Even with My Broken Heart, I Will Try to Learn from This

Even with my broken heart I will find meaning in this experience. I’m going to keep walking. I’m going to hurt when I need to. I will cry when my body needs to cry. I will share my time with anyone who can appreciate how I feel and but no one who doesn’t want to hear it.

I will respect myself enough to share my pain with people who value me and do me good. I will be strong enough to make this distinction. Because this thing I’m going through is mine and so personal that I don’t want to make it any more painful. But I want to find meaning in this experience.

Maybe you identify with these words. Maybe you’ve also had a broken heart like my broken heart. Perhaps for the first time, or just one more time to add to the list. Or maybe your heart only breaks with people who’ve been very important to you. No matter where you are.

I will find out what’s behind my broken heart to understand it better

People react to the disappointments of love in very different ways. They do so based on the expectations they had of the relationship, the place they had put that person in their life,  the image they’d constructed of it, and  the depth of the relationship itself. There are a million nuances that play into the pain pulsating inside us.

When we see the mechanisms inside our relationships, our vision becomes clearer. Less blurred. For example, perhaps you are a person who immediately idealizes the person your’re getting to know. You “fill” them out, adorning them with props that don’t actually have anything to do with them.

Many times we see them how we want to see them. And if we don’t see it the first time, we’ll go looking for signs confirming that they’re wonderful and special. We get really good at “makeup.” We add and remove pieces as if they were a toy.

Self-deception makes it more likely you’ll repeat the same thing

In fact, although we can see that reality is different, our dependence on that person takes over the relationship. And it leads us adrift. I don’t care if they’re not the person I imagined. “I cannot live without them”. And this is when our fear of being alone reigns. That is, until we’re finally willing and able to open our eyes and leave this maze.

To do this, we have to see with truth, not the self-deception that’s kept us with people who didn’t deserve us. It was self-deception that made us fall for the same kind of wrong person over and over. When we understand how we acted in a relationship, we can find meaning in this painful experience. I can understand how that first crack in my broken heart began.

The period that begins when a relationship (or fleeting, unrequited love) ends is very fertile land. It is full of opportunity for us to learn, no more blindfolds or illusions. Only then can we assume responsibility for our mistakes and reap the harvest of learning from them. Only then can we understand what led to their disastrous consequences. We can’t spend our whole life blaming the other person: it’s easy to do, but unproductive.

Be honest and explore your responsibility

We all have responsibility in a relationship. The important thing is to take it and know how to get out of it when necessary. If we trample our self-esteem in order to fit the other person into our life, it will not be a healthy relationship. When preventing them from leaving becomes number one in our lives, we are looking at a bright red flag. We will have to do something.

So, be honest with yourself and always try to find meaning in your painful experiences. There is meaning in my broken heart. See how you can understand yourself better and not repeat your mistakes. Once the lesson takes hold, you will be a little wiser and a little stronger.