'Breakup recovery' program founder praises Ant Anstead for 'grace' amid divorce from Christina Anstead
The man who created the breakup recovery program that Ant Anstead is participating in is praising the Wheeler Dealers host for dealing with his divorce from Christina Anstead with “grace” and “embracing masculinity” in the process.
Mark Groves, “human connection specialist” and founder of Create The Love, tells Yahoo Life that he launched the “Breakup Recovery Recipe” course just a year and a half ago after years of feeling challenged by a number of breakups that he went through himself. He even went back to school to study the science of relationships and became specifically interested in the inherent shame associated with breakups.
“The world is not really receptive to people who have relationships end. It’s not graceful to people who do. It's judge-y, to say the least, critical,” he explains. “So in the moment of our breakup, the last thing we need is more shame. And because society has made it so relationships ending are actually failures, I really sought to change that narrative.”
When Ant and Flip or Flop star Christina publicly announced their divorce in September after less than two years of marriage on Instagram, people flooded Anstead’s post with comments that claimed he was cheating on his wife or “giving up” on their relationship, instead of offering support.
In lieu of feeding off of those negative comments, Ant signed up for Groves’s program, which the creator says is built to take a person through “the five stages of grief and also at the same time, walking them through growth.” This, Groves says, provides people going through a fresh breakup or facing one from years ago to turn their pain into a personal transformation.
“You have the opportunity to look within [the pain] instead of drinking it away, pumping it away, you know, distracting ourselves,” Groves explains. “What an opportunity to claim your life.”
The five-week virtual course, which is set up so that people can take it at their own pace, provides daily programming that allows participants to do just that by providing a sort of introspective therapy that addresses the reality of the relationship that ended, the type of relationship that is desired and the experience of “true healing” rather than “idealized healing.” And although it’s likely assumed that the end-goal is to forget about an ex or feel ready to move onto another relationship, Groves says that it’s more personal than that.
“The goal is to take power and be empowered in how you live your life and what relationships mean to you,” he says. “This is going to be the moment that changes your life.”
Just 30 days into the program, Ant wrote on Instagram Sunday that “it’s been a lifeline for me” while encouraging other people who need the nearly $200 course to sign-up themselves. While it’s a great promotion for Groves’s program, the specialist is most enthused by Ant’s openness when it comes to these difficult emotions.
“He's embracing that masculinity is really tender. And it is. He’s a guy who works on cars and he does all these things, but here he is like, ‘I’m working on myself,’” Groves says. “What a great leader, what a great example for us and that your masculinity is not attached to your emotionality.”
According to Christina’s Instagram account, the mother-of-three who shares 1-year-old Hudson Anstead with Ant is also taking time to “find peace.”
Although Groves admittedly doesn’t know Christina’s healing process, he speaks highly of Ant’s continued journey. “One thing I know to be true about him is that he is using this opportunity to just continue to be a better human,” Groves says of Ant. “You can tell he’s a caring father and I know he was a caring husband. He’s such a good person.”
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