Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After

Conscious Uncoupling is a breakup or divorce that is characterized by a tremendous amount of goodwill, generosity, and respect, where those separating strive to do minimal damage to themselves, to each other, and to their children (if they have any), as well as intentionally seek to create new agreements and structures designed to set everyone up t

For learning to live happily even after, finding a way to forgive the unforgivable, and to move forward in life graciously with hope in our hearts and goodwill in our gestures and in our words, may very well be the essence of what it is to truly love each other.

The letting go of hope can feel like a funeral dirge, initiating a cascade of grief just as surely as if you broke up yesterday. That final release of possibility can feel to some like unplugging someone you love from a ventilator.

Fear just makes us plain old stupid. Right at the moment when we need our thinking brains the most to help sort through some incredibly important decisions, the consequences of which we will be living with for many years to come, our brains are programmed to not be thinking much at all.

By resolving to stay present with yourself and refusing to shut down and dissociate, your breakup becomes an initiation into greater wholeness, rather than the source of brokenness and fragmentation.

To strive to overcome the limbic-brain-induced impulses to burn the house down, smash all the china, or give his expensive suits away to Goodwill—choosing

thousand years before. And I, like so many of us, aspired

The first step in your Conscious Uncoupling program is to learn how to harness the energies of the wildly dark and difficult emotions you may be experiencing, such as rage, hatred, fear, and despair, and transform them from destructive impulses to hurt yourself or others into constructive drivers of positive change.

You want to let the agony you’re in wash you squeaky clean of every unconscious, fear-driven, and habitual way you’ve shown in life as a dimmed-down, inauthentic version of yourself. You want to take your hurt and transform it into a huge commitment to realize your potential for liberation, health, happiness, contribution, and the fulfillment of lo