One of the hardest parts of estrangement can be not knowing exactly what happened.
You may have questions that you have gone over again and again.
“Why did they do that?”
“What did I do wrong?”
“When did everything change?”
“Why couldn’t we talk about it?”
You may have spent years trying to find an explanation that finally makes the whole story make sense.
The mind wants an explanation
When something doesn’t make sense, our minds naturally try to make sense of it.
You might replay conversations.
Look back at old messages.
Remember particular moments.
Try to work out what someone else was thinking.
Sometimes this can be useful reflection.
But sometimes it becomes a cycle of analysing the same situation without getting any closer to an answer.
You may find yourself thinking about it late at night or returning to the same questions whenever something triggers the memories.
What if you never get the answer?
This can be one of the most difficult possibilities to accept.
You may never know exactly why someone behaved as they did.
You may never hear their version of events.
You may disagree about what happened.
You may even have completely different understandings of the same relationship.
And that can be incredibly frustrating.
Because sometimes what you want isn’t necessarily reconciliation.
You simply want to understand.
Acceptance isn’t the same as agreeing
Acceptance can sometimes sound like giving up.
But accepting that you may never have all the answers doesn’t mean saying that what happened was okay.
It doesn’t mean agreeing with someone else’s version.
And it doesn’t mean that you have to stop wanting answers.
It can simply mean recognising the limits of what you can know.
That can create space to ask a different question:
“What do I know about my own experience?”
You know how the relationship affected you.
You know what you experienced.
You know what you tried.
You know what you need now.
You may not know everything that was happening for the other person, and you may never be able to.
You don’t have to solve the whole story
Sometimes we can become so focused on understanding the past that we lose sight of the present.
You don’t necessarily need to work out exactly why everything happened before you can decide what you want now.
You can begin to understand your own patterns.
You can look at the boundaries you need.
You can explore the guilt, grief, anger or uncertainty you’re carrying.
And you can begin to think about what kind of relationships you want in your life going forward.
There may always be parts of the story that you don’t have an answer for.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make sense of your own experience.
You don’t have to have all the answers before you can begin to move forward.
Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.
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