Healing Heartbreak

Can’t read the whole post? Watch my video on Healing Heartbreak on Youtube and come back and read when you can.

My first love was my high school sweetheart. We met at my junior year homecoming dance. We had an instant connection and dated for two and a half years. We thought we’d go to college together, get married, have kids- then I found out he cheated (a brief kiss with an ex-girlfriend). I was devastated. Today, he’s very happily married and lives a life that, while beautiful and lovely to watch from afar, is a life I know I would have never wanted.

Then I got married. The ultimate representation of true love, surely. Not a single dry eye was present as we shared our vows, but the relationship was rocky, fragile at best, and now looking back, I wonder if we truly loved each other.

Sprinkled in there have been lovely startups, good intentions, and nice but not “it”. With all the relationship history [and therapy] I’d had, I thought the next time I fell in love, I’d know. The next time I’d fall in love would be the last.

I was wrong.

I fell in love again and I didn’t even realize it. I suspected, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t want to admit I loved someone who I knew didn’t or couldn’t love me back.

It happened almost by accident. It started pretty unremarkable. I was dating someone and romantically unavailable so a friendship bloomed instead. One night, while we were traversing the long lines of a spooky theme park event, it quickly dawned on me that I had never felt more seen or understood by someone before. I ended it with the person I was seeing because I knew the depth of connection couldn’t get there. A great date marked the beginning of almost a year of “maybe not…maybe”. Many, nowadays, would label this experience as a “situationship”. There were genuine and true feelings. So I thought. But there were roadblocks as well. Now, we’re not in each other’s lives anymore.

It’s been incredibly painful to process. Many content creators or dating coaches would tell you that situationships are the hardest to get over because of all of the unfulfilled potential. Other sources would say that there’s a pathological reason for why I remained in a relationship where someone was clearly not available to engage. As a therapist, I’ve worked with many clients who can’t seem to understand how they find themselves in one “failed” relationship after another. Through the years, I’ve cautioned around the idea of rushing to the notion of evaluating patterns or working to dissect relationships to find the theme. Yes, processing is important. In fact, looking back at my marriage with more separated eyes helped me cope and heal. However, creating hyper-awareness around the ends of relationships starts to formulate rigid narratives that are tough to break:

Love is unattainable: Something is wrong with me. Something is wrong with them. Dating is exhausting. I don’t want to start over. I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to get close. I don’t want to repeat the same patterns.

Love is confusing: I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I need. Do I want safe? Do I want exciting? Do I want serious? Am I only looking for casual?

Love hurts: My heart is broken. I’ll never find love again.

These narratives start to create hardness and make the prospect of a new relationship, of falling in love again, seem futile. I get it. I’m 31, a divorcee, and heartbroken. Again.

However, my narrative around love is not any of the ones I just mentioned. Where I once feared that I’d be alone forever or that there was something inherently and fundamentally flawed in me, I now know the truth. Love doesn’t hurt. Love heals. And it was actually this love, the very one that I’m coping through the loss of, that taught me that.

Keep Calm, Carry [Somewhat] On

Historically, I’d rush to move on from a relationship. Like many, I didn’t want to feel the pain of losing someone or the potential of a relationship. And if I’m being hella honest, I also wanted to move on from someone before they did. It wasn’t until I was chest-deep into the situation with, let’s call him… Mr. Tight End, I realized that while I had processed and moved on from the hurt and end of my marriage, I had never actually processed the grief of my first love. What I didn’t mention earlier was that after the “affair”, there was an attempt to reconcile, and in my mistrust and fear I couldn’t actually commit again. He ended up falling for a friend who is his now wife, and I somehow felt like it was my fault. Like I pushed him to her. And again, I’m totally over it now because our lives were clearly going in separate directions, but that kind of hurt sticks to you. We have a propensity as lizard-brained HoOmaNS to really latch on to the bad, and feel faintly attached to the good. Want to get nerdy with me real quick? Humans have on average 50-80 thousand thoughts a day and 80 PERCENT OF THEM ARE NEGATIVE. 80! We are all walking around this earth with a microscopic Debbie Downer living in our brains.

So, because I didn’t want to deal with the fact that he’d moved on and left me broken hearted, I started dating again and never fully digested the pain. It wasn’t even a whole 2 years later and a couple of quickie relationships until I met my ex-husband. Thankfully, the years of therapy I’ve done as a client and the immense amount of self-reflection necessary to be an effective therapist has helped me understand this past. So much so, that when things ended with Mr. Tight End, it took me a second to realize I was even heartbroken.

I was maintaining my routines, spending time with friends, focusing on my career and getting ready to move after three years of sticking to the same place. I thought I was moving on from something that shouldn’t have required more of my attention because it was never really a “relationship”. It wasn’t until I was in my last personal therapy session when my therapist said “you look tired” that it hit me. I was doing it again. I was bulldozing the healing process except instead of jumping into dating, I jumped into, me.

This is a common pendulum people love to swing on. At the end of relationships we either dive in to a new one or we dive into ourselves and both coping mechanisms can be unhealthy. Becoming completely closed off to the world in order to have some kind of metamorphosis continues to put the emphasis on the narrative that relationships continue to fail because there is something wrong with ourselves and we need to change in order to be more desirable or more ready. I don’t think I really need to go into why jumping into another relationship can be harmful. I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions. I know people who have met the love of their lives immediately after ending something, just like I’ve seen people completely come to their own after doing some internal work. The point is functioning on either extreme without self-attunement can lead to the repetition of the patterns we’re so desperately trying to avoid.

