You Gotta Go Through It!

Now, how do you deal with all this emotionally through all of this? You know, I hear a lot of guys saying that, how do I deal, how do I deal, how do I deal? And a lot of men that I talk to going through this, it's kind of their first major life holy shit. Maybe they lost a parent, which is, you know, no, not a small thing, or loved one or something like that, lost a job. But this is the biggest major holy shit moment for them. And they're like, and this hurts, and this sucks. And I wake up every morning going, wow, still hurts, still sucks. When's this going to stop? How do I deal with this? And you don't want to hear this— I've talked about this before in other videos— that there's a book that I read to my daughter. And I remember as a kid, we used to do this little song about going on a bear hunt, and they would say like, you come to all these different obstacles in the song, in the little story, and you come to some forest and like you can't go around it, can't go over it, gotta go through it. And then you go through the forest and you come to another obstacle, and then at the end you see the bear and you get scared and you have to go back through all these obstacles again. It's a very big life lesson kind of thing. Can't avoid it, gotta go through it. So dude, you're gonna go through hell and it's gonna suck, and there are gonna be days that you're gonna be like, I don't know if I can do this. Yeah, you can. And you will, and it will suck, and it will suck. And you know how you feel right now? There are going to be days where it sucks even worse. Why am I saying all this? I'm being realistic. Because guess what? At the end of the day, years down the line, when you're going through all this— and you will get over the hump, and it will be better, believe it or not— you're going to go, this— I know you're not going to believe this, but you're going to say, I'm kind of glad I went through all that. I learned a lot during all that. That's what everybody that goes through some major life thing, you know, somebody that has endured some kind of like life-altering disease, cancer, something like that, lost all their money, and then you see them later in life when they're doing much better and you're like, if you could change anything, would you change that chapter of your life? Of your life? And you're like— and they're like, you know, actually no, that's made me who I am. I learned a lot during that time. I went through it, I saw what I was made of, and in the end I'm like If I could put up with that and come out smelling pretty good at the end, looking pretty good, I'm a pretty tough dude. I got it going on. Nothing can stop me. Life just said, what do you— oh yeah, take this. And I was just like, what else you got? Um, that's the attitude you got to take through this. It's going to suck, but in the end— what, what, is there a way to expedite this process to the healing process to get over this quicker. So expedite means to get over this quicker. Yeah, if there's some advice I can give you in that realm, it would be to limit contact with the ex as much as possible. Sounds like she knows the way to poke at you and hurt you and, and, and, you know, make you quote unquote suffer. That's not unusual for these circumstances. Seems like once you're down, they just want to kick you while you're down even more. So how do you stop that? Process, you don't allow them to kick you. You don't unnecessarily contact them. You don't unnecessarily respond to contact that's not about the kids or finances or whatever. You just let it go in one ear and out the other. And eventually they're like, oh, this guy's no fun. And they stop pestering you and they stop contacting you. Some people, understandably— I know this may not be necessarily your situation since separation's been going on for so long— um, still have very much an emotional attachment to their ex. And those little touches and contacts, whatever you want to call it, don't help with splitting that, that connection that they have. You know, they— there's, there's still very much— there's still a part of them that's still in love and still wishes for this, you know, relationship to continue. And the only way to break the spell that you're under, so to speak, that addiction to them in essence, is to stop with the contact as much as humanly possible. And then you'll notice a day goes by, you don't think about them. 2 days, 3 days, a week, a month, and then you're like, oh, the spell has been broken. And then you can— you're more apt to continue on in life and, and do things in a healthy manner, as opposed to continuously being in contact with them. I often use the analogy of you're an alcoholic, you don't get better by taking just a little sip of alcohol every now and then. You can't do that. You have to put the bottle down and get the hell away from it, and then you can break that addiction. Um, so hang tough, buddy. And Scott says that your mental and emotional health are the most important thing. It's true. Um, if it means coughing up a few extra bucks— I know it's more than a few extra bucks potentially— and getting away from the situation and starting over, then do it. That's my advice.