Are you debating if “no contact” is the best decision for you after a divorce or a breakup? This strategy has benefits for many people. Here are some of the common advantages:

 

It Helps You Establish and Maintain Your Personal Power

For all of us, the lines between “me” and “we” can become blurred in a relationship of any significant intensity or duration. When a no contact policy has been adopted, it gives you the space and time to again figure out who you are separate from them.

It’s easy to begin to internalize the words that others speak about us. We begin to see ourselves as they see us. And as long as there is contact, these words will continue to echo in our thoughts. And the only way to handle a possession is with an exorcism.

 

No Contact Encourages Healthy Boundaries

For many people, setting and maintaining boundaries is difficult. You may state where the line is, but when challenged, you oblige, moving it back just a little bit. And then, you slide it just a little more. Before you know it, the boundary has been completely ignored. As a result, you feel under-appreciated and overlooked.

If you’re one of those who always puts other’s needs ahead of your own, no contact is a gift to yourself. It gives you permission to no longer worry about your ex’s well-being. This is a time when you can learn how to secure your own oxygen mask first and to ask for – and accept – what you need.

 

Your Focus Can Shift to Healing Yourself

When you have contact with your ex, it’s easy to focus on your ex – Are they happy? Are they dating? Do they miss me? Have they let themselves go or are they in the process of reinvention?

Especially if your ex struggles with addiction, mental health issues or other problems, it’s common to be worried about – and even consumed by – their state. And in many cases, an unhealthy ex will encourage this focus on their problems.

When you fully remove them from your life, you take away the excuse that you need to look after them. Which means that you can shift your attention to healing yourself, learning from this relationship and eventually putting those lessons to good use in another relationship.

 

Distance Helps to Provide Perspective and Clarity

Relationships are like the ocean – when you’re in it, you can feel it, but you can’t really see the whole of it. When you cut off contact and create some distance from your ex and the relationship, you allow yourself to begin to see the entirety of the situation more clearly.

Even occasional contact can act as a filter, a lens that blurs your view and makes it harder to see the relationship with more detachment and rationality. If you want to be able to fully understand and process where things went wrong, you first need to be able to see without undo emotion.

 

Space is Opened Up For New Possibilities

As long as your ex is taking up space in your life, that spot is occupied and nobody else can come in. When you remove them, you are making space for new possibilities.

 

 

Going “No Contact?”

Read the rest of the series:

 

Why is it So Hard?

Signs That It’s Needed

Strategies to Make it Work

Why You’re Struggling to Stay Away

Understanding No Contact