The day my ex and I broke up, I didn’t feel much.
A month later, I was doing my morning stretches. Suddenly, my body went limp and I felt something warm and wet rolling down my face: tears. For the next 30 minutes I lay motionless, crying silently.
It wasn’t the manliest moment of my life, but it made me remember an important fact:
Breaking up hurts and there’s nothing you can do about it.
If you’ve ever split up with someone important, you understand. Wondering if you’ll love again; missing the magic times you had together; feeling alone and lost – we’ve all been there. To deny that would be silly.
But as I worked through my first real break-up, I realized something important. Feeling sad when you lose someone is a part of life. Heartbreak – that intense, burning, painful feeling – is a choice, especially when it lingers.
Here’s how not to make that choice.
When Love Is A Drug
Loving and being loved back means many wonderful things.
Someone’s always there to listen to you; regular sex that gets hotter as you get to know your partner; unconditional support, trust and understanding. Even cleaning your place becomes fun when you’re doing it together.
That’s why it’s easy to get hooked.
Women stay with husbands who beat them for decades. Guys spend all their time with girlfriends neglecting other areas of life. I saw a guy drive across half of England to try and win his cheating girlfriend back.
That’s what happens when you get addicted to the advantages – real or imaginary – of being with someone. Relationships stop being about enjoyment and start being about needing another person.
The first step to overcoming heartbreak is differentiating genuine sadness and addiction (or a need).
What You’re Really Missing When You’re Heartbroken
Lama Yeshe has a great metaphor that I’ll use to explain the difference between heartbreak and the natural pain of losing someone.
Let’s say you love chocolate. It makes you feel happy and so you start eating it every day. One day, you run out – or maybe you decide to give it up because you’re becoming overweight.
Suddenly you’re miserable. Your source of happiness is gone. How can you live without chocolate – the only thing that made you feel good?!
In reality, you’re not miserable because there’s no chocolate. You’re miserable because you convinced yourself you need chocolate.
Heartbreak isn’t too different. It’s not just the hurt of loving and losing someone. It’s a painful and irrational cycle of regret, longing, and doubt.
Instead of remembering the great times you had and accepting your new situation, you cling to old times; convenient habits; hopes and dreams you made with your ex.
It’s not pain that creates heartbreak; it’s the inability to accept life without the person you once had.
But relying on someone else for happiness is just as absurd as relying on chocolate. Your fate is in your hands: you don’t need anything, or anyone, to make you feel good.
That’s the key to understanding and overcoming heartbreak.
Getting Better After Heartbreak
The more you focus on everything you’re missing, the worse your pain becomes. Breaking up can feel like losing a big part of yourself, but thinking about “the good old days” only makes things worse.
Two old sayings offer sage advice when it comes to getting over someone you lost:
- Time heals all wounds.
- One day at a time.
You might feel like smacking me with a fish for not giving you more complicated instructions, but that’s pretty much it.
Don’t obsess over the past. Don’t worry about everything that could have been or might be in the future. Most break-ups happen for a good reason – and if you’re meant to get back together, you will.
When you lose someone, focus on getting through life one day at a time. Fill your life with new activities – read a book, watch a movie, meet new people.
Most importantly, be gentle with yourself. Don’t expect yourself to feel fantastic immediately. Losing someone you loved always hurts; give yourself time to grieve without getting stuck in negative patterns.
Heartbreak is a choice you make by resisting reality and letting your attachments get the better of you.
I say – refuse to live in the past. Refuse to let yourself think you can’t be happy without another person. Refuse to worry over every little thing you might’ve done differently.
The pain of losing someone is something we all experience sooner or later. Heartbreak is a choice that I hope you won’t make after reading this post.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes I know what you mean. Something that I did after this happening to me was to start focusing more on me instead on the other person. Sure it doesn’t mean I don’t love the other person but honestly I love myself more. Because being too dependent on someone blinds you and unfortunately leads you to situations like that other guy you mention “I saw a guy drive across half of England to try and win his cheating girlfriend back.”
Also another thing that I would like to mention is even when you are in a relationship to keep in touch and going out with your friends. Because if s**t happens you always have someone help you out and to go out with.
I guess the worse thing to do is to only focus on a relationship and forget about the rest.
Anyway thanks for your post it was pretty useful.
Long time lurker of your website, first time poster… I, like many others, can definitely relate to this. Losing an attachment with a girlfriend is extremely difficult especially if she is one of the only very close attachments you have. You might be in an abusive relationship, a relationship void of compromise, or even a “perfect” relationship. At the end of the day, almost all romantic relationships develop into attachments. That why after ANY breakup, it’s easy to get your mind stuck in a negative pattern. Among the reasons behind this terrible feeling is the loss of hope (which you mentioned). I’ve learned that hope isn’t just a word, nor is it a simple feeling. Hope is a sophisticated mentality. It’s the proactive measures that you take to ensure your mind that there will be a great deal of future happiness. You said the same thing, but in a different way. You said, “Refuse to let yourself think you can’t be happy without another person.” How do you refuse yourself to think this? When you’re stuck in a pattern of negativity, the way you get hope is where things get really interesting.
When I read your reply, my first thought was – damn, he’s 100% right. It’s a little daunting to reply to comments as insightful as yours and Nick’s but I’ll do my best
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It’s easy for me to sit here and write about “refusing” to be depressed without someone. But to a regular person in the middle of a horrible break-up with someone they fully depended on, learning to hope again is so hard.
Moving past lost attachments, daring to dream when the odds are against you, recognizing and defeating negative thinking patterns… To be honest, there’s so much I want to say about hope – I feel it deserves its own article.
Thank you for giving me the idea for what I think will be a great post, Mike
Brilliant post George. I remember losing the first girl I cared about and the months of depression that followed. She was my whole world at the time and I felt nothing would ever be good again. As you said, I needed her in my life to be happy or so I thought.
Eventually one day I admitted to myself that she was not coming back. I could either keep descending into darkness or do something about it. That decision lead me to the most introspective growth period of my life. It helped me realize much of my faults and what I needed to improve on.
If it wasn’t for that breakup, I might not be the man I am today. I wouldn’t be as driven, open-minded, or be able to sustain healthy and successful relationships. And I definitely wouldn’t be coaching others as I am now.
Even in your darkest hours, try to look at the positive. The old makes way for new and better things, one day at a time. I still remember the incredible experiences I had with her and that’s something I will cherish forever. But, I’m grateful it ended the way it did — I became a stronger man and it lead me to find an amazing woman.
Again – it’s hard to write responses when people are dropping knowledge like this in their comments!
What you’re saying makes me think of the first time I fell in love. I never got the girl, but she’s the whole reason I am who I am today. Introspection is something I value highly and not getting her made me look within myself for the first time. Like you, I first descended into the darkness, but then I grew. Fast.
I’m really happy you found an amazing woman, by the way. I saw you mentioning a girlfriend who plays the harp on twitter once; if that’s her, I envy you. I always thought that women who can play musical instruments are incredibly sexy
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It’s amazing how much those experiences with women can make us evaluate ourselves. Good to hear you took the positive path as well
Haha, thanks man. She’s a professional harpist and it is most definitely sexy. I’ve always been a sucker for creative women.
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