Dear Chelcie:

Three major developments in your life within the last few months:

1. The nonprofit organization you are working for is going through some changes and your job which you love is uncertain, you may lose it.

2. Your relationship of a year and a half is on a mutually agreed-on break. The goal of the break is to “figure out who are as people separately and so we can come back together as 2 people that compliment each other and not a giant morph of one person.”

3. After ten years of going to church, being a Christian, following a few years of doubting the beliefs, you walk away from church, lost friend there as a result.

Regarding #1, your job, I hope the organization stabilizes with your job in it. If there is nothing you can do to stabilize the organization, if it is out of your control, I hope you can let go of worrying about it (one moment, one day at a time). I am not at all religious but I like this part of the serenity prayer: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”- and it applies here, doesn’t it?

Regarding #2, your relationship. There is a goal to the breakup, which you stated very clearly. Congratulations for making the right choice, taking a break from an unhealthy relationship while acknowledging that the two individuals in it, I understand, are basically good people who need to learn to interact differently so to make the relationship healthy.

Interestingly, achieving this goal has a lot to do with #3. There you wrote: that you had to “fight hard to not want to please those people… going back would just be for them and not for me. ..I want to make sure that everyone is okay with what I am doing before I go and do it. So truly very few things were my choice.”-

Relationships need to be Win-Win relationships, if they are not, long term, both parties lose. When you neglect yourself in a relationship, focusing on the well being of the other person at your expense, part of you is not okay with that, and that part is going to act against the relationship, maybe in passive-aggressive ways or otherwise. When you act for your own well being while checking with the other, so it is a win-win, then you act for the relationship, not against it.

If/ when you re-start the relationship, there will need to be ongoing communication between the two of you as issues come up, as choices need to be made, small choices as well as big choices. Every choice to be made, from where to meet, at what time, will be an opportunity for the two of you to practice the Win-Win principle. When you re-start, the tendency will be to continue as before. It will take clear intention to do things differently and then communicate clearly and effectively as you practice the change. It will not be automatic, therefore, not easy. It will be intentional and difficult, at times, at least.

No matter how much you prepare individually, before re-starting the relationship, the work will need to be done in the context of the relationship.

Regarding #3: again, congratulations for doing the right thing for you. It is difficult and undesirable to act against one’s beliefs, to doubt and to pretend not to doubt, so you did the right thing for you. But you also did the right thing for others in the church, giving them the opportunity to know who they are friends with and re-evaluating their choice. You also showed other members in church, who may have doubts, that there is a way to resolve those doubts that is authentic to oneself. Here too relationships need to be Win-Win. Or not be.

“What to hold on to” is in the title of your thread. I would say: hold on to the truth, that you do not believe in Christianity, that you need to continue to be honest with yourself, that relationships everywhere need to be Win-Win.

At times of great changes, people need social support because we are by nature social beings. And you realize this is what you need: “I am need of friends and support in general”- a friend who is supportive, maybe a support group for people who left their church, here on this thread (I will reply every time you post)… and if and when you are ready to start the work on the Win-Win relationship with your boyfriend, then maybe he can be that support. I believe, again, that there is no way to prepare and then proceed with a healthy relationship based on the preparation before, the work has to be done regardless during the relationship. It is like cooking, you can’t prepare a meal and get better at it unless you are in the kitchen.

anita