These are my notes and quotes from Conscious Uncoupling by Katherine Woodward Thomas. I used these notes and quotes to compile my perspective and learnings from the book for the subscribers of my Future of Conflict series.

Quotes from Conscious Uncoupling

Interesting Neologisms

Conscious uncoupling is a breakup or divorce that is characterized by a tremendous amount of goodwill, generosity, and respect

Wevorce: Because we did it together, intentionally
Wasband: Because ex- has a negative connotation
Expanded families: Including all the previous spouses and children and former in-laws
Happily even after: To counteract the divorce-as-failure meme
Schema fracture: When our worldview (schema) is found to be insufficient to deal with the trauma at hand.

Awesome Quotes

Buckminster Fuller:

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Rumi:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. …
Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Nietzsche:

Freedom is the willingness to be responsible for ourselves.

Rumi:

It looks like the end, it seems like a sunset, but in reality it is a dawn.

Reinforcement Learning

These are all concepts I’m quite familiar with. Which means, if I’m doing my job well, you’re also familiar with them. The author has a good presentation and reinforcement of them.

The Only Way Out Is Through

You can’t go back, so you have to suck it up and deal:

You may not care all that much about becoming who you have the potential to be in this moment, because all you wanna do is go back to being the person you were.

Heartbreak as developmentally important.

The developmental task of heartbreak is to harness the huge amount of pain we are in, and to use it to evolve beyond our old painful patterns and love, as well as to awaken us to the power we hold to re-create our lives to be even more beautiful than they were before.

By developmental, we mean “it’s a one-way door”.

Conflict is Opportunity

On the incredible opportunity for awakening:

A break up is nothing short of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a complete spiritual awakening. One that catapult you to a whole new level of authenticity, compassion, wisdom, depth, and – dare I say it? – Even joy.

and

Even though this is one of the more excruciatingly painful experiences, you’ve had in life, it also holds the promise for a whole hearted awakening that is bigger than any you’ve ever known.

and

What’s good about this breakup is that you have been brought to your knees by the great leveler of life. Every fear you’ve ever swept under the rug, minimized, or denied is now staring you straight in the face. Every way that you’ve given away your power, denied your own deeper knowing, put someone else’s feelings and needs before your own, stayed embedded in a victimized story, or settled for less in life—all of it is now up for review. You have nowhere to hide.

Sorrow specifically:

The only way to outrun the sorrow of losing the attentions and affections of the person you have loved is to use the fierce and fiery pain of it to catalyze your own awakening and propel you to become the person you were born to be.

and

When you can use the sheer force of your sorrow to crack open your heart, it promises to drop you down into a deeper capacity for compassion and care for all living beings.

Intention is the way to seize opportunity

If we see a break up as a failure, we short circuit the possibility of learning. Pragmatically, we have to see it as an opportunity to apply intention.

Contrary to popular belief, time does not heal all wounds. We do. You want to treat your broken heart with the same amount of care that you might offer your broken leg.

and, the key question

What intention can I set that will support me to use the pain I’m in to transform my life in positive ways?

The Right Question Changes Everything

The initial binary is between blame and possibility. There’s a lot of bad questions you can ask yourself. If you find yourself in that dynamic, it’s good to ask:

Where is my attention?

Why collapse the complex and unique story of your relationship into a simple numerical answer?

Rather than define the value of our relationships by the overly simplistic question, how long did it last? we [will] instead begin to ask questions like “what wisdom have I gained?” and “what have I learned about love that I can now apply moving forward?”

Here’s an unhelpful approach:

When we first try to understand ourselves as the source of our suffering, we often begin by asking self reflective questions that will slide us straight towards shame, self hatred, and self-blame.

Some unhelpful questions:

What the fuck is wrong with me?
Why can’t I ever do anything right?
Why does everyone always leave me?
How could I be so stupid?

A more helpful orientation:

Your mission right now is to reclaim your power and your life. That can only happen when you start asking yourself questions that inspire you to be a ruthlessly honest about all the ways you’ve been giving your power away, self-sabotaging, turning away from truth, and/or showing up as less than who you are.

Some better questions:

“How did I give my power away in this relationship, and what can I do to reclaim it?”
“How do I let myself down in ways that are similar to how I feel let down by my former partner?”
“Where was I pulling on my former partner to take care of me in ways I was refusing to take care of myself? What has this cost us both?”
“What were the lies I was telling myself in order to stay in the relationship?”
“How does it work for me to have chosen someone so clearly unavailable?”
“What disappointing story from my past is being repeated here, and how have I behaved in way(s) that covertly recreated it?”

and

If I follow my vindictive impulses, how might my angry actions impact any romantic relationship I might hope to have in the future?

