Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 195: How Do I Get Over Anger When My Ex Betrayed Me?

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

 Ever been betrayed by someone you love? How about having an ex start dating your best friend after putting you through a toxic relationship? It can be especially painful when you feel like someone has changed for the better...but only for their new partner AFTER you've already experienced the worst of them! In this episode, Matt and the JAMS crew discuss how to let go of your resentment, make peace with and forgive the past, and how to stop worrying about what a toxic ex does after you've cut them out of your life. --- Download our free guide on "How To Move On After Heartbreak" at MoveOnStrong.com --- Email us! You can in touch with the show and give your feedback/thoughts at [e-mail] --- Follow Matt on Insta @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen on Insta @stephenhhussey

You get to say, I left, I was bold, I was confident, I did the difficult thing,. I'm here with the whole Jams crew, Steve and Audrey and Jameson. And today we are answering a question from one of our listeners. This listener is Mariana and she talks about the anger and the resentment that she still feels after being out of a an abusive relationship for 12 months and how it's become an intrusive thought in her life that she cannot forgive this person but wants to move on from these thoughts so that she can just live her own happy and peaceful life. Before we read Mariana's question, I want to make sure if you haven't already, go over to yourdatingsolution.com. This is a specific page that we have set up where you, from a list of multiple choice issues, can select the love life challenge that you are experiencing right now.

And this tool on the website will recommend you the solution from all of the solutions that we've created over the last 15 years that best matches what you're going through in your love life right now go to your dating solution.com and tell it the issue you're having right now and if you're wondering why matt stumbled through that it's because i was dancing in the background and he was distracted by how good it was was Was that it, Matt? Was it the quality of the dancing? Let's go with that, Jameson. Okay. Thanks.

Now we're going with that. On to Mariana's question. This one is from Mariana who says, Hey, Mighty Jams. I am so excited that I have finally decided to reach out and write to you. Let me start by saying a massive thank you for all of the incredible work you do and the profound, and I mean profound, impact it has had on me. I first found you guys after my brother tagged me in Matty's viral Who Pays on a First Date video years ago, and I've been hooked and dedicated as a listener ever since.

But your work is never done, as I find myself in need of your assistance yet again. Thanks to all you do, I was able to recognize and subsequently leave an abusive relationship over 12 months ago. Yippee! I found out today, however, that my ex has started dating one of my closest friends. While I'm not surprised by my ex's behavior, and with time, I know I will make peace with the idea of him dating my friend, I just can't seem to get past my want for some kind of justice for how I was treated during the relationship. I mean, for all I know, he could have made a complete 180

and now make a wonderful partner to my friend. And for her sake, I really hope he has. But what I want even more is to be able to accept what has happened to me, how I was mistreated in that relationship and forgive him wholeheartedly without the need for an apology. My question is, how do I do this?

What a lovely human being you are, Mariana. Your friend has gone off and started dating your ex, one of your close friends, and you're just so, you wish her well and you're so positive and you're saying that you want to move forward without an apology i just think what that's just such a lovely email you're just such a lovely person i thought the same thing unbelievable maturity yeah i'd be living strength sorry that's not helpful yeah audrey would have sliced the tires what else what else would you do in this scenario I you know I think firstly you're you're on another level in terms of your ability to process what's happened I think that one thing that that I really think is important to treat as a

gift that you gave yourself is that you got out of an abusive relationship. The reward is that you got out of it. You get to say, I left, I was bold, I was confident, I did the difficult thing and I started a new life. The fact that this person has gone on with their life, albeit with a close friend of yours, but it could have been anybody. The only reason it's really on your radar is because it's a close friend of yours, right? It would have been with someone else if not your friend and by the way i mean the fact that he started dating one of your closest friends just adds to the picture of this person being someone that uh has no real care for people yeah i was gonna say that it really does just give you more ammunition to just go this really was the right decision yeah i mean gonna say that it really does just give you more ammunition to just go this

