A few months ago, my relationship of seven years broke down. For a long time, I had struggled to be the person my partner deserved me to be. Seven years is a long time. We were engaged to be married. We had wedding and house-buying plans. We argued good naturedly over names for the children we would have. I was confident that I knew what was ahead.

Last autumn, she chose to move to the other side of the world for work. I knew there were tough times ahead, but I believed we’d make it. I was due to fly out to see her just three weeks after she left. The day I was due to fly, it snowed. How simple. And random. It snowed, and no planes flew that day. If I had gone one day earlier. If it had snowed one day later. These are the thoughts I catch, and put away. Over and over again, some days. And other days, they come faster than I can notice or catch them. The days when I am surrounded by people with partners and children.  

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us”

It’s not a DBT phrase. I don’t even remember where I saw it. But I think it captures the spirit of DBT perfectly. The magic word ‘willingness’. The concept of ‘letting go’. Radical acceptance. Flexibility.

The snow didn’t help. And it’s very possible that things would have gone badly even if we had seen each other at Christmas.  But the truth is: my partner suffered and my relationship ended because I am broken. And although I work so very hard in therapy, I am not sure whether I can mend myself. I know that until I am mended, I cannot be in a relationship. So here I am, with the permanent lump of loss in the back of my throat, fighting to accept that the children whose names we so hotly debated will never exist. That my engagement ring sits in a box in my bathroom. That I will never again go to sleep beside her.

Letting go.  But trying to hold on- to hope, that there might be a life which is waiting for me.

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