A broken heart is a common condition in the modern world. We have more opportunity than ever before to meet and date exactly whom we please. We date until the novelty wears off, then we break up and start anew. While this reality allows us to choose partners with whom we are highly compatible, the ease of breaking up means that eventually we can be dumped by someone we truly love. The knowledge that you are not alone does little to soothe the pain of the broken heart.
Nonetheless, following are a few tips that can ease your suffering and help you heal.
1. Let Yourself Grieve
Breaking up is a painful process. Losing someone you deeply love to a breakup is often no easier than losing him to death. Consequently, a mourning period is to be expected. Crying, raging, feeling numb, having trouble sleeping and losing interest in activities are all normal and expected behaviors and feelings. Let the feelings come and work through them as they appear.
Repressing or burying your feelings may make it easier to cope day to day, but it only means that when the feelings do come, they will be worse. It is okay to lock your feelings away for a period, in order to get through the workday or other necessary activity, but be sure to revisit them frequently, allowing yourself to work with and through them.
2. Reach out to Friends
You may worry about “dumping” on your friends, feeling that you need to be strong and handle your emotions yourself. However, a broken heart is universal.
No matter how healthy your friends’ current relationships may be, they have been where you are at some point in the past. Let your friends comfort you during this time in your life. You will be able to reciprocate later once you are healed. For now, just gratefully accept their condolences and dinners out.
Do not be afraid to get back in touch with friends that you fell away from during the relationship. They understand. They have been there themselves. A friend who would make you feel guilty for devoting yourself to your relationship, especially during a time of heartbreak, is not much of a friend. Cross that person off your list for now and go on to the friends who are truly concerned about you.
3. Take Time for Yourself
When dealing with a broken heart, you need to find a balance between reaching out to others and isolating yourself. It is important to maintain those links of friendship and allow your friends to comfort you. However, this is not the time for filling up your social calendar. You need time to yourself, to grieve, to relax, and to think towards the future. It is reasonable for you to develop a bit of a protective shell, keeping the rest of the world at bay to prevent further hurts. This only becomes a problem if it continues for more than a few weeks or if you isolate yourself completely.
Be kind to yourself during this time. A great new haircut or a day at the spa will help you to recognize that your life will go on.
Look toward the future and decide exactly who you are and what you want to be, without the baggage of another person’s advice or demands. At the same time, make sure that your life-altering decisions are small. An extreme haircut will grow out again. Quitting your job and heading to a new city are big decisions with long-term ramifications. Wait until your head is clear before making major decisions.
4. Write About Your Feelings
Keep a daily diary. Express your feelings about the relationship and its ending. Write fiction. Write nonfiction. Write (but do not mail!) a letter to your ex. Writing is a task that is often assigned by psychotherapists to help clients unlock and process difficult feelings. You may follow in the footsteps of such legendary authors as Anne Rice and J.K. Rowling, turning grief into a series of bestselling novels, or your work may never be read by anyone but yourself. Either way, writing is one of the most cathartic ways of dealing with grief, including that of a broken heart.
5. Assess the Entire Experience
You will know when you are ready to look at the situation logically. In the early weeks, even the thought of your ex may send you into fits of sobs. As time moves along, however, you will find yourself naturally contemplating the entire situation with logic rather than emotions. At this point, you are ready to determine what you learned. No matter how good or bad the relationship was, and no matter how it ended, you learned some valuable life lessons from the experience. Assessing the good and bad and determining what you learned is helpful on two levels.
First, you gain the benefit of whatever the lessons are, which you can apply in the future. Second and perhaps more importantly, you will come to realize that the relationship was not ultimately meaningless. Finding the lessons in a negative experience is the first step towards turning it into a positive in your own mind.
6. Date Others
When you feel that you are sufficiently healed, begin to date again. Be very careful to avoid rebound relationships and never date to escape a fear of being alone. Most people are ready to date casually a month or two after experiencing a broken heart, but each person’s timetable is different. Listen to your own intuition. In the early stages, do not allow yourself to get into a relationship. The goal of dating soon after a broken heart should be demonstrating to yourself that you are attractive, desirable and able to feel attraction towards someone new. Be very careful with this, however, as you do not want to fall into a pattern of one-night stands or short relationships. These will make you feel better momentarily but worse in the long run.
7. Do Not Call Your Ex
At some point in the future, you may feel sufficiently healed enough to develop a meaningful friendship. However, you must fully resolve the broken heart first. Maintaining contact during this process will only make you feel worse. If he is kind, you will have trouble getting over him. If he is mean, you will feel clingy and desperate. If you have no choice but to communicate with your ex, as happens when you shared a household or were married, keep all communication businesslike and to the point.
Tell him exactly what you need from him and ask him what he needs from you. Refuse to discuss the circumstances of the breakup or any other issue. Stick to those issues that must be resolved and resolve them as quickly as possible. Lingering ties will make it harder to heal your broken heart.
Recognize Healing as a Process
Healing a broken heart does not happen in a straight line. You will experience peaks and valleys. Just when you think you are finally over your ex, something will happen that reminds you of him. The next thing you know, you will be choking back sobs. This is normal and will continue for a long time. Learn to recognize your triggers and head them off before they become serious.
Getting over a broken heart is a long-term process. You will need to work through your feelings, reach out to others, and focus on yourself. Give yourself permission to experience your feelings as they occur. Spend time with friends and family and be kind to yourself. As the days turn into weeks and the weeks into months, you will find yourself feeling better and better. Healing a broken heart is a universal reality and you can do it.
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