In today's blog I'm going to talk to you guys about why the rebound person doesn't matter. I felt this was a really important discussion to have because I have so many people reaching out to me about rebound relationships. There's lots of comparison going on, there's a lot of broken hearts, and many people that are really struggling to get over this person that they were with.
In my opinion, if you haven't taken the time to heal from your previous relationship before getting into a new one, it's technically a rebound. I don't care how long you guys were thinking about breaking up. It's still technically a rebound if you haven't taken that time to reset yourself, find out who you are again, and recalibrate.
It's hard to see your ex doing all the things with someone else that they would have done with you if you were still together, but I'm going to give you reassurance that it doesn't matter. Rebounds fail ninety percent of the time. When people reach out to me and ask things like, “what if it's been two years” or, “what if it's been four years?” It doesn't matter.
When you're thinking about someone that is in a relationship after you – they may have moved in with the person, they may have had kids with the person, or got married to the person. It doesn't matter. All we're going to focus on is you. What is it that you can do to bring the lens back on yourself? Take full accountability for how you showed up in the decision that you made because I can tell you at some point you probably saw the red flags. You saw something that wasn't legit and you decided to continue this relationship with that person.
What is it that you can change from within yourself? What is it that you need to do to prevent yourself from getting in the same situation in the future? That's the real question you should be asking yourself. The instant that you let some things slide is the instant that you essentially settled for this person because you felt like you couldn't find a better option or you just got lazy.
Men are kind of lazy. We find that one person and we think this is going to be the one that we're gonna spend the rest of our lives with. That's a really limiting belief. We put more effort in deciding the type of car we're going to buy than the person that we're going to spend the rest of our life with. If you ask me, that's just a sad thing to do. That's not something that you want to get yourself into.
Think about if you have kids with this person and you already know that you don't love them. You don't completely love them. You don't see yourself putting up with their snoring or their bad habits for the next five years, but you decide to make these long-term commitments with them. You're deciding to buy houses with them and get married to them, but then once they're not happy and they decide to go out and find someone else that is better suited for them, they're going to go ahead and do it. You have to be okay with that.
People are not happy when I put this type of spin on the breakup and the situation. I know you're broken-hearted, you don't know what to do, you're really struggling to get over this person, but I'm going to always bring it back to you. If you're my client I'm going to always bring it back to you. What is it that you could do to prevent this from happening in the future?
That's a high level of accountability and I feel that a lot of issues in life can be cured by having that high level of accountability. A person's flaws or a person's weaknesses is just a reflection of what you have within you, things that you're not comfortable with, and you're just projecting it on to them. There's a quote that goes, “you teach best what you most need to learn.”
So what is it that you can do next time to not get yourself attached to someone who you know is going to be unhealthy for you? You can't try to change them. I think that's the problem. We try to change that person to see if they'll either alter their behavior or start accommodating you more. It doesn't work that way. Just because you give someone more love, they're not going to want to change for you.
When that person goes on to the next person you start to think they're going to be giving them all the love and affection that you wanted, but they're not. That's just who they are and at a person's core they are not going to be able to change that.
Don't let this beat you down. Stop comparing yourself to this other person. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is you and your narrative and how you're going to move on. That's the only thing that matters so put energy into healing yourself and moving forward and stop keeping one foot in the past. Stop wondering what you could have done better or what you could have done differently because chances are they could have done something better and differently as well.