How do you recover from a major break-up? Life Coach, Caro Handley, guides us through the emotional turmoil.

We’ve all been there. Breaking up with someone you love is one of the most painful situations you ever have to face. In the aftermath of rejection, the hurt, the misery, the loneliness and the feeling that the future just disappeared, look as though they’ll go on forever.

As a Life Coach I often meet new clients who are struggling to recover from a break-up which has left them totally demoralised and afraid that they’ll never fall in love so deeply again.

Susie’s story
Susie was in this state when she came to me a few months ago. After six years together, four of them married, her husband had walked out on her, leaving her shocked and devastated.

‘I knew the relationship was in trouble,’ Susie told me. ‘Dan felt I was too clingy and insecure. He travels a lot for work and wanted to feel free while I wanted us to be together more. He meets a lot of women on his trips and I found that hard to take.

‘We’d talked about it a lot and I thought we were trying to work it out. He’d promised to be at home more and I promised not to be so suspicious. He felt I didn’t trust him.

‘Then I discovered that he was secretly emailing an ex-girlfriend and he refused to talk about it. Three days later he picked a fight and then packed his bags and left.’

Next page: facing the facts

No hope
After Dan had gone he contacted Susie to say there was no hope of saving the marriage and that he wanted a divorce.

Susie came to me three months later. She felt she’d been through the worst: the tears, the pleading for another chance, the miserable evenings calling every girlfriend she had just to go over the whole thing again. She had accepted – just about – that Dan wasn’t coming back. But she felt stuck about how to move forward.

‘I don’t know how to get to the next step,’ she told me. ‘I’m still trying to sort out the details of separating from Dan, like who gets what and when to divorce. He still pops round to the flat to get things he left there and when I see him I feel back to square one.

‘I hate being single, I just feel washed up and rejected and I can’t imagine anyone else fancying me or wanting to be with me. When I’m really low I watch our wedding video and think about what a failure I’ve been at marriage.’

Caro gave Susie an action plan for getting over Dan and putting her life back on track.
The moving on masterplan