How to Deal With a Broken Heart

Let’s take a look at what comes with a break up and what we can do with what’s left

If you’re reading these words, there’s a good chance you’re hurting. You and I are very different people, leading very different lives. Yet, when it comes to pain, while yours may be more or less intense than my own, the qualities of that pain are exactly the same. Through this shared experience, you are seen and you are felt, so you are not alone. You and I are in this unenviable place together, and everyone else has either already had their time here or inevitably will. We may be powerless against what ails us, but this is ultimately a contest between pain and time, and one that time has never lost. This wintry season will pass, and life’s many colors will return soon enough, and the light in your eyes along with them. Until then, we will endeavor to better understand our woes, and in understanding them, learn how to expedite their remission.

Measures

There are certain pillars of virtue and thought that act to support the spirit when faced with pressures that it would otherwise buckle under. These pillars are control, reason, and righteousness.

When we have control over a situation, and we know it, we’re better able to blunt our emotions. Even when it is hard for both parties, it is much easier to be the one who made the decision to leave. Power is calming, and having control over a situation is just that, power. If you have been robbed of your power, then surrender is the next best measure. Pull your will from the fray, release that which you cannot control, and bring your mind back to what is truly your own.

The second is reason. When we have made our decision based on sound logic — or even if the decision was forced on us, if we can at least understand and agree with the basis for it — we can use that justification to bolster ourselves in hard times. This is why relationships that end in anger tend to lead back to reunification. It is never easy to leave the person we love, and harder yet to be left by the one we love, but if we can hold fast to the logic of our decision, it can get us through; if there is no such logic behind it, our resolve will be weak.

Finally, we have righteousness. Did you conduct yourself in a way that you can be proud of? There is nothing more essential to the strength of the spirit in hard times than a healthy self-love. If we’re to infuse the natural pains of separation with an added dose of shame, our mind will have two strains of lingering pain present, and try though we might, they won’t allow themselves to be distinguished from one another — instead, the shame will be made stronger by the yearning and the yearning made stronger by the shame. I will add to this, as tangentially related, that negative emotions of any stripe, in regards to that lost love will have this effect. Even if you’re the party who has been wronged, to hate someone is much closer to loving them than one might think. Forgive them for all they’ve done and free yourself. If they remain the subject of your ire, they remain the subject of your thought, and even if they receive from you only contempt, they’re being given a part of you nonetheless. If you’ve done wrong, make your amends; if they’ve wronged you, give grace without limit.

Did you have control? Can you find the logic in the separation? Have you done what is right, and are you free from contempt for your ex-lover? For however many of these you can answer “yes” to, you have by that amount lessened your pain. But for what pain you have, we still must treat it.

Voids

When a partner leaves, we are left with voids in space and time. Where their physical presence once was each morning, there is now just a cold and empty half of the bed. As you stand in the bathroom brushing your teeth at night, you might see a glimmer of them where they used to stand next to you, but now it is just empty space. In the evenings, when once they were all the company you needed, you find yourself lost and alone — your routines and habits gone with them. You not only had them, you had whatever life you built together, a life that is now no more. This fate at first seems to be a miserable one, but you have in fact been granted something that is incredibly valuable in their absence. You were once very happy to have this freedom, this extra allotment of space and time to do what you will with, and you must now once again recognize your ownership of it.

Is the closet now a sad sight, looking unusually barren, as the half of the clothing that was theirs has been withdrawn from it? This is yours now. Are your evenings dreary and pointless as you try only to past the time quickly? This is yours now. You once shrunk down your wants to surrender and share what was rightfully yours. Now, all is yours again. Use the space. Use your extra time to build yourself up and to enjoy your newfound freedom. The pain is able to expand in emptiness. Fill the void. Pain will still find its corner, but you will reduce its impact.

Emotions

There is one major danger that comes with negative emotions: They are hungry for their own continuation. They will try to convince you that everything is worse than it is, so that when already down you might feel even sadder. Don’t let them take your thoughts in with them. They can make you feel pain — this only time can stop — but you have control over whether or not you will still see the good in the world, in yourself, and in the life you’re living.

Fear and sadness would be infinite if you’d let them. They’d convince you that food no longer has its same taste, or that your future is anything less than glorious, and that your life, with its countless small joys and comforts, is somehow accursed. If you are blind to all the flecks of gold scattered throughout your life, and that are even more brilliant as relief against sadness’s many hues of gray, then turn to nature. Hike the mountains, visit the beach, or make a point of catching the sunset or sunrise. None of us is so lost that we can deny the beauty of God’s works when confronted with them directly.

Along with your thoughts, these emotions will come for your behavior. Depression is cunning because it saps us of our energy and leads us to a life of apathy that, if we weren’t already depressed, would make us depressed anew. This is another method by which these insidious emotions look to self-perpetuate. Don’t cede your behaviors. Routine and habit will do half the heavy lifting when our resolve has been hollowed out. Stick to the routine and habits you have in place, and if you haven’t enough to fill the day, establish new ones without delay.

Love

There is one thing that is now absent and that you can’t readily replace. Family and friends can step in somewhat to fill the gap, if they are good to us and love us as they should. However, the deficit left behind by a departed love can never be fully compensated for in a matter of days or even weeks, and certainly not by pursuing a new lover. Someone new can be a welcome distraction, but it is highly unlikely that you will find with any immediacy one who is sufficiently well matched to you to eclipse the love lost.

No, you must instead learn to love yourself. It won’t quell your loneliness, though that too it can distract from, but it will give you what you need to be receptive to love from another, to give love to another, and to fill the void. Self-love is the foundation of all love. Develop body, mind, and soul; the gym, the library, and the temples, both those built by man and those found in nature, are fertile fields, which need only be worked in order to yield a moral nourishment.

Freedom

You have been given voids, emptiness, and deficits, and I will add one more thing that is now without: your future. Surely, many of your plans have been pulled from you. This can make us feel hopeless, but every firm plan becomes a structure that all subsequent plans must be contorted or curtailed to fit with. It can be a golden cage but a cage nonetheless. A future without plans, however, while daunting, is a blank slate which allows for the full range of limitless possibility. The only factor left to decide a boundary on your potential is whether or not you will muster a bold enough courage to go after whatever it is you crave out of life.

It only takes a spark to start the fire. Do something impulsive and adventurous before the sun sets today. Risk and reward most often come holding hands, so quiet your concern and disregard your reservations. Whatever it is that you have had in your mind all these days, months, and years — whatever you have told yourself you wish you did long ago — jump on that opportunity this very moment. Your life is entirely yours again, and your future along with it.

Your heart is not broken, it is only pained, but it still wants and loves the same as ever. Give it what it desires, and in so doing, be greedy.

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