Your maid of honor didn’t come to your wedding, and you’re still hurt about it. How do you move on when someone you care about misses an event that was supposed to be so important? In this Coaching Hotline episode, I answer a listener’s question about lingering hurt and why we can get stuck replaying someone else’s behavior long after the event itself has passed.
I’ll help you unpack the thoughts you’re having about what her absence means, from what you think a maid of honor or a good friend should do to what you’re making it mean about how much she cares about you. You’ll learn how to separate the facts from your interpretations, question the assumptions you’re making about her intentions, and find some room to let go of the hurt without pretending you weren’t disappointed.
Welcome to UnF*ck Your Brain. I’m your host, Kara Loewentheil, Master Certified Coach and founder of The School of New Feminist Thought. I’m here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that you’re truly excited to live. Let’s go.
Welcome to this week’s Coaching Hotline episode where I answer real questions from real listeners and coach you from afar. If you want to submit your question for consideration, go to unfuckyourbrain.com/coachinghotline, all one word, or text your email to +1 (347) 997-1784 and when you get prompted for the code word, it’s coaching hotline, all one word. Let’s get into this week’s questions.
How do I work through my lingering hurt that my maid of honor didn’t come to my wedding?
So, I don’t have a lot of information here, but what I can say is that you need to figure out what you’re thinking about this. What’s the story you’re telling about your maid of honor not coming to your wedding? What are you making it mean?
So, you could have a whole variety of thoughts, but you might have thoughts about what she should have done and why, what it means to be a maid of honor, what it means to be someone’s friend, how important weddings are, what your thoughts are about her motivations or reasons for not coming, whether you think those reasons are good enough or not. You might be making it mean something about what she thinks about you or how much she cares about you or how much she cares about your relationship.
Whatever is going on, you have lingering hurt because you have lingering thoughts. So, we have to find out or you need to explore what are those thoughts? What are the thoughts that you have about her not coming? And then if you want to try to change them, then I would use any of these tools that I teach on the podcast to start to question those thoughts. Those thoughts are not objective circumstances. They’re your thoughts, they’re your opinion, your evaluation, your interpretation of her behavior. And where can you find some daylight? Where can you see that there could be another explanation? Or where can you see that you’re assuming the worst intent? Or that you are making yourself the reference point and seeing everything only through your point of view?
The reason that we have these kinds of lingering hurts is usually that we are either demonizing the other person or we are telling ourselves a painful story about what their behavior means about us or about their relationship with us or about how important we are. And so that’s what I would encourage you to explore if you want to be able to let go of this lingering hurt.