How To Date: How to cope with heartbreak and rejection

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0:42Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. How to Date is proudly sponsored by Morrisons. Welcome to How To Date, the podcast that teaches you what you need to know about navigating modern romance. I'm podcaster and author Elizabeth Day. And I'm Mel Schilling, Relationship Coach. And every week, we aim to give you the skills you need to show up as yourself on the apps and in real life. And I just wanted to let you know that if you don't want to wait each week for new episodes, please join our wonderful community of subscribers where you can binge all episodes now ad-free all at once.

1:30Just follow the link in the show notes. Hello, Mel. Hello, gorgeous. So you are wearing beautiful pink today. Thank you. Is it magenta? It is my signature colour. I'd say it's a magenta. It feels like it has a blue undertone. It's stunning on you. Thank you. And it's ushering in the pink of romance into our lives. Like rose quartz. Exactly. And last week we spoke about taking it to the next level. Yes, we did. And this week it's going to be a big one. We are discussing heartbreak and rejection. This is going to be emotional. It is. Yeah. And we want to reassure every single listener out there that we have been through it and we do understand and we have an extraordinary guest coming up who really can speak to the depth of this experience because it is something that is so unbelievably gut-wrenching, particularly if you've got to that stage where you think you found the person, where you've made yourself vulnerable, you think you're on the same page, and then something can happen that can throw you into a tailspin and leave you facing a very different kind of life, or at least that's how it feels at the time.

2:46Yeah. And what I would say about this episode to is that it might be a little bit tough for some people to listen to. And if you're in a position now where you're going through a breakup or if it's very recent and very raw, maybe just earmark this one to listen to a little bit later because it might be a little confronting. But having said that, there's going to be some really good information in here. So when you're ready, come back to it and listen to this and hopefully get lots of lessons and support from us here too. Thank you for saying that, Mel. I have been through a divorce and I've been through multiple relationship breakups.

3:23And I think they're some of the hardest times of my life and we will get more into that. But what I want to say from the outset is that Mel and I are living proof that you can survive it. And I used to hate it when people said to me, you'll look back one day and you'll be grateful for this breakup. It's the least helpful thing you can say when someone's really in the thick of it. annoyingly I now look back and I am grateful for those breakups I'm grateful that I'm not with those people that I'm not in those relationships I'm also grateful for what they taught me and one of the main things that they taught me was that I could survive them yes and let's call out the elephant in the room you and I are both married we're both in happy relationships now but dear listener, we have been there.

4:14And we're not talking to you today from a position of smug married. We're talking to you from a position full of empathy because we have been there and we know how hard it is. So please take this in the spirit for which it's intended. Beautifully put. And on that note, I would love to bring in our fabulous guest because she will be able to speak to so much of this. And I know that so many of you will already know who she is and her story. And we wanted to bring her in straight away because why waste time on us? Right. When we've got the fabulous Michelle Ellman, the life coach and author who you might know from ITV's This Morning.

4:56She's the author of bestselling books, including The Joy of Being Selfish and The Selfish Romantic. So she really does know a thing or two about modern romance. in 2024 Michelle got engaged to her partner of three years she posted on Instagram the first time she had shared his face with her 500 ,000 followers within an hour she received a DM that would change her life forever it was from one of her followers revealing Michelle's fiance had been unfaithful I can't even imagine how that must have felt but she's with us today Michelle, a very, very warm welcome to How To Date. Thanks for having me on.

5:36It's honestly so unreal being in front of both of you because I'm such a big fan. Oh, that is so lovely of you. Well, we're huge admirers of yours. I wonder if we could structure our conversation into three parts. So the first one will be dealing with the shock, the immediacy of what happens. The second part will be dealing with the pain and how that affects you. And the third one is the bit that we want to get to, which is the survival, the recovery, and the lessons that we learn along the way. Michelle, can I take you back to that moment that you had this horrendous discovery? What was the shock like for you?

