I was just sitting there minding my own business, drinking my Peppermint Mocha.  Then I heard the words “Yes, he just decided to call it off and come home.  We are so excited.  Everything is going to be great.”

This young lady was so giddy and just beside herself.  “It’s a Christmas Miracle,” she said.

Their conversation carried across to my table, so I wasn’t eavesdropping.

I tried really hard to continue to mind my own business and work, but their voices kept escalating with excitement that this marriage would be saved.

I am all for a sappy love story and a reunification of a marriage, but I am also a realist and  leary of  “no, contact.. then all of a sudden, I am coming back home.”

I have seen so many hearts hurt in the past 13 years where the person did not want the separation. They were all heart broken moping around and then next month they were back together and life was great… or was it?

If there is one thing I have learned over the years of teaching the 180 Program , just because you say “I’m sorry”, doesn’t always equate to a behavior change.  More times than not it translates into this scenario:

I’m lonely and I know you are too.

 I know you are not in a healthy place emotionally and neither am I.

I know the way you feel about yourself, so I will take full advantage of your low self-esteem and low self- confidence in yourself.

You jump back into the relationship with both eyes closed, because you are lonely too. 

This does not end well.  Here is an ending I have seen more than once:

A week, even a month of pure bliss.  Then something happens and  there is an explosion.  

Words are spoken (usually yelled).  

Anger controls us and it gets physical.

 Now you are once again broken.

The house is destroyed

The earlier scars have been re-injured 

Your new wounds are bleeding profusely.  

They leave.

You yell “never come back”

Next week you get lonely again

and welcome them back home,

because they said “I am sorry”. 

If you have children, they see this dysfunction of a relationship.  They grow up, start having their own relationships….and the cycle starts all over.

In order for this cycle to stop, for a change to actually take place, you need to understand there are 2 people involved, but you can only change you.

Remember that you have to be healthy in your relationship with yourself  in order to walk away from relationships that are codependent and dysfunctional.