Love Hurts♥Love Advice for the Broken Hearted
Author: Lynne Namka, Ed. D.
Everybody gets their heart broken at least once in their life. Here’s some advice on putting it all in perspective. So “Give yourself to love, if love is what you’re after” the songwriter Kate Wolfe tells us. But unfortunately part of love is hurt and pain which can be more fully understood by pondering on the whys, wherefore and why nots of heartbreak. We have all experienced it in one form or another-that excruciating betrayal or loss of someone we cared deeply about. Movies ever repeat the theme of love gained and lost. Songs pulse and throb with the pain of losing someone.
When we care about someone deeply, we experience connection and the good feelings of belonging. We expect these to go on forever, but unfortunately all of human nature is not wired this way. Most first loves do break up and some later ones as well. Friends we consider to be forever move on to others who better suit their tastes. Like the oldie-but- goodie song says, “You always hurt the one you love.” If you choose someone who is basically selfish, is caught in addictions or mental illness or has unresolved childhood trauma issues, it’s probable that you will feel betrayed.
Learning to deal with the excruciating feelings of being left is a greater part of being a human being. I know. I’ve broken the hearts of good men that I had to leave and have had my heart broken several times as well. So I know both sides and have experienced all the emotions that come forth during the breakup process. In addition, I’ve sat in therapy sessions in compassion with numerous men and women who were heartbroken. One of my therapist roles is being “The Love Coach” helping people sort out what went wrong and how to keep the heartache from repeating next time. As Patsy Cline sings, “Heartaches, heartaches, my loving you makes my heart break.”
Love pain may be the worst feeling of all-a gut-wrenching anguish born of loss. Old core beliefs about not being deserving of love surface. That horrible feeling of being abandoned that may go back to early childhood memories when your parents weren’t there for you the way that you wanted them to be. Love suffering is one of the great mysteries of the human condition; it hits the self-esteem hard. Like the song says, “Love hurts.”
Love gone wrong. We never get the life nor the love we expect. And we do not deserve the emotional pain of betrayal, but it happens just the same. Understanding what happened to make things go sour helps somewhat.Being rejected hurts. Feeling abandoned when your partner leaves can be excruciating painful. Breakups allow you an opportunity to analyze your choice of a partner and what did not work for the both of you.
Why People Leave Relationships
People leave because they fall out of love and know the relationship is not meeting their needs. Some leave because they cannot stay any longer and be true to themselves. Some can’t tolerate the conflict, mind games and continual fights. Some betray the ones around them because they need new vistas or experiences. Some become totally absorbed in new hobbies. Some run away from tried-and-true love because they need the excitement of someone new; they aren’t mentally ready to settle down to one person. Some stay and seek out others outside the relationship because that is what they grew up with- parents who couldn’t be faithful to their partner. This is narcissistic entitlement-“I get to do this because I can”-which causes much suffering in the world.
Some are just plain severely damaged people-the narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths who have wrecked your life. Give thanks that you have the ability to move on. Seriously, you are better off without them.
And sometimes people leave, not because they are bad people, but because they have life lessons to be learned elsewhere with someone else. Their decision to leave may be entirely about their needs that could not be met in the relationship. So if this has happened to you consider that being left may not be about you at all. It may be something their ego required that you could not provide. This doesn’t mean that you were flawed. It just wasn’t the exact match like a jig saw puzzle piece that almost fits, looks like it should fit, but won’t go into that exact configuration of the open space left in the whole puzzle.
Betrayal is often the result of expectations not met. When we think we have found true love, it feels so good that we expect it will go on forever. We are set up for the unrealistic happily ever after by romance novels and films. The Finnish people are deemed happier than Americans because they have lower expectations. When something good does happen, the Finns are pleasantly surprised. Realistic expectations in a marriage are respect, caring, faithfulness, honesty and sharing of finances. Unrealistic expectations are demands like “I expect you to take care of all my feelings or always put my needs before yours.”
Love gone wrong can turn into love gone gone giving a big hit to the psyche and the fragile self-esteem. Humiliation festers. Exaggerations come forth. Dark fantasy takes over. A victim-hood story forms. Mourning sets in. Misery thoughts hamper the outlook. Happiness in the simple things of life goes out the window. Energy drops to a lethargic level. Depression moves in. Ruminations run the gerbil wheel of the mind. Life contracts to dwell on the negative. The illusion of love too often turns to the disillusion of love. The ego kicks in with hurt, bitterness and thought of revenge which is the idea of “You hurt me; I’ll hurt you.” Ugly can set in if you don’t nip it repeatedly in the bud.
Attachment to the Old Ways of Thinking and Feeling
Buddhist psychology says that life is suffering and to let go of suffering, let go of attachment. We attach to those that have made us feel good. We attach to the nostalgia of simpler times. What we attach to is the good feelings brought about by the dopamine center of the brain. It’s the pleasure center that puts out the feel-good endorphin’s that make us feel alive having that grand amour.