6:11I've never really had anything like this where I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. Like I've, for context, I've been through some shit in the world. So I've had 15 surgeries, I've gone through PTSD, trauma, all at a very young age. So I'm a tough person. So for something to rattle me and rattle me like this, it was the whiplash of, I was engaged on the Saturday, on the Sunday, I posted it 24 hours after it happened. And within an hour, I got a DM. And that day, he was with me the whole time. Like he was with me when I got the first message, the first message said hey is your fiance and his name I trusted him so much I thought it was a colleague so I was like oh this person knows you when I say I trusted him like not only did I trust him my friends trusted him my family trusted him he had asked my dad for his blessing in December um yeah how long had you been together when you got engaged he is so I'm so sorry and how long had he been unfaithful for?

7:19Six months. The trauma of that, I mean, is there such a thing as betrayal trauma? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So the thinking around trauma is that it takes about three months to settle in. And I would say that's accurate to my lived experience, that the first three months, I couldn't understand why I wasn't more angry. And I couldn't understand why I wasn't more sad. All I felt was grateful and a relief. I was like, I was saved. Thank God this woman messaged me. Like, at least I didn't marry him. I was going to wait until our marriage day to share a photo of him. That's where, yeah, it was survival mode.

7:59I remember there were points, especially within the first week, there would be times I would just stare out the window. Like, the motto for that phase of my life was one day at a time, even just one hour at a time. And so that first day I didn't make any decisions about whether to stay or leave. He shockingly left five minutes after I found out. So he left you. So he didn't leave me, like the relationship. We were actually on the way to go to London. And he recalls me telling him to leave the house. I don't remember me saying that. I don't remember a lot of that day. And so he thought he was being respectful by respecting what I wanted.

8:36Well, I wish he'd had that respect six months prior. Well, yeah. And also you don't actually leave. And I ended up getting all the information from, for lack of a better term, the other woman. I actually called her. And at this point, I didn't trust anything he said anyway. So she told me everything. And she wasn't the only one. There were two other women, which he admitted to. and then the ironic thing is because we've been trying for a baby for eight months I had booked a solo trip because that's one of my like top goals in life was like I was I've always wanted to go on a solo trip so I thought like well since I'm gonna be pregnant soon let's go and I decided to still go and I think that's actually where a lot of my healing took place like I it's not what I planned and it wasn't what I was expecting at all but like I'm tough I can do this and like it was my it's my first heartbreak like he was the first guy I ever loved and I still do love him that's the like sad part and I think sometimes people get scared of saying that because especially when I say it amongst my friends they worry that I'll get back together with him but I'm a big believer in you don't decide to stay based on how much you love a person because actually you'll always stay especially if it's a long-term relationship and then I called him at like six in the morning and I was like, it's over.

9:58I love you. I probably always will. And I forgive you. I actually forgave him immediately. But this can't work. There's no trust. There's no respect. There's no any of it. Did he have an explanation as to why he chose to do this? So my personal belief from my coaching, learning, training around psychology is you cheat for two reasons. One, because of the individual, so because of him, and two, because of the relationship. People who cheat for those different reasons behave in very different ways. So if they want out of the relationship, they leave clues everywhere and they want to be found out.

10:39He was not one of them because he deleted all the evidence. Literally, the only way I could have found out was through this woman. And ultimately, if there was something wrong with the relationship, he wouldn't have proposed. So it was a him problem. And what he says is, I never felt good enough for you. And I always thought one day you'd find out how awful a person I was. And essentially, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy of like, I said to him, like, it's really sad because you were good enough for me. You've always been good enough for me. But you then acted in line with that belief. And that's what made you not good enough.

11:14But he never even told me that beforehand. So interesting that there's this lack of honesty. and I say that without judgment. There was just a fundamental lack of honesty there. Honesty, it sounds like, with himself, about himself as well. But there's so much that I want to pick up on in that story that you have expressed so powerfully. So thank you, first of all. One of them is, as you so rightly put, there's a difference between love and the actions of a person. You can still love someone even when they betray you in the worst possible ways, even when, I'm not saying he was, but even when they are abusive.

