5 Lessons to Learn From an Unexpected Breakup

A breakup is an extremely painful experience. It’s even worse if one of the partners is still deeply in love with the other person. Love can bring a lot of beautiful things to your life, but it can also bring suffering. It’s like the other side to the coin. You can’t have one without the other, and if you don’t know how to process that it’ll shatter you on the inside.

But there are some people who manage to get rid of their irrational beliefs about love, relationships, and affective bonds. They’re almost always the kinds of beliefs that our culture has given us. Those beliefs don’t make any room for the idea that love can bring suffering. But in the end, Buddha said ignorance is the root of all psychological suffering. 

In the same way, a large number of thinkers and spiritual teachers have researched and reflected on how important it is to think correctly and not feel bad. This extends into the world of relationships too. Are we ignorant about love? Maybe we are, though it’s hard to say for sure. What is clear is that we all need to learn to manage things related to love and relationships much better. Let’s delve deeper into this. 

Suffering for love

People suffer too much for love, it’s a sad truth. Even the people who talk about how perfect their partner is for them have doubts deep down. They have all these tiny fears about the future of their relationship.

Who hasn’t ever suffered from being with the wrong person, feeling less desire, or going through an unexpected breakup? There’s nothing more hypersensitive than love. Nothing is as beautiful, and nothing is as vital to our life. There are even people who say not loving someone is like not living at all.

That’s why going through an unexpected breakup is like watching your plans disappear on the horizon. You feel like you want to die. Desperation and disbelief take hold of you. You can’t help but feel confused and paralyzed. A feeling of emptiness sweeps over you.

Rationalizing love?

There are people who say you can’t “understand” love. It’s something you have to feel and enjoy, because there’s no logic to romance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. That sentimental kind of attitude is more than just naive, it’s dangerous. 

One of the main causes of “lovesickness” are those very same irrational, unrealistic beliefs we’ve developed about relationships. Mistaken ideas about love are one of the biggest sources of suffering in relationships.

But should we rationalize love? Yes, but only enough that it stops intoxicating us. Love isn’t just something to be enjoyed. It’s also something you need to make part of your belief and value systems. You have to organize and regulate it to make it more intimate and friendly with your neurons. You have to teach it how to fly, instead of cutting off its wings.

The lessons of an unexpected breakup

If you “understand” love and its logic, you can also “understand” heartbreak. There are lot of things that can cause it. If you see it coming you’ll be able to prepare yourself much better for the breakup. But what happens if it’s completely unexpected?

This is probably one of the most devastating things that can happen in life. You can learn from everything that happens to you, though. There are some valuable lessons you can take from an unexpected breakup, and they’ll help you grow. Here are some of them:

Nothing lasts forever

That’s the simple truth. It’s a fact of life. Everything has a beginning and an end. Some things end quickly and some things take a long time, but everything ends at some point. Couples might break up from a lack of desire, having different goals, or because of problems communicating. There are also couples stay together their whole lives, of course. But when one of them dies, the magical spell is over. There’s no way to avoid that.

You can’t control everything

Some people try to control every single thing that happens with their partner. They think that if they’re always paying attention they’ll be able to avoid a breakup. But that’s just not the case. There are some things you can’t change, no matter how much you want them to. If your partner wants to leave you, they will, no matter what you do. 

You can live without a partner

Living life without a partner is just another option in life, like living life with one. They’re both valid options. They also both have their pros and cons. Everyone knows the benefits that come with having a partner. In the end, not having a partner doesn’t mean rejecting love forever.

Life is unpredictable (or at least not as predictable as you think it is)

This has a lot to do with feeling in control. When you go through an unexpected breakup you realize that it’s impossible to predict everything in life. You can make plans for the future, and you should, but you should always plan for the unexpected too.

Nothing is as terrible as it seems in your mind

It’s good to learn to put things into perspective. Is it terrible to go through an unexpected breakup? What are the truly terrible things in life? Your partner leaving you isn’t terrible. What’s terrible is a terminal illness, a world war, a tragic death of someone you love. Those things are terrible.

You might think that if your partner leaves you your life will lose all its meaning. You worry you won’t be able to go on with life, that you’ll get stuck in a bottomless well. It might really be like that at first. But little by little, the situation will normalize itself, and you’ll float up to the top. I promise.