So, I’ve instead worked to balance the current reality of my life. There are wonderful and exciting things happening for me and because of me, and I’m also missing someone dearly and grieving the end of a meaningful relationship. They are both true, both worthy of my attention, and both necessary for me to feel in order to heal and move on.

In action it looks like, getting to spend an amazing day with close friends drinking and eating around the world at the Happiest Place on Earth and noticing small moments in the day while running to the bathroom or having a quiet time in line where my mind drifts to the moments I cherised with Señor Tighty the most. When those waves of grief or memory come over, I engage them with gratitude.

Thank You, Next

My girl Ari was onto something with this song. And while I know she’s in hot water for jumping into a new relationship herself 👀, the lyrics resonate so much with me after this relationship. I’m so flipping grateful for the role this person played in my life. And gratitude in heartbreak is extremely important. I’ve heard many a client say that they’d wish something egregious had taken place for them to be able to place anger on another person and therefore have an easier time with coping. I’ve tried that, and like….it doesn’t work. Of course, if there was a betrayal or some other kind of deliberate hurt, anger is valid and gets to be processed too. And we should assign justified feelings to our experiences. And feelings are justified when they rationally fit the situation.

I’ve had not one, but two separate ex-partners use a manipulation tactic that for a long time rendered me immobile at the end of every startup romance. Both, in their super loving and sweet ways 🙄, told me they were concerned for my future without them because I’d “never find” what I was looking for. When you mix that in with trauma and an anxious attachment, the final result is flambéed panic.

I wouldn’t admit it out loud, and I was often able to challenge my thoughts when they were trying to derail me, but boy in my weakest moments I really started to believe the words these people said. Without knowing, it caused me to be incredibly hyper-focused on any instances of miscommunication or incompatibilities with someone I was seeing. I was quick to end things or I’d stay longer even though I knew one of the Four C’s was missing.

Because my relationship with He Who Wears Incredibly Tight Jeans started as a friendship, I was able to have my guard down. In fact, when we had our first “I don’t think I’m ready for a relationship” convo, I was able to put my boundaries up and say goodbye. It hurt like a mother, but I could do it. That’s why whenever there was a reoccurrence of presence in each other’s lives, I was fully aware of what the risk was. And despite knowing the risk, I was willing to take it. This isn’t the case for most people. In fact, there’s a psychological phenomenon that takes place in which people have a tendency to overestimate the negative outcome for something, and underestimate the benefits of taking a risk. Don’t believe me? Check out “The Good Life”. It was written by the two current directors of the Harvard study on happiness. It is the longest longitudinal study ever done. So these dudes know a thing or two.

For the first time, in a long time, I was able to trust myself that I had the capacity to love someone, completely unconditionally, with no expectations. It wasn’t infatuation, because I was able to date other people and think about moving on. I wasn’t clinging or obsessed. I didn’t try to create ways or times to see this person or manipulate them into talking to me. It wasn’t anxious attachment, because whenever this person retreated, I didn’t try to chase after them. It wasn’t insecurity, because I know what I bring to the table and all that I offer as a partner. It was genuine, and sure, love. Even now, with them being completely out of my life, my true desire is for him to find a way back to healthy circulation (for real, them jeans be TIGHTTTTTTTTT) and a healthy and loving relationship enveloped by a full life.

I’m also grateful because I have a much clearer idea of what a deep connection looks like. I can now tangibly express what it means to be seen and understood by someone. I often found myself having a massive case of word vomit with this person. And don’t get me wrong. I talk a lot. I wouldn’t have a blog if I didn’t enjoy words, but I’m often the listener in many of my romantic relationships. In this case, I felt like words, ideas, and feelings, could easily pour out of me and I was never afraid of being judged or criticized. That’s an incredibly difficult experience to come by these days.

We’re so consumed by ticking off boxes and being driven by appearances (thank you dating apps) that we miss the thing that leading relationship experts say is the most crucial factor for happy relationships: acceptance of each other. And despite the fact that this man deliberately put on clothing that offered no lower mobility and therefore no chance for survival from some kind of ground attack, I accepted and appreciated everything about this person. And not in a pedestal way. I knew the flaws. I had my annoyances. But I was so happy to just watch this person be. When the annoyances or the icks (did I mention the jeans?) came, it was easy for me to move past them.

I’m so happy that I know my heart can open like this again. I’ve had a rough childhood. I’ve been abandoned, neglected, abused. I’ve loved and lost. And I can love again. And I know that if it’s possible for me, it’s possible for anyone.

So, if you’re going through heartbreak, take it easy. Be gentle and loving towards yourself. You don’t need to know every reason why things ended. You don’t need to figure out everything that’s wrong with you. You don’t have to trace your heart to a childhood wound. You just have to understand that this is a process, and the insights you yield will be shown through intentional and grounded processing. Be grateful for what’s happening in your life that’s allowed you to bring someone into your heart despite all the times your mind tells you it’s unsafe to do so. Be grateful to yourself for doing the work to get there.

Love is worthwhile.

Love is empowering.

Love is healing.