really was the right decision yeah i mean it's not that man it's hard to imagine the 180 has happened when this was the next move that you're talking about that this person is just so evolved and has changed and is now a wonderful partner to your friend unfortunately for your friend, unless this person has done an incredible amount of work on themselves in the last 12 months, and these things tend to take years, not months. And I believe if he had done that, she would have had an apology. Yeah, I think that's a great point. So I don't think, I don't think he has done an incredible amount of work no so i don't i think that any any feeling you have of the kind of resentment that someone else got the better deal and someone else got this amazing side of him and you didn't i think is really far-fetched

and and unfortunately for your friend i think that she will find herself with many if not all of the same problems you found yourself with, or they may arise in a different form, but be just as destructive or damaging in their own way. So that feeling, that kind of extra level of resentment that is being stoked by that, I think you can make, you can actually let go of what the bottom line is. And the story that I want you to hold on to that is the real story is that you let go of someone abusive and your life is the better for it. As far as holding on to the resentment from this person, there are always going to be people in our lives who wrong us in ways that it feels difficult to forgive. And forgiveness is a word that is, I always find forgiveness to be a sort of charged word

because it, for, for many of us, it carries the connotation of I'm somehow, uh, I'm somehow releasing this person from the accountability of their actions. I'm what's the word I'm i'm i'm looking for um the word escapes me steven this is where you come in and swoop in with your oxford i have a phd i can't read minds what's the word um for letting someone off exonerating them exonerating yeah i think there's there's this feeling that by forgiving someone we. Exonerating them? Exonerating, yeah. I think there's this feeling that by forgiving someone, we're exonerating them from the blame for their actions or the responsibility for their actions. And the reality is that forgiveness can,

and you don't even have to use the word forgiveness. I think sometimes forgiveness just gets this kind of tangled up. Forgiveness to me can become a form of peacemaking with who this person is in the world and an acceptance of that where we say oh this is you know this is how they chose to live their life and there is a darkness to this person. And, you know, unfortunately, I was someone who collided with that darkness. And it can feel when we've collided with someone's darkness,

the thing that sticks with us is this feeling that it was, you know, there's something significant about me being on the other side of this, me being the victim of this. I'm the one that they targeted with this behavior. And all of that makes it intensely personal and when it feels personal our ego gets wrapped up in it and we can feel especially shamed ashamed that we allowed this to happen we can feel especially weak that we were on the other end of this.

We can feel such hatred and such anger that they did this to us. And it can serve us to step back and go, this actually had nothing to do with me. This had to do with who they are as a human being. It had to do with the way they operate in this world. Because if it truly had to do with me, that would mean that they weren't this person. It was me who made them this person. But we all know that a person who's not that person, regardless of what you did, would not have reacted in that way. And so whether it's going to be them forever or whether it was them then that's who they were then that's what they chose to do then that's how they chose to behave that is about them not you and what that means is that you happen to be a person that collided with that darkness at that time.

And that could have been anybody. And so we can remove this personal nature from it and just say, wow, this is, this is who they were. This is, this is how they operate in the world. And when you leave that, when you left that situation, you left with the person you are, which is by the way, one that will be, uh, will have taken, uh taken incredible strength from your decision to leave, from the agency that you exercised by doing that. You get to leave with you. That person gets left with themselves. And the problems that they created for you and themselves are problems that they carry on with.

And those problems will have an effect on their lives. Those problems aren't costly to you and free to them. That's not how life works. Those problems will follow them around and they will have to continue to deal with that stuff. And, you know, you can say, well, they're, you know, so what you're saying, Matt, is that they're going to be tortured by the fact that they're not happy and that they did all of those things. And that's going to, they're going to live with that. And it's going to continue. Yes, that can be true. All of that can be true. That they don, that their conscience doesn't get off free. But let's even take the example of someone whose conscience does get off free because they are just a total

sociopath or narcissist, or they really don't feel it in the same way as other people do. Well, they can still, in those situations, feel not getting the result they want. And they will consistently find that in life, there are times where they don't get the result they want because of their behavior. But even for the person who's not conscious and not empathetic and doesn't feel how much they've hurt people, their life suffers from that too. They can never feel what you can feel. What you can feel, what you can go on and experience is a genuine connection, real love, a real sense of a connected, intimate relationship with someone where you show up for each other and where you feel each other's pain and the depth of connection

