RULE 7

Remember they’re not a monster

It’s easy to demonize your ex. I’ve known people refer to their ex-partners by nicknames such as . . . ah, actually I can’t at present think of any examples I’d want to repeat in print. But they’re usually unprintable variations on The Cheater or The Loser or The Egotist or something of the sort. With lots of extra asterisks.

This certainly has a short-term cathartic effect. However, in the long term it’s destructive – and by that I mean destructive for you, not them. If you allow that anger to fester, to become a part of everyday life, it will take you far longer to shake it off. This is no way to go through life because it won’t make you happy. Far better to do your very best to get to a place where your ex stirs no negative reaction in you at all. That way they have no power over you.

Besides, answer me this. If they’re such a monster, what on earth did you take up with them for in the first place? Are you that blind – or just that stupid? You see? You do yourself no favours. If you cast them as a monster, you have effectively cast yourself as an idiot. Either you rushed into things much faster than anyone with a grain of sense would do, or you completely failed to identify the monster right in front of you. Or both.

Unless . . . you were quite right at the start of the relationship that here was something worth putting some effort into in case it worked, only this time it didn’t. But you couldn’t know that without trying. It might have got a bit messy at the end, but really the two of you were just being human, doing your best, hampered by the human flaws and failings that affect us all.

I know it can take a little while to get to this philosophical point, especially if there’s a long history, and kids, and shared property and so on. But it’s the only place where you can be happy, so it’s worth striding out towards it as soon as you feel halfway able to. People who never reach this point spend the rest of their lives embittered, and often single, lonely, and hating the opposite sex.

I have known couples split up where at least one has painted the other one as a monster, and it doesn’t change anything except how churned up they feel inside, and the whole aftermath continues for far longer. They still end up apart and eventually – almost always – they arrive at a peaceful place, only more battered and bruised than other friends who have taken the quicker and more philosophical route. The worst option of all is to demonize your ex and never progress beyond that point. Because until you can see them as human, you’ll never get over it.