Did I really want to give my ex and their lover the power to determine the kind of human being that I will become?

Given circumstances that are unlikely to change, what might be the best possible outcome for all involved?

Emotions are Information

She suggests labelling emotions as a way of understanding what they offer us and being less subject to their influence. We can’t do two things at once, so we can’t both label an emotion and be carried away by it.

She reminds us that emotions (especially rage and depression) are reminders of potential for action. This is similar to an article I’ve written: Every Emotion is Information.

Forgiveness is not Justice

This could be equally said of mediations in which there will be an ongoing relationship:

The goal of a conscious uncoupling is not necessarily the restoration of justice, the attainment of restitution, or the vindication of being right. The goal of a conscious uncoupling is to be free.

Forgiveness as a decision:

Forgiveness is not so much a feeling as it is a decision you make from the strongest, soundest part of yourself. It is a perspective to adopt, a practice to engage, and a proclamation of life declared in the midst of death.

Strategy on feeling a completion after forgiveness. This does not require interacting with the other party:

Clean completions consist of three parts. First, acknowledging what this person has meant to you. Second, appreciating the gifts he or she brought into your life. And third, making a sincere attempt to restore wholeness to the situation by offering amends, either to the people you’ve hurt directly, or by declaring your commitment to never again repeat the same mistakes with someone new.

As you can see, this list does not include reconciling your irreconcilable differences, being vindicated once and for all, or finally getting your emotional needs met.

Could you feel loved?

Odd as it may sound, it’s possible to feel even more loved at the end of a relationship than at the beginning. For in the first blush of romance, we often project we’re going to get all we want and need from our partner, making it easy to give of ourselves. It’s at the end of love, when we know better, when we’re wrestling with the disappointments and very real limitations of the relationship, that we have the opportunity to give and receive authentic care — care that has no motivation other than to do the right thing for the right reasons. These generous gestures of fairness and goodwill go a long way toward building new bridges at a time when the old ones are being torn down.

New and Helpful Concepts

The Brain is Trying to Be Your Friend, and Failing

She quotes a few researchers and psychologists who aim to show that the brain is trying protect us by staying connected to a relationship at all costs, even when the relationship is not working.

from the work of Dr. Louis Cozolino…

The brain has but one primary mission: to keep us safe and ensure our survival. It doesn’t really care that much about our spiritual aspirations, our noble ideals, or our self-image of being nice and loving people. And, as the brain is a social organ and hardwired to stay connected, it’s not necessarily prone to letting go easily of a primary attachment. In the brain’s world, better to have a negative bond than the existential death of no bond at all. And so, even if you know deep down inside that leaving is the right thing to do, even if you have five times as many bad days together as good ones, even if the lies between you are making you physically sick, the brain still doesn’t want to let the relationship go.

One way the brain may try to do this is through a highly contentious and nasty separation, where both people feed each other a steady diet of hostility and disdain, upping the anti-on lowlife behaviors, and where one or both people become obsessed with winning and/or getting revenge.

and then:

Unlike our pancreas, kidneys, or livers, our brains are actually social organs, having developed over millions of years as though purposely designed to connect with the brains of those around us. This attachment circuitry causes our brains to link up to become one interactive system that, in addition to other functions, serves to regulate our moods and emotions. In the world of neuroscience, this is called “sociostasis,” and it is the reason we can become so deeply dependent upon, and even somewhat addicted to, our lovers. In other words, at the heart of all attachment is fear regulation, and our closest relationships serve the purpose of calming us down when we’re in danger of spinning out of control.

Finally:

Hate is just as strong a bond as love, and will quickly make a negative bond of a positive one, keeping us just as tied to our former love as we have ever been. The bonds we form are a continual exchange of energy that keeps us interested, invested, and engaged with one another, whether that engagement be positive or negative.

Relationship is a Set of Agreements

At the heart of each bond lies a series of agreements, some consciously consented to and some simply assumed.

Community Guidance around Breakups

Mandate: Offer clear guidance to others in your community on how they should behave around your break-up.

To defuse a potential division in your community, make sure to take the lead in letting others know that they need not take sides. Give people permission to maintain their relationships with both of you regardless of how tempted you may be to split your friends and family down the middle. Because once that happens, it could take years, even decades, to repair the damage, if at all.