11:55I have personal experience of that in the sense that I was in an abusive relationship, mostly emotional abuse, once physical. And I remember when that physical incident happened, vividly thinking, I don't want to tell anyone. Because if I tell any of my friends or loved ones, I know that they will say I should leave and I don't want to hear that because then I'll have to do it. And I think that that's a really important distinction to make. Also, as it pertains to the aftermath of a breakup or a rejection, you can still love someone and it's still be right that you are not with them. and whoever it was who gave me that advice take it hour by hour I was lucky enough to have a best friend Emma who you know who's also a psychotherapist who is unofficially my life coach and I remember her saying do whatever you need to do whatever it is on any given day that you feel you need to do within the parameters of reason do it if you need the bottle of red wine you need a bottle of red wine if you want to text that person text them now not everyone would agree with that and as it turned out because she'd given me permission to do whatever I needed to do I didn't need to do all of the things yeah but it was about having grace for myself in whatever I was feeling and not feeling guilty about the feeling itself because there's enough to beat yourself up about at that stage well so the do whatever you need to do I I believe in that the one thing that I was like I really want to date sorry this is amazing to hear because I did that too yeah and everyone judged it but it was there was not a moment I've regretted it it was the hope I needed it was reclaiming my sexuality after especially after trying for a baby like that's not a romantic process no matter what anyone says I met great wonderful emotionally intelligent guys and because I was so fresh from a breakup I was so transparent and they were so transparent with me And like, especially casual relationships get treated like this dirty, trashy thing.

13:58It was far from that. Like, we both had a duty of care to each other in a casual setting. That's so interesting, Mel, because it relates so much to what we have said about getting to know yourself and being able to show up authentically. And I wonder if there is a world in which, as Michelle and I experienced, can you use dating casually as a way to do that? Absolutely. And I love the way you said you basically went into a verbal contract with these men that you had these casual relationships with. So it's honest. Yeah. It's adult. You know, it's fair. There's consent there. No one gets hurt. Let's reclaim the word rebound.

14:39Yes. I'm so here for that. It doesn't have to be a negative thing. People say it in a judgmental way, don't they? Oh, that's just a rebound relationship. But that can be so positive and therapeutic. Trampolining is fun. Yes. As long as you're wearing a good bra. Did you have any fear at this point? So we're talking about the immediate aftermath, that three-month period where you were just still processing and possibly in fight or flight. Was there a fear attached to being single? There was a fear around my age, if I'm being really honest. I was 30 trying for a baby. I was doing it all right. I know 30 is not old.

15:19I want to be very clear about that. But there was a thing that morning where I went, what if this means me not having a baby? And what if I believe there will be another love of my life? But what if I don't meet him in time? And there was a moment, it was like this voice almost outside of myself of like, I'd rather never be a mother than be a mother to his kid. I don't want to bring another version of him in the world and I've never thought that I've never had that thought of like I think I'm okay if I'm not a mother then I think it was almost like this more adult version of a realization I had when I was 21 where my first relationship was uh quite emotionally abusive and horrible and I remember I left that relationship and the first feeling I had was relief and I was like single is better than a bad relationship and then I realized like this now more grown-up version is it's better to not have a kid than have a kid with a father who either is not going to participate or not be a good role model to that child

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17:21I have a very specific question, which is whether you both believe in the block the X tactic where there's no communication, you block them from all forms of social media. yes I do I think you need some space after the breakup I think there is a potential to be friends at some point but I also think for healing to take place you need a period of no contact you don't get that access to me anymore yes I think that's key I've done both ways and although it was harder the blocking and no contact was probably the better one for me and the thing that really made sense to me was, no, you don't have access to me as a friend, as a partner, and you also don't have access to my life through the window of social media.

18:10Mel, do you have a strong view on this? I absolutely agree with you. I really do. In fact, I've had conversations with some clients where we've taken that even further to not just block the ex-partner, but their friends as well. And that's not an F you to the friends, but letting them know I'm blocking you for a I can't see him on your profile, him in shared photos with you. So just removing that whole sphere to make sure that there are no trigger points. I love that you talk about giving yourself grace. I think that's something that our listeners could really learn from and take on board because I think when things like this happen, there's a tendency to be really hard on yourself and to be looking for irrational things like, what did I do to deserve this?

18:55Not that you ever would, but that's where the brain goes, of course. I think that's where my life coaching training came in. Because I think if you start that, you're going to do damage to yourself. Like, that's where your pain of the heartbreak is actually self-inflicted. There's a life coaching exercise I give of writing 100 reasons why you're dateable. And I do it. I recommend it all the time, but I've also done it. I know what I bring to the table. Like, it's on you that it's your loss. And it's on you that you mess it up. I'm not taking accountability for something I did not do. Preach! Absolutely brilliant.

