Posted by Did they take your love, all of your good intentions, your optimistic attitude that this time it would work? Did they take your precious time and hard-earned money too? Did you waste years with them, trying to make it all work, trying to get on the same page, trying to suck up enough to make it work? Did you think that if you could just be good enough, it would all work out?
Did they tell you stories that you wanted to believe so badly that you actually did? Did they paint beautiful pictures about your life together and what it could look like? Did they leave you places, take your trust in them and wring it out to dry in a public display of disrespect? Did they leave you- cold-heartedly– just leave the room, the house, the bed, the intimate life you had once shared?
Did they sleep around? Did they sleep around in obvious, hurtful, disgusting ways? Steal your money right out of your wallet? Embarrass you in front of your friends, telling them things you had told them in during that quiet pillow-time together? Did you want to crawl in a hole it was so awful the way you felt during the holiday together with your family?
Oh yeah, the names- which names did they call you? Did they use the names and descriptions you told them hurt the most?
Did they refuse to love you, to respect your efforts, to care that your heart was shriveling and crackling into bits while they threw tantrums about what they wanted and deserved from the world and from you?
Oh, and just how unforgiving were they? Did they remind you over and over about your mistakes? Did you live over and over and over again the incredible remorse you felt for those unthinking actions you took that you really wish you could have buried away?
So they broke your heart. Yes, of course they did. They did that stuff to us… and maybe more. That is how a heart breaks. It is how we break hearts. We have broken other hearts, and our hearts will be broken. It happens every minute of every hour of every day. It happens. Get over it.
When we stay in the hole of fear, we are allowing them to continue to hurt us. We continue the pain and agony of that old relationship. The spiraling down the drain continues until we catch hold and get out of it.
We can choose to be safe and warm and snug in our little cocoon of safety that never lets our heart feel love. But we weren’t made for that. God doesn’t want it for us, your mom doesn’t want it for you, and I don’t want it for you either. My friend Diane has the most basic advice ever for broken hearts and disappointments: relax, learn the lesson, and move forward.
Get over it. Get over you. It happens to everyone, and it wasn’t any worse for you than anyone else. A broken heart is a broken heart. No one deserves it. Find your way through it the muck of hurt, retrieve your self esteem from the back shelf of the back closet, decide what you want next time around, and move forward.
3-Legged Table: Reframing Our Beautiful Chaos 
Anne, wow what a blog! all of a sudden I was right back to where I’ve been when I was hurt in my love life. Right on about finding love or love finding you and healing.
Thanks
d
Relax, learn the lesson, and move forward is a very good advice. Easier said than done. But it’s true, that time, time, time…
Apparently it takes half the time we were in a relationship with somebody to get over it. In my case it’s true… It took me over three years to see the sun at the end of the tunnel, but now I’m here, and I know I had to go through all the pain on the way….
Yes, swimming thru the muck of pain to get to the other side… we must go thru it. But if I can keep my instructions simple, it gives me the illusion that it is easier?
That was hard to read….But you’re right Get over it! and be willing to take a chance. And continue to write!!!..Writing helps!
That was a conglomeration of all the awful ways relationships are stomped. That didn’t all happen to me. But all of it happened to people I know… really sad, huh? But you are right, it is good for us to write about it and get it out. We are as sick as our secrets.