Impossible Love: 3 Wounds that Never Heal

There are loves in this world that are not destined to be, that do not have a beginning or an end. They are like summer storms whirling with intense emotions that bring a cool, refreshing rain to soothe an intense heat, an insatiable thirst…however, when the clouds clear, all that remains is a barren and cracked earth instead of the expected bright humidity that allows new life to bloom. Nothing will grow there for some time.

There are loves that come and go like a gentle breeze. Some end amicably, with a mutual understanding, but there are some that leave a painful void that hurts and changes us for better or for worse.

Let’s talk about the latter, analyze the “secondary effects” of the lasting pain that can make our future romantic relationships appear to be a repetitive series of rebounds, and recognize the need to keep those effects in mind.

1 – Is it true that we learn from every romantic failure?

Everyone has run into the saying that you “learn from failure.” There is no better teacher than pain, and there is no better lesson than that which life’s pain gives. Thanks to that pain, we can move forward with more knowledge and confidence in life, and we gradually understand people better.

Even so, there is an important point we must bring to light: not everyone gains a “positive lesson” because, in part, they do not see it as such. After a breakup or being cheated on, it takes time to bounce back and face the world again. You have to work through the pain by an internal process in which we “rebuild ourselves from the inside.”

However, in many cases, instead of coming out of the breakup experience stronger and smarter, we date rebounds. When someone has hurt us badly, we learn to put up a shield. When they have lied to us, we learn to be distrustful. When they have cut our wings and smothered our personal development, we avoid opening up to other people.

So, do we really learn something after a heartbreak? Of course we do, but it is not always positive and it’s important to be aware of the way we “readjust” our reality following such an event.

Do not get carried away with bad thoughts, and always be resilient. Doors will open and new opportunities will arise.

2 – The loss of innocence

Losing your innocence means you lose some of your naivety, but it also means that you lose freedom from prejudice against others and the trust to open ourselves to new relationships. After romantic failure and the loss of a love that we invested so much into, a part of us will inevitably age, and this often results in cynicism.

Few things could make us feel more hopeless than allowing ourselves to become old and cynical or letting our young hearts be slowly chipped away until they become barren wastelands where nothing grows. From such conditions grows a dense bitterness, and it becomes very difficult to love again with the same illusion of the past.

There is no doubt that it is good to be prudent and cautious in matters of the heart, but if we let ourselves completely lose our innocence, we will lose our “inner child” and spontaneity – we will lose the innate freshness of youth where emotions and relationships are lived so much more intensely.

3 – Everlasting voids

Loves that could never be are shapeless voids inhabited by lost dreams and disappointments, by time lost but always remembered and invoked. But, you can recover from them, and even start new relationships and a new chapter in your life.

Happiness often comes through second chances. However, there is something that will always be present, hiding in some dusty corner of our hearts and our memories, and it is those voids. They are like paths we once followed, believing they would lead to all of our dreams, but in the end we had no choice but to turn around and abandon them in a change as drastic as it was painful.

In our minds, that impossible path will always be there, forming part of us and who we are. It will always be a huge “what if” that serves as a parallel universe, with the memories that we cannot erase but in essence are part of us.

The voids will always be there and as such, you must accept them. Those wounds may never heal, but you must learn to live with them, integrating them into your life as lessons and accepting them as part of you but not letting them become “black holes” that consume you.

Let them be cracks in the wall through which a soft and fragrant breeze of recall occasionally passes, but only for a few seconds. Then, continue in your “here and now,” where without a doubt, your true happiness lies.