19:30Click that. Before we move on to the second part of the process, which is the pain and how it affects us, I wanted to ask about rejection and heartbreak from the other perspective. So perhaps someone who has done the breaking up and how much self-sabotage might play into that. Mel, could you just give us a little insight into how heartbreak plays out in that scenario? Well, it's interesting, Michelle, in your ex's story, you know, you describe him feeling so unworthy that he engaged in behaviour that pushed you away and ultimately ended the relationship. And that is something that we see, you know, with people with really low self-esteem, they often, it's this sense of, well, I'm going to hurt you before you can hurt me.

20:20and it can unravel some of the best relationships. It's a desperate set of behaviours on his behalf really, isn't it? If that's where it's coming from, if it's coming from that desperation for validation above and beyond what he was getting from his relationship, it's an absolute cry for help. I wonder if we can talk now about the process you went through after those initial three months where you went on your solo trip, you threw yourself into dating, you had your sister and your loved ones that you could call on. Part of that was numbness and staring out of the window. And then you get to the point, I imagine, where the reality begins to hit you.

21:06Did you feel at that stage, sort of three months in, that you were reconfiguring the life you thought you were going to have. Yeah, I missed his family a lot. I had a really great relationship with his family because my family's not in this country. They really were my support. The loss of the companionship was a really big thing. And especially at the three months mark, I started thinking about how as a society, there's an author called Robert Putnam who talks about loss of social capital. We have become so reliant on our romantic partners that it is so much more than just the loss of the person I was dating.

21:47It was my best friend. It was my family. Like, I've never had to go through something alone for the last three years. And that makes you feel so lonely. And I think also when like the crying and everything hit, like there's a part of me that was like, is this ever going to end? The lowest I probably felt, being completely honest was about a month ago and it was the weekends like the weekends were just so hard and it's a loneliness I don't really think I've ever really gone through and and the reason why I love him is I still love him is because he actually gave me more love than he took away and like I know everyone thinks I should be focusing on the infidelity but the loss of that I just try yeah yeah michelle it's the toughest toughest thing it is so tough and i'm so proud of you for living through it i also feel like it's something that's not really spoken enough about like that it is the practical day-to-day that is a little bit harder or like there would be moments where i'd get off the tube and I was like oh I should check with him whether we have milk and I was like oh like that's not my life right now and you kind of you do forget yeah it's that feeling isn't it when you wake up in the mornings and your first thought is to roll over and your partner will be there and then you remember sort of five minutes I was waking up and that horror of abandonment That's what it triggered in me.

23:30And it's such a difficult and horrible place to be. And like you, weekends were soul crushing. More importantly, people move on. Like life keeps going and you feel like you're still stuck. I won't lie. I had a few, why are we still talking about this? And I was like, well, I didn't really feel it in the first three months, but I'm feeling it now. And I think sometimes that's where like breakups don't come in order. and so when all your friends your friends are doing the best they can my friends are certainly doing the best I can but they also have things they're going through and they they supported as long as they could and then at some point I have to stand on my own two feet which unfortunately also coincides with the point where I felt the worst yeah Mel what advice would you give to anyone listening to this right now who is in that stage that Michelle so powerfully describes where maybe they really need to work on building up their own self-esteem, but what do they reach for to do it?

24:32I'm going to go back to what you said earlier about giving yourself some grace, you know, and I think this is where being kind to yourself is so, so important here because, you know, we've all been through breakups and one of the things that we learn is that one of the hardest things is about the way we treat ourselves. Now, thankfully for you, you've got a lot of training in this area and you're very self-aware. So I'm hearing that you're able to separate out some of that self-talk, but still, as you're highlighting today, it's very raw right now. And like any grief process, it's not linear. There's two steps forward, three steps back.

25:11And I think it's very insightful there that you've pointed out that your friends have moved on. They sort of have this idea that she's gone through a breakup. We'll give her some love now for, you know, 17.4 days and then we'll move on. But you're here now.

