How An "Astral Divorce" Helped Me Get Over My Ex

"We must perform an astral divorce," the woman said after reading my tarot cards. "You need to sever ties in order to truly be happy with the amazing guy you will start seeing next."

Sorry, back up there lady. "An astral what?" I asked. "An astral divorce," she repeated. "This is where you energetically cut the cords and mark your relationship 'completed' in the akashic records, leaving you energetically free to be with someone else." (I later learned that the akashic records is a library of the events in people's lives.) Right then.

How did I come to be at Urban Retreat — the place I usually frequent for massages, mani-pedis, and blowouts – and end up getting divorced from someone I wasn’t even married to?

It was my search for closure, that’s how. I desperately needed it after the end of a whirlwind romance that saw my underlying insecurities and rejection sensitivities triggered by the hot-and-cold, back-and-forth nature of our relationship. By the end, I felt broken by it all. I’d given him the power to make me feel worthy of love – and the power to make me feel unworthy of it, too.

For months post-breakup, I attempted to find closure in a number of ways, from phone calls and long text conversations – in which we’d go over how we felt and why we couldn’t be together (or more to the point, why he didn’t want to be with me) – to me begging him to see me in person (I inwardly cringe thinking about it).

I thought I could cheat the system, bypass the hurt I was feeling and somehow accelerate the healing process by getting him to tell me to my face that he didn't want to be with me. However, when we ended up in bed together, I knew that theory was flawed. Unsurprisingly, none of these attempts brought me any respite.

I spent weeks after our last meeting carrying around this intense feeling of sadness, which my rational mind kept telling me to get over. I kept trying to tell myself: If someone rejects you, move on and find someone who actually wants to be with you. But I couldn’t. I’d reached the point where I needed someone else to tell me all would be okay and give me hope that my fortunes would change.

Sadly, traditional therapy didn't provide that comfort for me. So, I figured, who better to see than someone who can (supposedly) predict the future?

I booked a session with Jane Orr, a well-respected "intuitive consultant" and trained psychotherapist – something that comes in handy, as most people see psychics (and clairvoyants, palm readers, etc.) after an unsettling experience when therapy is advisable, like the death of a loved one, a career change, or a breakup.

Our session began with her reading the 10 tarot cards I had chosen from her deck. "The central theme of these cards you’ve chosen are all about emotional relationships," she said. The Ten of Cups card was at the center of the story, which I was told meant that contentment, happiness and a loving, long-term relationship made up the current theme of my inner thoughts. You're bloody right they do, I thought.

As Orr read my cards, she said that there was someone I couldn't let go of, who would cause me to doubt my next (and significant) relationship. "You've known this person in a past life," she explained. "Which is why you have this connection that makes it difficult to detach from one another."

Whether or not I believed what I was being told, I realized that if I didn’t let go of this person who didn’t love me back, I wouldn’t be ready or open to someone else loving me.

So I agreed to the "divorce." Orr explained that when you begin a relationship with someone, you immediately establish an "energetic link."

"Post-breakup, you may well be physically separated," she said. "However, energetically and mentally, this is not always the case. If your ex is always in your thoughts, or present in your dreams, cutting the energetic ties you have to them can greatly improve the closure process."

Orr began with guided visualisation, to put me into a meditative state where I could calm my mind and gain clarity as I journeyed to the "astral plane." Once there, she put her hands on my head and began mumbling inaudible sentences before guiding me back down to Earth, through the roof of Harrods and straight into the treatment room where I was lying.

I asked her what had happened during the minutes when I couldn’t make out what she was saying. "I witnessed you both sign the divorce," she said. "He rushed to sign his section, so eager was he to move on, while you lagged behind, but eventually you signed it, too."

Basically, what she was saying was, "He’s just not that into you," and that was what he was saying, too, by not wanting to be with me in the real world. This was the final nail in the coffin for me. Strange that I needed a psychic to tell me, but so be it.

I walked out of the room, and I began to feel like a weight had been lifted. I felt detached – my feelings for him hadn’t changed, but my feelings about the situation had done a 360. I had finally come to terms with letting him go.

Do I totally understand what happened? No. Would I recommend an astral divorce? Yes! Are psychics real? Are we really energetically linked to our loved ones? I shall let you make up your own mind. As for me, I've finally found that closure I was looking for.