Hello students! Today you’re going to learn how to use the phrase come to terms with something. I heard it recently when a woman was describing an accident she’d had that left her with chronic back pain (chronic means the condition persists over time). Before her accident, she had played a lot of sports, but the back pain made these activities difficult or impossible, and she was frustrated. She said that nowadays she is happy with her life, but it took her a long time after the accident to come to terms with her physical limitations.
To come to terms with something means to eventually accept and be okay with a difficult situation. This process usually takes some time. Before you come to terms with the situation, you might feel angry, disappointed, frustrated, etc. but after you come to terms with the situation, you feel calmer because you have accepted the reality.
Another example would be a man whose fiancee -that’s the woman who promised to marry him -decided to leave him a week before the wedding. For a while, he would feel sad, angry, and upset, and spend lots of time thinking about her and wondering why she did such a terrible thing. But eventually, over time, he would come to terms with it -accept it as something bad that happened, but not feel such strong negative emotions anymore.
What’s a difficult fact or situation you have had to come to terms with? Try to use this phrase in your own example. Thanks for joining me today and I’ll see you in the next lesson!