The greatest and cheapest antidepressant is the endorphin’s and positive feelings generated by being around the one you love. And the biggest plunge happens when that is taken away from you by your partner’s duplicity. We humans are more governed by our dopamine systems that we ever know. And it is that very dopamine system that keeps us attached to old and unobtainable loves years after the initial loss. It’s called nostalgia-that longing and wistfulness for a simpler time when we felt safe.
Working to Calm the Pain of Feeling Betrayed
If you are still adrift after experiencing pangs over lost love, the best bet is to turn it around to understanding what you need to change about yourself to make love work the next time. Sometimes this means choosing a better-suited partner who is mentally healthy enough to be loving and kind to you.
Medical intuitive Caroline Myss suggests using the pain of betrayal as an opportunity to learn something about yourself. “Betrayal, brilliantly serves as the master teacher, motivating us to seek a higher order. In trying to heal from a betrayal, we demand to know why the break up happened. But for all our questions, the answer we seek seldom surfaces, so we are forced to move beyond our questioning. What I’m suggesting is that betrayal is a spiritual message, telling us that it is time to leave the dimension of human logic behind and move to the next plateau of consciousness; diving reasoning… This epiphany is the source of joy. It brings an awareness that the people, places or events that allegedly ’caused’ a betrayal were no more than players in a dram to serve our growth, as we serve them. Knowing this may not immediately make betrayal painless. But look at betrayal as anything less than a call to higher consciousness can keep us locked in the pain far longer.”
You might find minor comfort in telling yourself that it just wasn’t meant to be and that you don’t need to know why. As my friend, poet John Bailey wrote, “It’s not your fault, but it’s your move.” So move you must if you want to let go of your victim story. Put in a lot of stops. Stop obsessing about getting the lost love back. Stop your single-minded focus on that one person and move on to satisfying sensory experiences. Step back and detach from the angst of loss and grief. Step away from those beliefs of the mind that dwell on suffering.
Seeking Help for Love Pain
Pain makes you contract emotionally so go for the opposite: expand yourself. See the situation from a bigger perspective than one of ongoing pain. Open yourself spiritually. Reach out and help someone else. If you have a character defect that caused the break up, go after it with a determination that you WILL become a better person. Practice Thought Stoppage-interrupt each yearning thought especially the negative concept that you were “dumped.” Turn that mental channel of your mind away from the soap opera channel to a more entertaining one.
Your capacity to feel pain is equal to your capacity to love again. The depth of the plunge into the valley of despair can be the one and same as the long climb back to the land of the loving again. It might be a long, arduous journey but the expedition to self-knowledge is doable.
There are many techniques to quell the aches inside and you can learn. The approaches that involve the mind, body and feeling are more robust in releasing heartaches and traumas.The Emotional Freedom Technique, Tapas Acupressure Technique and The Healing Code and Eye Movement Desensitization Technique plus many more can help you process and release unhappy emotions. Practice them daily to return to wholeness. Do a web search for findatherapist.com for referrals to therapists in your area. Learn to do these techniques on your own each and every time you have a love pang and gradually or sometimes quickly they will decrease.
To love is to risk. To love is to face the possibility that you might experience loss. Be glad that you are a feeling person who has the ability to feel for others deeply. Feelings add to the richness of life; go for the richness. Like Faith Hill sings, “When it comes to sitting it out or dance, I hope you dance.” And I hope you love.
So I Wish You Love
Do it differently this time. Choose wiser. Love wiser. Really check out the baggage of the person you choose to see if he or she has a generous heart. Pick a fight with them to see how they do conflict. See them drunk or high to see if you can stand their behavior when under the influence.
Look for that person who is truly able to love and commit to you. Find someone who is giving and loving even if it is a furry companion that thinks you are the greatest thing in the world. Look at your own barriers to intimacy and how you distance yourself to keep from being hurt again. Learn the skills of living in loving relationships. I’ve gathered the best of the rules of staying in love in my many articles listed under – Relationships.
Our world needs more loving people in loving relationships. We now know what it takes to create a loving relationship. Study the positive relationship skills and tools available through my articles. I’ve put a lot of them on this website under the category – Relationships.
Find that good person, and then give the object of your affections all its worth. Learn about your psychological defense mechanisms given provided at my article, Threatened? Out Come Your Defense Mechanisms. Here’s a line of hope from Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s poem for the walking wounded who seek new possibilities, “Love as if you have never been hurt.”
Aren’t We all a Little Bit Mad when it Comes to Love?
My book Love As a Fine Species of Madness tells about the soul-searching portrait of Janie Perkins who obsessively sorts through her haunting childhood memories to solve a long-hidden family murder. Janie, a vulnerable woman with grit and determination builds her life around, and then runs from, flawed men. This poignant psychological mystery has themes of loss, holding onto the first love across a lifetime and healing. This is bittersweet story of moving through the illusions of a never-to-be romance and finding an identity and place in the world. It is a life-affirming story of parental insanity, betrayal and redemption.
So give yourself to love.
One of the best investments to make in life is to invest in loving and being loved. Giving yourself to love of the right kind—not the desperate, ego-make-up-for what-your-parents’-didn’t-give-you type—is the journey out of madness.