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Visiting Authors

Wayne L. Misner

Wayne L. Misner is owner of Healthcare CIO, a consultant company in New Jersey. He has been in the healthcare field for thirty-five years. In addition, he became the Vice President of Programs and Education for a NJ chapter of Parents Without Partners, where he moderated men and women's groups across the state. For ten years, he had the opportunity to facilitate many groups of men and women who were struggling with not being able to listen. While at the Rehabilitation Hospital he also was a facilitator of the women's group for both inpatients and outpatients.

He is the father of two sons and one daughter and is one of the men he has written about.


Healthcare CIO
10 Wayne Court
Edison, NJ 08820

Uncoupling

You have heard it said, “Caught hook, line and sinker”. However, it is a pleasant caught. A mutual decision most of the time. You both start out in life your own color. Maybe you are red, they are yellow and as a couple when you are both mixed together you become a pair that is orange. This works as long as you two stay together. The longer you two are one the more difficult it becomes when one of you (or both) decide to call it quits and go your separate ways. For the longer you were orange the more you have forgotten what red/blue felt like. Who are you? How do you get your self back? Why does this feel like you're cutting a piece of your body off and throwing it away? How long am I going to feel this way? Will I ever heal? 

Uncoupling has been compared to a death. Actually it is. It is the death of the relationship. That “hook, line and sinker”, especially the “hook”, is so painful to have removed. It is like having major surgery without the benefit of an anesthesia. Many emotions run though your mind. As you already know emotions are not logical. In fact, with so many conflicting emotions simultaneously you feel you are irrational. Some of these emotions are, sadness, anger, and grief.

Why you ask do I have these emotions when I wanted this to happen? The sadness comes with having lost a shared, precious dream. The anger comes because you fell in love with, and pinned your hopes on dreams. The grief is losing the relationship. The death of the relationship forces a grieving period.  When someone loses a loved one, be it from a broken relationship, the death of a relationship, divorce or death they go through a series of stages.  The time it takes to go through each stage is different for each person.  Timing has a lot to do with who it was, how long you were together, how it ended, who ended it, and many other factors. The sequence of the steps is:

Denial. You can't believe this is happening. Shock, numbness, and believing something will happen to make it change.

 

Anger. Having no hope, loss of heart, feelings of guilt, if I only…

 

Depression. Sadness, hopelessness, the end of the world, I will never be happy again.               

 

Acceptance. Concession, belief, recognition, I will go on.

 

It is possible you will cry within each of the steps above.  It is also possible to go into a new stage for a while, fall back into a previous stage, and go forward once again.

 

So you see that uncoupling is taking the hook out and takes much longer then it took when is was put in and hurts much more coming out than going in.

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