8 ‘breakup coach’ tips that teach women to forget about their exes

The fact that the hashtag #breakup has been used more than 21 billion times on TikTok shows how many people want to talk to or get advice about heartbreak.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that there are breakup coaches like Aronke Omame who make a living helping these people through their experience.

It’s 1993 now, and 35-year-old commercial attorney Aronke Omame is about to learn a life-changing lesson in lovemaking.

She is in court in Lagos, Nigeria, but for the first time she is not representing a client. She is supporting her friend Mary (not her real name), whose parents are getting divorced.

Mary’s mother, Aronke notes, keeps looking at Mary’s father from across the room. It’s not subtle. She’s craning her neck to get his attention.

So when the judge takes a short break, Aronke watches, transfixed, as Mary and her mother approach him. The courtroom is silent, all eyes on the family.

A sigh fills the room with the scene that follows.

Mary and mother kneel before their father and husband. Heads down, they beg him not to tear the family apart.

But Mary’s father lifts his chin and contemptuously starts insulting women loudly in front of everyone.

The year is now 1967, and Aronke, then nine years old, is at recess with his friends as the director walks toward him. It is rare to see the principal at recess. Something is wrong.

She informs Aronke that her father is waiting at the gate. He’s here to get you. Did something happen.

Aronke’s father tells her that they won’t be coming home, that she’s going to have to stay at her grandmother’s house for a few weeks. And since her grandmother’s house is far from the city, no one will be able to take her to school. She will have that free time, says her father.

He and her mother are going to visit her, but for now they have private matters to attend to. They need time alone. She is confused, but she can feel that now is not the time for questions.

Aronke’s Tips for Separation (scroll down to see more)

• Cry – crying is good, it helps to release the pain.
• Don’t call or text your ex for at least a few weeks.

Over the next few weeks, Aronke and the brothers are always taken to other rooms in their grandmother’s house, out of reach of adults, when their mother and father arrive to chat, whispering quietly with various family members.

They leave the kids with their grandparents every night to go home. A house that is in the process of dissolution.

Aronke plays with his cousins ​​and cooks with his grandmother. It’s fun to have a few weeks off from school. She is happy. Or, at least, she’s not unhappy.

And within a month, your family finds its new rhythm.

“Back then, the family was a community,” Aronke tells the BBC.

“I was raised by both grandparents, aunts and uncles. My parents got a lot of help.”

Her father leaves the family home, and Aronke and the brothers return. Her parents maintain a cordial relationship with each other, and neither of them criticizes the other in front of their children. The family is not broken. There’s only one less person sleeping in the house.

“I learned that relationships don’t always last,” says Aronke.

“Despite everyone’s best intentions. It’s tempting to be scathing with each other, but ending things with dignity will be better in the future.”

• Ask a friend or family member to be your listener, someone you can contact frequently.
• Remember that you are grieving and so is your ex – grieving is a period of adjustment.

She never knew exactly why her parents’ marriage broke up, but that doesn’t matter.

The rest of her childhood, she insists, is a happy one. But her next lesson in the field of love is going to hurt.

Aronke is 18 years old and in law school. She has a crush on her best friend. They are from the same class. The two’s inside jokes lead to a flirtation, which soon turns, Aronke believes, into an exclusive relationship.

She is in love for the first time.

But there is a problem. He wants to have sex, and she’s not ready.

“I didn’t believe in premarital sex,” she says.

“I was very homely.”

She tries to compensate in other ways, being available, being loving and spontaneous. One day, she goes to his house to surprise him, and finds him kissing another young woman.

“I was devastated. I left there thinking he would come after me.”

He did not go.

• Give your ex a new name – if his name is Pedro, call him Roberto while talking about him, it might make you less angry.
• Unfollow the person on all social media – this is not the time to try to figure out if he’s happier without you!

After days of silence, she receives a letter.

“He says he’s found his ‘gemstone’ and I’m not part of his life anymore.”

The rejection leaves Aronke devastated.

“I was embarrassed. I felt like my world had fallen apart.”

She doesn’t go to class for two weeks. Cry in bed. She is afraid of bumping into him. She stays indoors.

Friends go to visit her. She is told that there are better options waiting for her in the outside world.

Until, one day, as if by magic, his mood improves. She feels like venturing out. She has law school to finish and friends to party with. She walks out the door and comes back to life.

Those two weeks of isolation did her a lot of good. Over time, she manages to return, even, to be friends with him.

“I’m glad I allowed myself to cry,” she says.

“It was a good lesson. I threw it out.”

Fast forward 17 years, and now Aronke is in court in Lagos, watching in horror as Mary’s father insults his kneeling wife and daughter.

