This week I talk about the factors that influence how long it takes for us to get over a breakup.

Plus, I also explain what you need to do when you find that you're in a relationship where you are incompatible on a core value.

I'm Natalie Lou, a writer based in Southeast London who is dedicated to helping people to improve their emotional and relationship literacy.

Let's kick this off.

One of the traps that we can fall into is assuming that if a person is expressing interest in us is pushing for us to be in a relationship, that it must mean that not only are they interested

but that they are over their ex. But what we do discover is that even when somebody

says that they're over their ex or even

when somebody pursues us even though they are fresh out of a relationship it

doesn't mean that they are indeed over their ex if we are not careful and we don't step away and

recognize what is unhealthy about that situation, we become an emotional

airbag. Now an airbag is like you know that that plastic blow-up bag that gets

activated in a car when you have a car crash. When you have the human one that's

where you're acting as a buffer for somebody when they are coming out of something

painful. So it can be coming out of a breakup, we can know that they're going through pain as such, and we act as this lovely puffed out cushion that separates them from whatever pain that they are going through.

We nurse them back to good health,

we provide them with a rehab,

and we effectively act as a bridge

between their old life and the life that they're going to have after

they're done with using us as an emotional airbag. We are sheltering them from who they are. We act as a buffer, we act as

soft landing for them, so you know they can take a parachute out of their old life and then

they can find somebody who's willing to be an

emotional airbag and then land and know that they are protected. We

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