that comes with that kind of sensitivity. You can go and have that experience. And it's one of the greatest experiences there is in life. If they're not conscious enough to feel the pain of how they've hurt you, they're also not conscious enough to go and have anything like the kind of relationship that you can go and have. Their lack of consciousness is their prison. I think I disagree. Okay. It's not true. I disagree a little bit and I just want to be a little bit careful. I think Mariana is very evolved, right? Like this message is really, I mean, she's thought a lot about it

and she really has a lot of compassion for her friend and all this stuff. And she's just like, but she still has that yearning for justice. And you're giving her that right now with this answer. I think like, don't worry, justice will sort of happen. And I just want to say it might not. I just might not. If you're looking for some kind of like fairness or satisfaction in the end, you might not get it. Like, I think that you said early on,

like she left an abusive relationship and that is true. I don't want to say, I don't know anything about this guy. I don't want to say he's an abusive is true i don't want to say i don't know anything about this guy i don't want to say he's an abusive person i don't want to say he's a toxic person it but the relationship was right and maybe that dynamic was sort of doomed but i don't i don't know if it's gonna come back around like if she's gonna see it him suffering in some way maybe it just was gonna it was that dynamic was not good for either of them right i always think of like the sort of uh the stereotype of like the nerd going to the high school reunion who has like made uh made a bunch of money he's successful in business now and he can't wait to go see that star quarterback who, you know, he must have just drank himself into like early aging, and now he probably

has a crappy job, and then he gets to the high school reunion, and that charming quarterback, turns out he's like a massively successful real estate agent or something, and he's just like, he was looking for that justice, the nerd was looking for that justice and he didn't get it. And maybe he was bullied by the guy, but that guy just was good at doing this success dance in life. And, uh, just, it would have been fine if you just weren't looking for the justice so much. I think a helpful way, and I actually speak from experience in this. It's something that I've practiced before and I've found to be very very helpful I think a helpful way to look at forgiveness is as a gift to yourself because when you hold on to resentment and you hold on to pain caused by somebody else you're only punishing yourself in the process. He's not feeling that resentment

that you're feeling. And he's not experiencing all of the ways that you feel hard done by and you feel pain and you hate him and you think about how you wish that justice would come and do this. He's not feeling any of that. He's off off living his life whether he's happy or not is another unknown but he's off doing his own thing and he's not feeling any of that that is energy that is directed every day at yourself and it's negative energy that you're experiencing and I almost see forgiveness in situations like this as something you do for yourself and an act of self-love where you go well i don't want to live with this resentment in my heart i want to move on from it and the only way i can do that because i'm not going to get vindication and you know some kind of resolution

for what i went through i'm not going to get that from this person. That much is clear. So I have to give it to myself. And it's not about forgiving him. It's just about giving yourself peace of mind. And that can only come through not thinking negatively about him, which is hard to do. But I do think that's the most helpful way to reframe it and i actually think that um from reading the z-man i think that you're already most of the way there

anyway there's a saying that the best revenge is living well i thought you were going to say the best revenge is a dish served cold i don't know why and here's the plan um and and i don't think these things are about revenge but i think it can just be a helpful way to frame these things is is always you know like i've had relationships that have ended where i've felt uh annoyed or or bitter about something uh you know at like I've had relationships that have ended where I felt annoyed or bitter about something, you know, at the time and resentful. And you come to realize that those emotions are so wasted and so pointless. And the other person is fighting, as Matt said, they're fighting all their demons and battles that they're going to struggle with anyway so you don't need to worry about what what's going to happen or not happen to them

they're going to have their own struggles and turmoil and that's that's going to happen and especially if they they aren't good in their relationships anyway um but I uh there's a quote here by Charlie Munger who um through a lot of hardship. You know, he's an old man now, very successful man, but went through lots of hardships in his life, in his early life. And he talked about how he said, generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia and paranoia is one of the very hardest thing to reverse you do not want to drift into self-pity and he talks about the problem of of bitterness or envy and how destructive it is and he says