“He was blurting out words I can’t even remember. I erased it from my mind,” says Aronke.

“But they were disgusting.”

Not long before, she herself had been divorced, but her separation process had never gotten as ugly as the public humiliation she had just witnessed.

She wonders how a 60-year-old woman can kneel before a man who clearly mistreats her – and beg him not to leave her.

It was then that everything fell into place.

“The culture supports a woman being subjugated to her husband,” says Aronke.

“If I hadn’t noticed this before, I do now.”

The digital rise of separations:

– Google says that searches for “get over break-up” (something like “getting over a breakup”) have doubled in the last five years, and more than tripled since 2012.

– KeywordTool.io, an AI-powered tool that measures search terms across multiple platforms, says Ireland looked more for “how to get over a break-up/your ex” (“how to get over a breakup/your ex”) over the last 10 years – and that Nigeria, Singapore, India, Australia, Kenya, the US and the UK are among others in the top 10.

– On TikTok the hashtag #breakup has over 21 billion mentions and #gettingoverabreakup has 8.7 million.

– The International Coaching Federation, the industry body responsible for the personal development coaching market, says the relationship coaching market, which includes breakup coaching, is now valued at more than $1 billion a year.

Aronke remembered people who said, as if they were helping, that it had been her excessive focus on her career that had led to the end of her own marriage. At the time, Aronke told herself to ignore the gossip. But did it hurt? Of course yes.

And when her parents’ marriage ended, all eyes turned to her mother, wondering what she could have done to keep her husband from losing interest. Society was pushing women into unhappy, even abusive, marriages, not offering them a roadmap on how to get out and start a prosperous and fulfilling life.

So, that day, as he leaves the courthouse where Mary’s mother’s marriage would be legally dissolved, Aronke makes a decision. She will help people get through the end of their relationships with as much dignity as possible.

In the following years, she dedicates herself to the study of family law and relationship coaching. Her friends always called her “Sisi Lawyer” (something like “Lawyer Owner”), now they call her “Sisi Lawyer: Separation Coach”.

In 2022, there is no normal day for Lawyer Sisi. With more than 40 years of legal career, and more than 10 years as a certified coach, she wakes up daily with messages on Facebook or in her inbox – mainly from women – looking for help to get over a relationship.

She is now part of an emerging subgroup of relationship coaches called “breakup coaches” — trained mentors who say they can help you deal with the pain of a breakup.

“A breakup coach can help you look back on an inevitable and painful period of life with pride,” he says.

“While a relationship coach can help you become desirable to someone else, a breakup coach can help you become desirable to yourself again.”

It’s a service apparently still shrouded in discretion.

“I get messages from people who don’t openly follow me on social media,” he reveals.

“Which tells me there’s still a certain shame attached to the end of a relationship.”

• It’s tempting to stuff yourself with unhealthy foods and get sloppy, but that won’t make you happy — think about your diet and exercise.
• Relationships often lead to shared money and resources, so review your expenses and make changes if you need to.

But there certainly seems to be a market to help overcome heartbreaks.

Aronke charges 150,000 Nigerian naira (about R$1,800) for three sessions. She says she starts by giving clients the big picture on how to get their lives back on track. The first two weeks are crucial, she says.

She encourages clients to cry, unfollow or mute their ex on all social media and ask a trusted friend to help stop them from picking up the phone to call their ex.

“Your mind will trick you with excuses about why you feel like you need to call,” she says.

“Don’t listen, she’s lying to you. If you need to, give your phone to a friend.”

‘Minute to minute’

“Losing a relationship is a painful and difficult thing to go through, especially if you’ve never experienced it before. You don’t even have to say anything – just being surrounded by friends and family can help. The main things to remember is that you don’t have to. go through this alone, and that with time your heart will heal. This difficult time will pass, face it minute by minute, hour by hour and, little by little, your wounds will start to heal.”

Holly Roberts, counselor at Relate, a relationship-supporting charity.

A more unusual tip is to change your ex’s name when talking about him.

“If his name is Pedro, call him Roberto while talking about him. You may feel less irritated and more objective about Roberto.”

Next, Aronke guides clients on how to create long-term strategies.

“A lot of times, money and real estate are involved in relationships, and they need to be separated. It’s confusing, and people need help with that.”

She helps women analyze their finances and budget to be alone.

Aronke says she gets criticism online from people saying, “Of course this lady wants to break up families, she’s a divorced woman.”

It doesn’t bother her, she says. Despite her having a partner, she says it wouldn’t affect her even if she were single.

“Anyway, I’m happy,” he says.

“And isn’t that the point? There is light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes losing a relationship is a wake-up call to learn how to build better relationships moving forward.”

This text was originally published here