The breakup happened long ago, the belongings are sorted, mutual friends have adjusted. And inside, a conversation is still running with a person who is not there. A woman either stays alone or keeps meeting the same man in new faces. On how a relationship actually closes, Peruquois, a top World Music performer in Australia, a musician, composer, author and facilitator of personal development trainings for women.
Why the past takes up room
“Thoughts, feelings and emotions connected with a previous partner do not let you live fully. That is why you have to know how to let people go,” says Peruquois.
She then names three things that appear once a person does let go. She accepts herself as she is, rather than as the trauma of the breakup defined her. She meets real love. And she stops stepping on the same rake in her choice of partner.
The last one often matters most. A repeating type of man arrives in a woman's life for a reason that makes perfect sense. He is brought in by the state she was in when she first met him.
Stage one. The review
“This is an analysis of the thoughts and emotions you were living through roughly a week before you met your partner,” Peruquois explains. That analysis shows what state you were in during that period. Perhaps you were full of love and wanted to share it with someone. Or perhaps you were living through loneliness and wanted to be with at least somebody.
Here is how it is done.
Create a calm setting. Take three or four deep breaths and try to live through that time again, the week before you met. Pay attention to every detail, thought and emotion. Write down everything that comes back.
When you come out of that state, read carefully what you wrote and organize the notes into a numbered list. Then, as unemotionally as you can manage, write out the main qualities of your former partner. Take your time, be honest and thorough, let it be a full text.
Then compare the two lists and look at the obvious overlaps. Most likely you will see cause and effect, because the answer always matches the question.
Stage two. The thoughts that are still playing
The second stage is a review of your thoughts, and Peruquois sorts them into three categories.
First: his words about you or about your shared future, the ones you often recall as though they were still sounding in your head.
Second: thoughts in which you remember the person himself or your plans together.
Third: thoughts where you argue with him, accuse him, or justify yourself to him.
“Write all these thoughts down and read them over. You may be surprised how large a part of you still lives in the past and how much energy you spend on it,” says Peruquois.
All of these thoughts are to be released. And the stage has a clear sign of completion: when they stop appearing, the relationship really is behind you.
Stage three. Taking off the emotional charge
“Accept reality, you are not together,” says Peruquois. Do not drag the baggage of old hurts and grievances along with you and do not poison your inner world with it, release all of it with gratitude and forgiveness.
The gratitude is not a formality. We owe our partner thanks for the moments of love we lived together. And the forgiveness goes both ways: forgive him and forgive yourself. We are human, we make mistakes, and that is entirely normal.
If the feelings run deep, Peruquois suggests putting them on paper and writing your partner a letter. Say everything unsaid, give thanks and forgive for all of it. The letter is not meant to be sent, it does something else.
Stage four. Releasing the shared future
Your plans, dreams and ideas together have not gone anywhere. You run into them in your head from time to time, and that not only hurts, it blocks you from building a future that matches the dream you have now.
Peruquois suggests writing down everything the two of you meant to do, and then looking carefully at how much of your present striving and your grief over broken hopes rests on exactly that. Then it is released with love. Recognize and understand: this mattered once, and now it has lost all meaning. It is only an echo of your former dreams. You can write those dreams a farewell letter and burn it, if you like that kind of ritual.
How to know the person is released
The sign is simple. You stop thinking about him.
Peruquois describes the state in more detail: you no longer hear his voice in your head, you do not react to memories of your life together, you feel no pain and you no longer grieve the separation.
And then there is room in your life for new love. The room is quite literal: where argument, hurt and an unlived shared plan lived for years, an enormous amount of attention and energy is freed.
If you want to go through this to the end and close a story that has followed you for more than a year, take Peruquois's course Letting Go of Past Relationships.
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