About Just Mackaay
Feeling cut off from the rest of the world? Want to be able to move on?
I know what you’re feeling. I’ve been there!
A relationship breakup is a traumatic experience regardless of whether the breakup is recent or happened some time ago. It is painful, scary and hurts like hell. And there is very little support for men struggling with their relationship breakup. My relationship breakup occurred some years ago, and as a result of that breakup I now work with and support men who are experiencing that emotional rollercoaster, through individual coaching (both face to face and on-line), facilitating workshops, providing information and strategies to help them, firstly, get their life back on track and secondly, help them realise that there is an opportunity to create a life stronger yet gentler, the same and yet different, and to be more accepting of themself, others, and what “is”.
My name is Just Mackaay, and I’d like to share my story with you. It’s a story of travelling through a “dark tunnel” which encompassed pain, grief, deep sadness, weight loss, hope, anger, insecurity, fright, questioning, relief, realisation, acceptance and finally an inner peace. A peace that today allows me to view relationships and life from a different perspective.
Some years ago I met a woman who came into my life at a time when the relationship I was in had been on the decline for three to four years. She and I worked together and became friends over time.
During the course of the ensuing months I came to realise that I was feeling more than simply friendship towards this woman and thought she felt the same about me. She certainly indicated that she did. We became involved in a relationship which, over time, I felt we were cementing as a relationship that was going to last a very long time. How wrong I was!!!
About five months after we had decided there was a relationship here that we could work with and enjoy, she asked for “time out”. I understood her request and even though it put me in a very scary space, I knew it was something she had to do. She had no idea how long she needed, a few days, weeks, months and she asked for no contact during the entire “timeout” period. The fear and the scare that arose in me was enormous but was nowhere near what I was to experience about two weeks later when she called me to tell me that she had written me a letter. I’m sure you can guess what the letter said, and I can assure you it wasn’t an invitation to continue our relationship. And to add salt to the wound she wouldn’t discuss the contents of the letter over the phone.
The immediate fear that gripped me during that telephone conversation is indescribable and, coupled with the emotional hurt and physical pain, left me completely devastated. I was on my way to work when she called and the call resulted in me being an hour late and completely useless as a worker. I sat in a corner all night wondering what it was I had done (or not done) for this to be happening. My mind raced without any sense of clarity as to what I was experiencing. I felt totally “gutted” and completely lost. I was shattered!
During the following three weeks I lost fifteen kilos in weight and the next three to four months I lived on coffee and cigarettes simply because I could not eat. Had I been wiser (as I am now) I would have invested my money in coffee bean and tobacco plantations rather than consuming copious quantities of both and I would probably be a rich man now. I couldn’t sleep! My life was a blur and I found myself in a very dark tunnel that appeared to have no light at the end of it. And for a very long time it felt like I was making no headway towards the end of the tunnel. I was merely going through the motions of living and yet I wasn’t living. I struggled to get through each day. Each night had its own nightmares. The questions I asked myself were never ending. They just kept repeating themselves. It was like being on a treadmill going around and around without any way of jumping off.
I recall someone asking me about two months later if I was seeing anyone romantically. The question was so totally out of place to where I was at emotionally, that I questioned the individual’s sanity. Couldn’t they see that I was in no condition to see anyone, that I was struggling to cope with me and my own inner turmoil, let alone get involved with another woman?
For every step forward it felt like I was taking one back. I found it hard to believe the depth of my despair. It was as though I was completely wrapped up in a blanket of grief, hurt and physical pain, and I knew that this breakup was going to take me a long time to get over, if indeed I ever did.! Life as I had previously known it had stopped dead in its tracks. My mind was screaming, “What do I need to do to get through this debilitating trauma?”
I had no permanent home and because I only had a part-time job could not afford to pay rent. As a result I spent six months living out of a suitcase whilst house-sitting. This only added to my feeling of turmoil.
A couple of months later my eldest daughter gave me a book that dealt with the subject of starting over following the end of a relationship. And whilst I didn’t really enjoy the book, it gave me a thirst for discovering what it was that I was experiencing and what steps I could take to recover from this devastation.
