Rosie Green To move on you have to let go - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Life Relationships Rosie Green To move on you have to let go By Rosie Green - July 24, 2022 Actor Damian Lewis has found love with rock chick Alison Mosshart 14 months after his wife Helen McCrory died. Given the couple’s celebrity status, we can safely assume their relationship reveal (public displays of affection at a summer party) was stage-managed. Ergo they got together a few months ago. And this – stay with me at the back! – would mean it was within a year of his loss. Celeb relationships are not like ours, whereby going public just involves sharing a packet of cheese and onion and a snog at your local. Lewis’s reveal divided opinion. Many were joyous, but some were indignant. ‘What would Helen say?’ the naysayers tsk-ed. Well, we know what she would say because she wrote about it in a letter to her kids. She said, ‘I want Daddy to have girlfriends, lots of them.’ Which shows serious emotional generosity. It also got me thinking about moving on. There’s something about the subject that’s deeply emotional, both for those in the throes of loss/heartbreak and those observing it. I know it’s different when someone’s partner dies, as opposed to them leaving – as happened to me – but it still triggers intense emotions. Image: David Venni I know this because I get asked all the time: how do you feel about your ex being with someone else? Well, in those raw early days of my separation, the idea of my ex with someone else was agony. A gut-wrenching, sick-making, all-consuming thought that reached into my very soul and took a stranglehold on my sense of self. I’m not alone in experiencing such feelings. There’s a reason it’s the stuff of songs, films and books. In my new role as advisor to the heartbroken, I recently got a letter from a guy whose partner had left him for another. ‘Every time I imagine her with a new man the pain is as real as if someone had stabbed me in the stomach,’ he wrote. So why does it hurt so badly to see your ex with someone else? Obviously, it offers finality: another person has become your ex’s focus. And, chances are, you have become an obstacle in the way of them fully enjoying their new love. While researching my book on heartbreak, I learned that your romantic relationship is intrinsically wrapped up in your sense of self, so when someone leaves you it bruises your soul. You lose rationality. Your partner may leave for myriad reasons that have nothing to do with you, but you still default to thinking it must be something you are lacking. And it’s Darwinian – as humans we are hardwired to want to keep our mate. So we pour all our efforts into trying to figure out why it happened, so it doesn’t happen again. But, as I wrote back to this man, there are different, more rational ways of thinking about the situation that are a lot more helpful to recovery. A new love doesn’t have to devalue the old one. And while it’s healthy to reflect on your own part in a relationship breakdown, it’s not helpful to castigate yourself for your failings for ever more. Instead, see the situation as your best friend might – more a reflection on the leaver, or as part of life’s unpredictability. People evolve, want different things – your worth is not necessarily linked to that. Recovery is about detaching. You do not want to be stalking your ex on social media for the foreseeable (a friend was still monitoring hers daily ten years on from their separation; we unfollowed his account together). Books, films, adverts – they all sell us the idea that for love to be valid, it has to be the only one you’ve ever felt. Which is unrealistic. I’m sure Alison and Damian are battling with some of these feelings. Just because they’re talented, beautiful and rich doesn’t mean they don’t experience the same basic emotions. As for me and how I now feel about my ex moving on? I’m genuinely not bothered. Which seems like closure to me. @lifesrosie Read more of Rosie Green’s columns here RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR Rosie Green Will this be the winter of our discontent Rosie Green Want to find true love Follow your nose Rosie Green I have a love rival – his phone DON' T MISS Fiona Bruce Sometimes I struggle not to cry November 14, 2021 17 beautiful 2021 diaries to help you to look forward to December 4, 2020 Why women leave men for women What’ s fuelling the rise of April 28, 2019 Hollywood veteran Laura Linney on plastic surgery friendship and her stellar July 3, 2017 You can shop the khaki jumpsuit from Holly Willoughby’ s new M& S July 17, 2019 The secrets and lies behind this happy family photo April 11, 2021 It’ s cocktail hour Olly Smith’ s cocktail recipes and Eleanor Maidment s canapé November 14, 2021 BBC One has revealed its Christmas TV schedule and there’ s lots December 2, 2020 YOU Beauty Box August Reviews August 1, 2017 Rome has been named the cheapest major city to visit in August 7, 2019 Popular CategoriesFood2704Life2496Fashion2240Beauty1738Celebrity1261Interiors684 Sign up for YOUMail Thanks for subscribing Please check your email to confirm (If you don't see the email, check the spam box) Fashion Beauty Celebrity Life Food Privacy & Cookies T&C Copyright 2022 - YOU Magazine. 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