Having your heart broken will mess you the hell up.
Whether the relationship lasted two months or two years, heartbreak is heartbreak is heartbreak. When you face an end like this, one of three things happens.
1. You shake it off, laugh in the face of your ex’s new profile picture adversity and move on with the hopes of a better future. As far as everyone else is concerned you and your ex just “parted ways” and you “totally wish the best for them.” Disclaimer: No one actually believes that.
2. You become the grumpy, love-isn’t-real, cynical single you always swore you’d never be. Couples holding hands at restaurants are automatically “the worst.” Wedding announcements are laughed at. Your wedding board on Pinterest collects digital dust.
3. You become a lethal combination of the two: a cynic who loves too easily.
It’s similar to an identity crisis, only worse. You hate love, you don’t trust anyone and anyone who flirts with you is public enemy number one. But at the same time, you sit by the phone waiting for that same person to call. You are excited for dates and gush about it to your friends the next day.
You don’t want to have feelings for another individual because you know how easily they can be taken away. Yet you remember how amazing it was to have feelings like that. So despite the fact your body is telling you to run in the other direction, you throw yourself into a blooming relationship with the hopes that this one will be the one to prove you wrong.
Everything is great for about two seconds. You’re annoying yourself with your happiness. But then something happens – something probably insignificant.
He or she doesn’t text back that day; the person bails on dinner plans or posts a picture with someone else – like I said, insignificant. But whatever it is, it brings you right back to that dreaded place of love-isn’t-real, and before you know it you’ve deleted his or her number and told your friends it “just wasn’t working."
You put on a cold front; as far as anyone else is concerned, you never really cared about him or her in the first place. You were just looking for a “good time” and this person didn’t deliver. But in reality, you’re bailing on something you aren’t even sure is sinking. You’re calling it quits when you have no real reason to do so.
So why? Why is it easier to run for the hills at the first sign this is real life and not a fairy tale than to stand there and trust what you’ve been feeling? Why is it something that wouldn’t have fazed you at one time is suddenly an immediate deal-breaker?
Listen, I get it. You don’t want to love someone. You don’t want to put yourself on the line because the last time you did you got seriously screwed. You’d be safer avoiding people for the rest of your life because feelings suck and you just don’t have the energy to deal with them anymore.
But at the same time, you’ll be damned if you spend the rest of your days alone. Your heart still skips a beat when you catch the eye of someone from across the room. At the end of the day, all of the future plans you have for yourself involve another person standing next to you.
So really, there’s only one thing you can do.
Get over it.
Stop trying to find every reason in the book why it’s not going to work. Stop assuming that just because you didn’t get a text back means that person's not interested anymore.
People aren’t perfect -- they never have been -- and I hate to break it to you, but they never will be. They’ll forget to respond to texts, accidentally double-book Friday nights, realize they’re too tired to go out after they get off work and a number of other things.
Sure, you’ll get hurt again. You’ll finally get yourself to trust another person and he or she will make you wish you hadn’t. But guess what? That’s the way of the world.
The only thing you can do is remember how easily you trusted before your heart was broken. You took everything a person said at face value and you gave everyone the benefit of the doubt.
So when your heart is begging you to run the other direction, stand still for a moment instead. When your head is reminding you of everything that went wrong the last time, remember everything that could go right this time.
Being a cynic who loves too easily doesn’t mean you’re in a hopeless maze of love-you, love-you-not. It means you’re dying to be proved wrong, and when you finally are, nothing in the world will be sweeter.