life will have terrible blows in it horrible blows unfair blows and some people recover and others don't. And here I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He said that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the blow in constructive fashion that is a very good idea i love that you know i i suppose in everything that i was saying the the real point for me is twofold it's not about they'll get theirs it's about two things one what charlie munger said which is it is every one of these and look it's a kind of a it's a hard thing to say and a hard thing to hear when something terrible happens to someone that this is a great opportunity to grow. It may be true,

but there may be a resounding, um, fuck you from someone who's going through something unbelievably difficult. If you say that at the wrong moment, at the height of their pain, but it doesn't make it not true. And anyone who's been through terrible things and come out the other side knows that that terrible thing, they probably would have rathered didn't happen. But there is something it gave them that maybe they never would have had otherwise. And it might be a scary thing to undo

that difficult thing that happened to them because they might also be undoing a part of themselves that's become crucial to who they are and the impact they have in their world. And in that sense, our only job is to focus on what do I do with this? What do I do with this thing that has happened? That's our job. And that's where all the treasure is. The other thing is, when I say I don't mean that they'll get theirs, I mean to say that it's not about just wait because at some point it'll all come crashing down around them. I mean more to say that they don't get to escape

themselves. They don't have a special pass to a better life than you or me. I'm always reminded of that scene in Crash where, you know, you have this cop that molests this woman on a traffic, on a stop when he pulls them over and it makes you want to rip him to shreds. It really, for me, it gives me a visceral, seething anger to just watch that scene in the movie. And it makes me want to hurt that person. But you also just see that this person doesn't get to escape life afterwards. They just go back to life.

They have to live life and they are not exempt from the troubles that afflict everybody else. And I feel like part of our resentment is that we feel like they're having a better go of it than we are. And I just don't, I think that even playing ground of life, some people have it harder than others. That's, that's absolutely true. But to me, the even playing ground of life is that just no one, no one gets off. No one gets off without having to go through everything that you have to go through in order to grow and be happy and be at peace. No one gets the shortcut to that.

However you get there, we all have to do the work to get to the same place of peace and happiness. What I know is that the bad behavior of people is not giving them any kind of an, that's not giving them access to, to those things, that that happiness but the hard things that happen to us those actually might give us access that we might actually get special access to to to kind of a awakening a happiness a peacefulness a strength through those difficult things. And to me, the most difficult things in my life have been the gateways to a version of me that I'm more proud of. They have been the gateway to a greater

sense of humility and peace and understanding. And when those things involved bad people or people that were acting badly, those things did far more for me in the end than they did for them. So that's what I mean. It's not about wishing badly on others. It's about realizing that there is no free pass. He does not have a free pass to a happy life. He's still stuck with life as you and I know it. And you may look at him from the outside and think he is especially happy. And you're like, what the hell? But he still has to access happiness through all of the gauntlet and the hurdles that you do. So don't think that he's got a special pass. He

doesn't. He's still playing the same game as you in life. And that's true of anybody. When we're envious of celebrities who we think have it easy, when we're envious of people who have all the money in the world, when we're envious of people who seem to be better looking or seem to have just got everything in life, they don't have a special pass. They may have more access to things in life or to opportunities or whatever. They may have, certain parts of life may come easier to them, but they don't have special access.

And sometimes when something comes harder to you, it leads to an easier life for you. For people for whom life seems to come easy to them because of their resources, that often means a harder life for them. So I hope that's not too philosophical, but I will, I suppose, finish just by reiterating everything that everyone said, Mariana, you sound incredible and evolved and you're already on your way. And hopefully listening to this, whoever's perspective it came from, uh, was valuable to you. Email us and let us know what it meant to you. Uh, you already know the email, but for anyone else, it's podcast at Matthew Hussey.com. Thank you so much, Mariana. Uh, don't forget you can email in your thoughts, your comments, your feedback on the podcast at podcast at Matthew Hussey.com. And we look forward to speaking to you again

in the next episode of Love Life. Bye, everyone. Toodles noodles. See you, my little pickles. Bye.