How to Love Again After a Broken Heart

"A broken middle is non the aforementioned as sadness. Sadness occurs when the heart is stone cold and lifeless. On the opposite, at that place is an unbelievable amount of vitality in a broken heart." ~Elizabeth Lesser

"I love you simply I'm not in love with you" was the line my first boyfriend used when he broke up with me. I was twenty-2.

We were simply together six months simply I cried over him for a solid year, thinking a few parallel thoughts: "If I were thinner and prettier he would've been in love with me," "How could he non be in love with me, I'm HILARIOUS," and "I'm never doing this honey affair again. It hurts way too much."

Even letting myself fall in love was a big bargain. I'd always kept people at a distance—friends and family included—because I didn't want to be that vulnerable and I didn't want to feel that much.

Letting people in meant they might see things they didn't similar or see the things about me that I didn't similar. Being that open left style too much up to chance. I much preferred to control the state of affairs.

And and so, when I permit myself autumn in love for the first fourth dimension, I did it with strong boundaries drawn. I monitored the overnice things I did for him to make sure I wasn't going overboard. I checked in with myself oftentimes to brand sure I wasn't "losing myself" and was careful not to give him "also many" compliments.

At the time, I idea my approach was very mature. I wasn't going to be 1 of those girls who loses her mind and goes gaga for some undeserving dude.

I would permit myself love him, just not too much.

Looking dorsum now, I was in total-blown defensive fashion driven by a deep demand to protect my middle from any harm. I'm a mighty deep feeler and, like most humans, quite a sensitive soul, and then loving someone just felt like mode besides much feeling for my delicate arrangement to handle.

A few years later I met my now ex-hubby. He was kind and generous and, as my grandmother said, "He felt like an old shoe." And then again, I let myself autumn in love. A logical, rational, "we make sense together" kind of love.

I was better with the compliments and did my best to love him through the footling things. A domicile cooked meal, a hug and buss every night when he walked in the door, a risotto tartlet from the farmer'due south market to show I was thinking virtually him.

And yet, I didn't let him in in. I chose him because he was safe to love. I chose him because he would never ask for my whole heart, for my fullest capacity to beloved. He had no need to see the deeper, darker parts of me that were desperately seeking light, and I had zero interest in showing him.

At the time, I really idea I loved him as much as I could. And I did, for the time and place we shared together. I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone, which felt enormous and vulnerable.

I'd ofttimes accept this recurring nightmare where something would happen to him and I'd exist left all alone, bereft and broken. I was terrified past the dream, scared out of my listen non by the thought of losing him but by having to feel bereft and broken.

And so ane day, he left. And my heart, for the first time in my life, broke open and all I could practise was feel.

In the weeks and months post-obit our separation, my heartbreak brought me confront to face with more than pain and more love than I had ever known.

At times I thought I might intermission under the strain of their combined weight.

While shedding horizontal tears that ricocheted off my glasses and ran downwardly my confront, equally I watched my matrimony and home crumble before me, I was able to muster more honey for myself and for my pain than I ever could have, for either of us, during our marriage.

When he left, the wall effectually my heart came tumbling down. The ice melted off the inner chambers of my soul. The doors to my ability to love swung open, inviting me to feel into those tender places so long ignored.

It is true. I did non love my ex-hubby to my fullest chapters because upwardly until my eye broke open, I could not dear myself to such capacity.

I was also busy protecting myself from my pain, my needs, his pain, his needs that I walked right past the love that is possible betwixt two people when they open up their hearts to one another.

Know this: A broken heart is an open eye.

Information technology is in the breaking, when our hearts are peeled back on themselves, that our truths accept passage to come in and out.

If we're lucky, our hearts will break over and again to reveal new ways of being, of thinking, and of loving.

Each break allows our hearts to heal bigger than the fourth dimension earlier.

Yeah, there is hurting every time we're cracked open. Immeasurable hurting. And with each break, each sting of pain, our hearts are able to expand and strengthen our capacity to love.

Sunset heart paradigm via Shutterstock

Virtually Jamie Greenwood

Jamie Greenwood is the founder of JamieLiving.com, where well-meaning, control-freak women come for shots of strength and lightening bolts of truth. Jamie is as well the creator of Just F*cking Swallow Information technology, an online programme that helps women stop second-guessing food and kickoff trusting their bodies.

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