short-term ‘fix’ but leaves a longer term hangover. You are more concerned with a perceived ‘reward’ than you are with the impact of what pursuing their validation is doing to your sense of self.

  Our society has taught us that it means something about us if our relationships don’t work or that we mean a hell of a lot more if we’re in one whether they’re working or not. When you’re a people pleaser, the suppressing of your needs, wishes, expectations and basically yourself means that when your relationships end and you may recognise the sheer necessity of NC, you feel bereft. This is due to not knowing who you are, not knowing how to meet your needs, plus you may still be looking for others to step in for you where you’re not stepping up for yourself. Hence you end up contradicting your own desires and wondering if you expected too much or whether you could downsize your expectations to make the relationship work.

  NC starts to feel ‘wrong’ because you don’t approve of you not people pleasing and it feels as if you’re feeling ‘bad’ all of the time. Er, you didn’t feel too hot when you were in the relationship people pleasing either.

  In your world, because you spend so much of your time suppressing who you are to meet other people’s needs, wishes and expectations even if they run counter to yours, you regard opting out as aggression; getting your needs, expectations and wishes met by force. It’s why you may feel as if you’re a ‘bad person’ and may be tormenting yourself with guilt because you feel as if you’re doing something ‘bad’ now that you’re not there to participate in Groundhog Day #734. Yes you are asserting yourself by sticking up for your own boundaries and withdrawing from this cycle, but you are not trying to force them to meet the needs, wishes and expectations that they haven’t been meeting anyway. All you’re doing is following through on the breakup.

  Another easy way back into an unhealthy dynamic is to tell yourself that you need to continue engaging with this person because you won’t be able to move on until they understand your perspective or where they’ve ‘gone wrong’, or what they’ve lost. You don’t want your relationship to end and for the person to move on and not show some sense of struggle with their conscience, identity or actions because you’re not moving on because you’re going through these very struggles seems wrong. You determine that you’ll feel a whole lot better if this person could just see things your way and admit their errors. You fear calling it ‘done’ in case ‘understanding’ would have meant a solution to ‘making’ this person do what we want, need and expect. The outcome of moving on is often attached to achieving full understanding of the other party or the relationship, as if less than 100% but more than a code red alert is grounds for reasonable doubt.

  “Tell me that I’m not crazy!”

  “Tell me that I didn’t misunderstand!”

  “Tell me the truth because I know you lied but I won’t be able to accept that you lied until you accept that you lied”.

  “Tell me that it was all your fault.”

  “Tell me that it was all my fault.”

  “Tell me that you’re sorry.”

  “Tell me that because you know what you did, that you’re suffering and you’ll be suitably pained until I feel better about me.”

  “Tell me that you finally understand all of the things that we’ve talked about in our hundreds of discussions where you never understood me before.”

  “Tell me that you’re a narcissist or sociopath or that you’ve got some mental health issues that I’ve been reading up about on the internet”.

  “Tell me that you wish you’d been a better man/woman in the right time and place to be with a wonderful person like me”.

  Sometimes you want to make sense out of nonsense. Often you’re pretty much trying to get a Ph.D. in another person’s behaviour.

  Respectful relationships and breakups rely on empathy, which is the ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes and see things from their perspective. This is very different to what many people engage in – over-empathy – putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes and seeing things from our perspective, which neglects reality. We think about how we see things, how we do things, what we would do if they were the other person, or how we imagine we might react if we had someone who was practically throwing their love at us, or even what we think we might need if we had the same problems that they do. This perspective tells you about you and maybe what might happen in your version of an ideal world, but if this person is n
ot the same as you (they’re not), you’re missing out on valuable information that’s being used as a basis for dodgy decision-making.

  When you’re giving yourself a hard time about doing NC and not getting the validation and understanding you need, you’re actually hating on yourself for the fact that they’re now not doing something that they weren’t ever doing anyway or that they only pretended to do for a time.

  Some of these people have the compassion of a stone, some live on Me-Me-Me Island, some just can't see past their nose never mind their penises/vaginas, and some will mirror you when trying to get what they want. It’s about their needs, their wants and their expectations. In some circumstances, they may be entirely unaware of the true extent of your feelings – for instance in a one-sided crush or relationship – and really, it’s nigh on impossible for him/her to truly validate you. It’s also safe to say that some circumstances don’t really allow for a person to put in as much time and energy as you’d like into investigating ‘what happened’ and closure because from their point of view, they have plenty going on in their own lives and may have already made the decision to avoid their feelings or even to move on with someone else. In fact, they may already have done their closure. Alone.

  You might argue that it would benefit you both because you’d get validation and they’d be a ‘better person’ due to the insights they gain while providing you with this understanding and validation plus this outcome could be avoided in their future relationships or even with you because maybe you could give things another shot. This is all a rather presumptuous fantasy and this argument and grand masterplan ultimately originates out of you trying to make this person – an external ‘solution’ – solve your internal issues.