Love/Self
9 Reminders When Your Love Story Falls Apart
Save this, and read it as often as you need to.
We all grew up with the Disney version of love. We meet someone, fall in love, overcome an obstacle, and live happily ever after. Even though we know it’s fiction, we sort of expect our love stories to happen the same way. We meet someone, we fall in love, we might have a little something to overcome, but then it’s smooth sailing as we grow old together.
It’s a very cute fantasy, but it is a fantasy. Real relationships are two people from two different backgrounds with two different life experiences who meet, fall in love, and do their best to share their lives. It doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, we fall in love with people who aren’t compatible with us, or we fall in love and fall back out of it as we change over time. Life might give us challenges we simply cannot overcome.
Even if we do choose to wake up each day and love the other person, it’s not easy. We can share our whole lives with another human being and still find it challenging at times. The work is to keep loving someone else through good times and bad, theirs and our own.
9 Reminders When Your Love Story Falls Apart
When we love and lose, it hurts. It causes physical and emotional pain. Having lived, loved, and lost a time or two, I can offer a few reminders for when a love story falls apart. Remembering these things can help us process and heal.
1. Everything is Not About You
Everything is not about you is a phrase that hurts, but it’s also true. We have to learn to stop taking things personally. Just because one person didn’t want or love us doesn’t mean that we aren’t desirable or loveable. It means they weren’t the right fit. It’s about them, not about us.
In fairness, they might have felt like the right fit — for us. But if they don’t feel the same way, then we have to accept that. It’s magical thinking to assume that if we could go back and change one thing or another the entire relationship would be saved. The truth is that we can do everything in our power to love someone, and they can still choose to leave the relationship or make it impossible for us to stay. That’s about them. Everything isn’t about us, and when we stop taking that personally, we’ll begin to heal.
2. Every End is a New Beginning
Every ending offers the chance for a new beginning. A relationship might feel like our lives are over, but we’re still living. We can reimagine a new future for ourselves once we choose to let go of the fantasy of that relationship lasting.
In fact, instead of finding fault, we can choose to be self-aware and accountable for our role in the relationship. We can use that self-awareness as a starting point to work on our issues. It might not save the last relationship, but it could improve the next one. It could also make our lives healthier and happier when we step into our power.
3. It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over
Some relationships fall apart but can be put back together. We have to decide if we’re willing to do the work if they are. I love to read second-chance romances, but I rarely see them work out in real life. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible. If the challenges that broke down the relationship have changed, or if we’ve changed as a result of them, we might have a real shot at reigniting the relationship and trying again.
Remember that this is only possible when the other person is willing to try again. One person cannot save a relationship. It takes both parties willing to do the work and make real, lasting changes. It ain’t over ’til it’s over, but when it is over, we need to accept their decision and move forward.
4. Closure is the Gift You Give Yourself
We might think that the other person saying or doing something will release us from holding on to the relationship. We try to make them give us closure — but that’s not how closure works. Closure is the gift we give ourselves. It’s when we choose to make peace with the ending even when the ending wasn’t peaceful. We accept their choices, and we make our own when we elect to move forward without constantly rehashing what might have been.
If we don’t find acceptance, we won’t magically discover it when someone says or does the thing we think they should. No apology or acknowledgment of our pain will make everything feel right when we’re stuck in grief and unable to accept the outcome of the relationship. We have to choose our closure or else risk staying stuck in our pain.
5. Love is a Renewable Resource
I believe love is a renewable resource. We can give and give and not run out. One love story might end, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never love or be loved again. That’s a fear-based story we tell ourselves when everything hurts, and the relationship we wanted didn’t work out. But if we give ourselves the chance to heal, we can love again.
I was surprised by how fiercely I loved the last time. I had thought the pain of the past would have damaged my ability to wholeheartedly love and accept another person, but it didn’t. I know that even though I lost that relationship, I still can love just as fully again. It doesn’t run out. There are people with the capacity to love me just as wholly, and I feel like we owe it to ourselves to be open to finding love again.
6. Heal So You Don’t Become the One Who Hurts
When broken, we might want to zoom right past the pain and find an attractive distraction. We might want to ignore the feelings in favor of casual fun or a new relationship. Here’s the reality: If we don’t take the time to heal, we will become a person who hurts others. We might not do it intentionally, but we will create scars when we don’t address our pain.
I don’t want to be the person who hurts others — even unintentionally. I’ve been working on my healing so that I can enter relationships with an open heart and not hold past pain against future partners. I am accountable for my actions, and I know that healing will help me be kinder and better to others. If we don’t take the time for healing, we’ll likely experience more pain or cause it in others.
7. You Don’t Have to Be a Victim
Being dumped isn’t fun. I hate it. But taking ownership of our role in the relationship’s end is far more empowering than placing blame and playing the victim. Yes, it’s terrible when someone chooses not to be with us, and maybe they did something that ended the relationship. But the truth is that if the relationship was right, it would have lasted.
I might have gotten dumped, but I can look back and take some personal responsibility for how it ended. Having high anxiety and fear of abandonment didn’t help the relationship. Being unable to communicate about those fears didn’t help. I might not have caused the ending, but I can also see some personal responsibility in it. I can also empower myself to look at what I can do better next time rather than beating myself up for every mistake I ever made. It’s far more powerful to accept and change what I can than to make myself the victim.
8. It’s an opportunity for a Major Glow-Up
One advantage to a breakup is that it’s an opportunity for a major glow-up. We can use it as motivation for self-improvement, healthy habits, or a whole-life change. The sky’s the limit.
It might seem like the consolation prize, but we can use it to get better. It also can help us heal when we make healthy choices when we’re hurting. It might not seem like much but eating well, sleeping longer, and getting in some gentle movement can help the healing process while improving our overall mental and physical health. Don’t overlook the plus side of the glow-up.
9. Healing is a F*cking Rollercoaster
It’s okay to feel your feelings for as long as you need to feel them. Just don’t get stuck there. Healing is a f*cking rollercoaster. We think we’re fine, and then we’re not. We think we’re not fine, and then we are. We don’t know where we are or what we’re doing, and we’re stuck in a loop. It’s terrible.
But the process works — if we work at it. We will heal in time if we put in the effort, but it might take a while. It might be a back-and-forth experience that causes us massive frustration. But we deserve healing. We deserve to get better and give ourselves plenty of chances for love in the future. To do that, we might have to ride the rollercoaster as long as it takes.
Your Life’s Love Story
We all need the reminder that we’ve already found the love of our lives. We were born with them. They are … us. I am the only person I will spend my entire life with — from birth until death. In that case, I better like who I am. Better yet, I need to love who I am.
Sometimes, we look at our love stories as a relationship with a particular person. I thought I found “The One.” I have never been so sure of another person. And I was wrong.
Maybe I’m “The One.” Maybe the person I need to be sure of is me. I’m not saying that we can’t meet and love others in our lifetimes, but I am saying that we need to take the focus away from them and put it back on ourselves. We need to live in a way that we love — and to love as much as we can for as long as we can.
Sometimes, relationships don’t work out. We live, even when we think we can’t breathe without them. We wake up and keep going, and we can make our lives wonderful again. The pain does not have to define us. At least, not forever.
We might have grown up with the Disney version of love shoved in our faces at every possible opportunity, but real love is messy. It’s complicated. It’s frustrating and beautiful and so completely worth it. When we’re stuck in the heartache, we might want to wrap our hearts up tight and protect them from ever being hurt again. But hearts heal. They get stronger. And one day, if we’re lucky, we find love and give it, and we decide that it’s enough.
