Struggling with a new chapter in life

[Eva]

I'm requesting tips from you to cope with my new life situation. I actually feel a bit embarrassed to even admit having these kinds of issues, but I feel like this is the time to face them head-on.

Short story: I'm learning to live without a romantic relationship for the first time in my (adult) life. I'm confused, anxious and tempted to bypass this chapter by joining Tinder yet again to distract myself. Any concrete tips, advice and/or words of encouragement on how to stick with this besides these growing pains and ultimate confusion? This has got to be the hardest thing I've ever done and I've done a bunch of truly hard stuff during my lifetime. I'm feeling really overwhelmed at this point. 

I've started to go through The Life Purpose Course. I try to give myself slack and time to cope with all of this. I'm trying to eat better, sleep enough and work out. I'm trying to learn about myself by providing myself things that might interest me and not ask too much of myself at this point yet. But I still feel really scared and disoriented, to be honest.


Long story: I've been in the dating scene and in different kinds of relationships (FWB, casually dating, long-term, short-term, monogamous, poly, long-distance, living together & being married) for over 17 years in a row now. And I'm not an old person. So that's quite a big of a chunk of my life and you can tell that I've mastered my fair share of chaining relationships together one after another. During these years I've been fully single and by myself (meaning: not seeing / f*cking / sharing daily occurrences with anybody) for a few months. My latest relationship (1,5 years, LDR) ended less than a week ago and I'm quite devastated cause I had pretty high hopes for us in the long run. Since it was an LDR I've learned to be pretty self-sufficient. I have my own life, friends, work, and routines. I have traveled alone and cultivated my personal development practice alone. But I feel like I still relied pretty heavily on the other person to hold a space for me on a daily basis. It's is understandable, but now I'm facing being truly by myself after this latest endeavor ended. I recognize that I have codependency issues because of emotional issues in my childhood and I've been trying to compulsively fix them through other people. I've been in therapy for 3,5 years and it has helped me a lot. Yet I still feel shaky about this situation. I have trouble knowing and liking myself, and I tolerate being completely alone only short periods in time and only under certain situations. I need a lot of reassurance and involvement from my romantic partner, which apparently caused this last one to end. And I understand him. I don't feel like I'm needy or clingy, but I've been described as "intense" in my romantic relationships. I have a tendency to lose myself more or less to other people. All of this makes it even harder for me to like myself. On the surface, I'm really self-sufficient and avoid asking for help even too much. But when the romantic relationships evolve deep enough I seem to get "intense", grasping for a deeper and deeper connection. I am ready to take responsibility for all of these traits and try to improve them. 

Thank you for your help. I really need it.

[Gili Trawangan]

I'm not sure if you will find this helpful, but I think what you need is to create a connection with your True Self. You're on this forum, so you know what that means. Discovering that you are not separate from anything else is true fulfillment. And in the process you also discover, if you haven't already, that no relationship or object can make you happy, only you can. And happiness is available every single moment, it's your nature. Self-realization, in a nutshell.

[Eva]

Just now, Gili Trawangan said:

I'm not sure if you will find this helpful, but I think what you need is to create a connection with your True Self. You're on this forum, so you know what that means. Discovering that you are not separate from anything else is true fulfillment. And in the process you also discover, if you haven't already, that no relationship or object can make you happy, only you can. And happiness is available every single moment, it's your nature. Self-realization, in a nutshell.

Yes, that is helpful. Thank you. That's very true and resonates to be right. It's still kinda lofty ideal to me since I'm down on the dumps and surviving day by day. But that's an ultimate truth to keep in mind at all times. Thank you for replying.