At that point I made my first and most important decision!
I decided to fully “experience the experience.”
My first step was to buy another book, and than a second and a third. And in the ensuing years I purchased and read approximately 300 books and the number keeps growing. Each one contained one or more pieces of information that would ultimately lead me to where I wanted to be in my life. Exactly where I am today.
I went to counsellors, but found that unless they themselves have gone through a similar experience, it was difficult to make a strong connection. Don’t misunderstand me, counsellors like all professionals have an important role to play in our lives, however for me it was the missing connection (not for the lack of trying on the part of the counsellors) that made it difficult for me to gain any insight or guidance as to how to escape the black tunnel I was in.
I surfed the Net only to find too much information to digest and nothing concise to meet my needs at the time.
I spent hours talking to friends, acquaintances and people I met through various sources but again found that unless they had actually experienced a break-up could not put themselves in my shoes.
I spent thousands of hours researching the subject trying to find answers and more importantly solutions that would get me back on track. But the more time I spent on trying to find a solution the more I realised that there is no easy solution readily available. If there was I would have found it and used it.
One of my most important findings is that people going through a breakup are likely to engage in one or more of the following to help ease the pain. They will attempt to drown their sorrows in alcohol, take drugs, immediately try and find another partner/s, or become reclusive. For a time I chose the latter. I couldn’t and didn’t want to face the world. It was too scary. I felt such a complete failure and couldn’t bear the false sympathy and the lack of understanding I was being accorded.
It was important to me that the research I undertook related to men. Being male, it made sense that I spend my time finding how other men had coped and what they had done to get through this period in their lives. And let me assure you that everyone knows someone who has gone through a break up, is experiencing one at the moment or is still struggling with one that happened some time ago. However this is not restricted to the male population of this world. After all there are always two people in a relationship. And whilst women tend to handle a breakup differently to men they nevertheless experience similar emotions and can struggle as much as men do.
During this entire time I made notes of the activities and strategies I was using to help me get my life back together. Some worked and I used them more often. Others didn’t and were discarded.
It was about 18 months after the breakup, I felt that I was starting to take three steps forward and slipping back only two, compared to my constant lack of emotional progress and movement previously. My life’s equation was changing!!!
There were so many times when I simply wanted to flick a switch and get on with living the rest of my life. If only it had been that simple!!!
At times I would wake up in the morning feeling it was all behind me only to find a couple of hours later that I had again regressed into my dark tunnel.
The lack of available support meant that I had to go it alone for the most part.
As time went on and I implemented more and more of the strategies and activities I had found, a very faint light at the end of my dark tunnel started to appear.
Having seen the first glimmer of light I wanted to rush to the end of the tunnel and leave all my pain, hurt and confusion behind me. But it wasn’t to be. I had to continue to crawl!!!
As a self imposed recluse, I use to sit in front of the television each night, trying to block out the pain. I would wake up late in front of the television and crawl into bed, only to repeat the same process the following night, and the night after and the night after that one. One Friday night, twelve months after the breakup, having again woken up in front of the mind numbing box, I decided that I wanted to do more with my life than continue to escape the pain I was still feeling so deeply. So I gave the television to a local Op Shop who accepted it gratefully.
This was the second most important decision I made!
And there were more to come.
Now I had time to fully experience the experience rather than escape it each night. It gave me time to read, to write and to continue my research.
I used the “spare” time I now had and put it to good use. I read, I wrote, I experimented with different activities and strategies, I made notes and collated information that ultimately put me in a position where I felt I could help other men recover from their breakup. As a result my life is now showing men how to move towards creating a new life away from the awful isolation and loss of identity that so often accompanies separation and divorce. I can help you step back, regroup and move forward, as I have done with many men.
"Just's life experiences and training provide him with the ideal qualifications to lead the ReGroup Workshops, which is based on his well founded strategies and he believes that there is a strong need for such a service in the community today."
Daniel N.
Perth WA
