Estrangement can be a blessing. In my last two postings, I talked about reasons for estrangement and how to recover from the pain that goes with it.
At the same time, estrangement from someone may end up to be the best thing possible for us. How many times have we heard about women murdered by crazy boyfriends and husbands, and then later the man’s ex-girlfriends came forward and confessed how he had mistreated or abused them and they had to leave him? I am sure these women are counting their lucky stars that they left before they also became murder victims.
While that example may be extreme, sometimes the person we are estranged from, the person who perhaps we don’t reject but who rejects us, is better left alone after all. Looking back, I’m sure many of us can recall relationships that were not healthy for us, but that at the time we thought were important. It might be with a boyfriend or girlfriend, it might be with the wild crowd of people we hung out with in high school or college. We may later find out a friend from high school became a drug dealer, a prostitute, a criminal. That person was once one of our best friends, and we feel bad for him or her, but we are also thankful that by the grace of God, or by our own decision to leave a bad situation, our lives did not go down that same road.
Reflecting back on the past often leads us to seeing patterns we could not see at the time. The old saying, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” rings true in these cases. We realize the boyfriend who dumped us, whom we thought was all our world, actually did us a favor. Instead of spending all our time worshipping him and allowing him to control or use us, we find our hearts broken for a short time, but then we regroup. We begin to feel anger. Then relief. We are glad the situation ended. We learn from the experience what we do not want in the next relationship. We focus on our goals, if not for relationships, for life. Do we want to date someone whose only purpose in life is to get high every night? Or do we want to pursue an art degree, become a business executive, travel around the world speaking to interesting people? Adversity leads us to new growth.
Yes, estrangement can be a blessing.
Irene Watson, MA, is author of The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference, and co-editor of The Story that Must Be Told: True Tales of Transformation, and Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers. She is a workshop leader, managing editor of Reader Views, and president of a non-profit Higher Power Foundation. Irene lives next to Barton Creek in Austin, TX, with her husband Robert.
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