Breakups: Heartbreak = Broken

Heartache, heartbreak, it doesn’t matter what word you give it. It. Sucks. 

This is a topic I genuinely hate to tackle, yet it is the one thing constantly in my face. I’m the friend that answers the phone at 3am to a sobbing voice, and the girl who joins them out for drinks to get over another dating blunder. I am often trusted to have the words of wisdom someone will need to get over the inevitable shattering heart that lies just within their chest. And I won’t say that I am right or that it ever works, but I will say what I know…

The world is a hurtful place and we are all human. We make mistakes and we drag people through the mud day in and day out, hoping to fulfill our own selfish needs. It’s hard to see beyond the walls of our own mind and at the end of the day we have to make decisions that are in our best interest, and sometimes those decisions hurt other people. Actually, a good portion of the time they might hurt other people.

Dating is one of the most exciting and terrifying things a person can go through. We have to put our trust in someone else completely and strip ourselves bare of that protective barrier we keep and become vulnerable. To me, that’s the worst part of it. I don’t like to put my life out there and leave my secrets in someone else’s hands. But somehow I’ve learned to do it. And it wasn’t an easy road. I’ve had guys who have literally dropped from the face of the earth without a single explanation as to why, all while carrying my truths in their pockets. Honestly, that’s like a punch straight to the face.

Some people get lucky and meet their partners early on and don’t have to suffer the confusing world of single adulthood, while the rest of us are stuck sitting here wondering what the hell we did so wrong.

There comes a point where I think we have to embrace our singleness and stop listening to all the voices in our head that are telling us we need to be with someone. We get so stuck on social constructs and finding a partner that it makes it hurt that much more when things don’t work out with someone.

I was sitting with a friend one night and she was crying about her latest dating disaster and amongst her garbled, alcohol induced complaints, she began rattling off her five year plan which consisted of a career, marriage, and children. These were all things we’ve aimed for so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but with these goals was a desperate voice of defeat. She didn’t care so much about the guy as she did the life he took away from her.

With each breakup and dating mishap, we feel our lives start to slip away from us. When a partner leaves, they take with them a potential future and all the hopes we had for our life shatters. We’re stuck sitting in the remains, wondering if this is it, if this is just where we end up.

Society adds a lot of harsh pressure to young adults after college. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been asked if I’m married or have a boyfriend. It’s one of those automatic questions people ask upon meeting you, as if that is what makes up your life. I’ve found this to be especially true since I’ve entered the working world. Other adults base everything off their own experiences and they don’t understand a life that doesn’t mimic their own. Grandmothers who married young look at grandchildren in their early twenties and ask why they haven’t settled down, parents look at their children as if they’re robbing them of the experiences of having grandchildren while they’re still fairly young and active, and friends begin competing with each other for who gets engaged first. It’s a nasty, hurtful cycle that leaves a lot of us out in the cold.

Breakups hurt and they’re a hard thing to overcome, but is it the love that we had for that person that is destroying us, or is it the life they took away from us?
We need validation, constantly. We need little reminders that we matter and that we’re smart and beautiful and important, and we’re taught from an early age that we will best get those things from a significant other. That’s a pretty devastating thought when we become adults. We stop getting approval from our elders and start looking at our relationships to fill in all those voids. We don’t even realize that we hold all that capability and fulfillment ourselves.

I’ve gone back and analyzed a lot of old dating situations and reflected upon where I’ve failed and where others have failed me, and I’ve realized that all of those majorly hurtful situations have put me in a better place today. They’ve pushed me to aim higher and to look for people that are more worth my time. They’ve made me ambitious and more hopeful for my career goals and the life I want to have, and they’ve made me a better friend and all around person. I still hurt when I hear certain names and shed tears during certain songs, but I made it. That’s what’s important. I can go on and keep dating and I’ll probably get hurt a dozen more times, because that’s life and that’s how it works.

I wish there was some brilliant explanation as to why we have to get hurt so many times before finding the “one”, or why some people fall in love with the first person they’re with. I wish there was an answer for that, but there isn’t. All we can do is get up and keep trying and let the world come to us. If we start focusing on what we’d hoped for our lives to look like when we were kids or when we thought we’d be married by, we’re only going to get more upset. Life is something that just happens and relationships and families will come when they’re supposed to. Breakups only hurt us because we’d hoped for permanence. We can’t put that kind of pressure on something, because if it felt good with the wrong one, imagine how good it’s going to feel with the right one.