The Secret to an Unbreakable Heart

For everyone who’s tired of loving and losing

I reach a point where I think, “Enough is enough.” My heart is tired. Tired of filling up to the brim with love only for lovers to leave. Tired of giving and giving while never receiving love in return. Tired of trying and failing. Tired of loving and being left broken by it.

I want an unbreakable heart. I want to love freely and to accept that lovers who leave were never for me anyway. I want to watch them go with a smile on my face as I wish them well on their journey. I want to trust that whatever is for me will be so much better than what I planned for myself. I want to feel the peace of staying on my path and only choosing the hearts who are choosing me.

Instead, I love with my heart on my sleeve for all to see. I love with my heart in my throat as I wait for the other shoe to drop. I love freely but fearfully — waiting for the moment when they decide I am both too much and not enough. I love fiercely — with a stubborn heart that refuses to stop loving when love is withdrawn from me.

There are so many people in the world who seem unaffected by heartache, impervious to the whims of their lovers. Lovers come and go, and they sit strong in their worth. Never holding on. Never breaking. I studied the ones who never seemed to take heartbreak so hard, and I came to a few conclusions.

No One is Impervious to a Broken Heart

Some people seem unaffected, but that doesn’t mean they are unaffected. It just means that they distract from it or deny it. Instead of learning the secret art to never being brokenhearted, they have learned all the ways to refuse to feel it.

They may not break, but they also never heal. In fact, they are more likely to do damage to others because of all the unhealed places and all the unfelt feelings stored up and just waiting to burst.

The Curse of the Emotionally Unavailable

Others guard their hearts so carefully that they were never in danger to begin with. It’s the curse of the emotionally unavailable to never fully feel the love because they were too busy taking protective measures to never feel the hurt.

They are not incapable of intimacy. Rather, they are unwilling to allow anyone close enough to hurt them — or to love them. They have learned that love and hurt are the same. They are not willing to risk the pain. Even if the pain is the price of the love.

The Complicated Math of Love

Some people go out into the world and try to figure out the complicated equation that is love. They try to feel less love in order to mitigate the potential hurt.

If pain is the price of love, they assess the cost and put it neatly into a budget, hoping discounted love might hurt less than love they put their whole souls into feeling. They look for easy lovers, ones who fill them with fondness but never enough love to cause true pain. They fall into familiar patterns because it seems so much safer than daring to take a risk on an epic love that could lead to epic heartache.

The Secret to an Unbreakable Heart

C. S. Lewis offered the secret to an unbreakable heart when he wrote,

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

We cannot love and be loved without the risk of a broken heart. Even in strong, committed, healthy relationships, our hearts are often broken in small ways — the tiny cracks in our relationships that can be a danger if left unhealed. They come in many forms: unkind words, turning away when we should be turning toward each other, seeing the relationship as an obligation rather than a privilege, taking one another for granted, and all the little ways we fail each other that don’t feel little at all.

It is impossible to be human and not risk a broken heart unless we simply prevent ourselves from feeling anything. To do so is to prevent ourselves from loving and truly living. There are worse things than a broken heart — even though it doesn’t feel that way when we have one.

While I’ve been an imperfect partner, I find peace knowing that I loved well. For all my other faults and flaws, I showed up as my truest self and gave all the love I had available. My love didn’t shrink from faults or flaws, didn’t shift on a whim, and was a constant when so much of life is not. I have given love without conditions and with an open door for lovers to leave should they so choose.

I have felt heartache that I thought would break me. Yet here I am. Still breathing. Still living. Still capable of loving. I reach inside me for acceptance. I breathe through my fear. I try to trust that the Universe conspires for my highest good. I feel all my feelings from love to pain, and I know that an unbreakable heart might not hurt, but it wouldn’t feel either.

I no longer try to solve the equation of love. I don’t look for the hidden variable to lessen loss or prevent the next person I love from leaving. I give up trying to find the secret to an unbreakable heart. It fills to the brim with love, and I let it. I know my heart will break and break again. Just as it will love, and love again.