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26:35That idea of being pitched into this new world where your future vision of life has been snatched away from you. Do you think, Mel, that that also presents an opportunity? Absolutely. Absolutely. I guess you've got to arrive there in your own time and space, don't you? You're only as an individual, will you know if you've arrived there, but absolutely it's opportunity, you know, as, as all transitions are, once you can separate yourself from some of the pain and move through that. And of course, the only way through it is through it, um, as you're experiencing right now, Michelle, and thank you again so much for sharing this with us because I don't know about you darling but I can feel it yeah we can feel we can feel what you're experiencing right now what's interesting about it coming at different phases though is actually that hope and that possibility of the future actually came very early on so it's kind of carried me through my summer I joke I had a hot girl summer I really did because I had a free diary which means I could say yes spontaneously it made me question a lot of things I thought I wanted in my life because you become a different person so what you want becomes different as well and then also in the dating I was like what's the one thing I didn't do the last time I was single and what's the opportunity I get to do now and the one thing I probably had slight regret around is I'm a very safety conscious person and I've always been quite careful around like having someone in my apartment and as a result I probably didn't have as much fun as I wanted to have because I was so nervous and I was like, I'm actually, I'll still be like safe and do all the checks, especially on dating apps of they're real people and all of that.

28:25But I wanted to let go of the fear around it. And so it was that thing of like, I get this opportunity again to be single. And I truly think we talk about being single in such an awful way in society. And I just wish people knew the joy and the power that it had. Well, you've just changed it from saying, I have to be single to. I get to be. I get to be single. I think that's very powerful. And I also relate to that drawing a discreet veil over it. But I definitely, as someone who had been in a series of monogamous relationships in the age of 19 to 36, I got divorced. Different people, but essentially back to back.

29:04I was like, I need to get out there and sow some oats. And I did that totally unapologetically. And it was brilliant. I don't regret a single second of it. Me neither. And I look back on it with a lot of fondness. also glad that it's in my rear view mirror, but really glad that I did it. There were moments when I was dating, I was like, I can't believe I would have died not having experienced this. I love that mindset. I was actually going to get married to a man without having to experience this. Yes. We'll talk about it when we're off. Don't talk about how dating in your 30s is so much better than your 20s.

29:40That's another thing. Because people are more self-aware, people are more emotionally intelligent, and we always talk about it like past baggage but actually people have lived a past and that's okay because they've also learned from it yeah I just want to pick up on what we were saying there about working through something and living through something and that being the only way to go on the other side of it and I think that's so true and I also think that heartbreak can sometimes feel as we've discussed very like grief and the metaphor that I reach for when I think about grief in my life is that it's not that I've ever gotten over it.

30:17It's that it's like a tiny drop of red paint in a bucket of white paint. You stir it together and it will forever change the colour of your life and of that bucket of paint. It will become this kind of pale pink. But there's something really extraordinary about that too, that in a way that's a means that you will always be shaped by this thing that you experience both the bad and the good that there's something about that that actually informs how you experience life the texture and I think that's really important all of that stuff is is if you want if you wash away the whole relationship and diminish it and just want to focus on he's an asshole you don't get those gifts whereas I'm like I learned so much I'm so grateful for that experience if that's the only experience I get of having been in love I'm glad it happened there is no part of me that regrets even if I knew how it ended I would have done it again oh better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all let's move on to the final part which is the survival the recovery and the lessons we've already heard so much about that from your perspective Michelle I suppose one big question is can you forgive someone who who has treated you badly or not turned out to be the person you thought they were?

31:40And should you forgive someone for your own benefit? Mel, what's your take on that? Wow. I'm very interested in the idea of post-traumatic growth as opposed to the stress that we talk about more often. And I think one of the aspects of that, so in order to move through that process and actually grow through it and grow beyond it is a certain type of forgiveness. Now, whether that is forgiveness of the person or the behavior or of yourself, I think that that varies given any, whatever situation you're in. But I think there has to be an element of forgiveness because that is a function of letting go.

32:25And until you let go of the angst, you cannot move through it. I love that you say forgiveness of yourself can be part of that because it very often is that, isn't it? It's forgiveness of yourself for making the decisions, but you did the best that you could with the available information at the time. Michelle, have you forgiven him? Yes, I did immediately. I did it the next day. I was like, I forgive you. People might not understand. I was about to say, that's so impressive. How did you do it? But you know what? At the moment, I didn't know either. And I don't know whether it's because he might not have been the best partner, but he was the best family I knew.