What It Feels Like To Have A Broken Heart And Try To Love Anyway

I don’t really like the phrase, “a broken heart.” If our hearts were to break, we’d be dead -- something many would welcome as a relief from the soul-crushing pain they’re actually experiencing.

The truth is, when you get your heart broken, nothing truly breaks -- nothing physical and (almost always) nothing psychological -- but it feels like we’ve been broken somewhere on the inside.

The truth is nothing has broken. We’ve simply detached ourselves from the world we thought we knew and found ourselves in a separate version of reality.

And it hurts.

When you’re in love, you lay the foundation on a set of beliefs -- all of which are built on trust. These beliefs become your reality, your world. Everything you do and think and plan for relies on the beliefs you've set up for yourself.

When we feel our hearts breaking, we're just realizing the realities we thought existed -- and all the things we took as truths -- were nothing more than fantasy.

We were lied to, deceived, insulted and left to fend for ourselves in a reality we don't yet fully comprehend.

Heartbreak tends to last so long because of the way we understand our lives. We link our thoughts, ideas and understanding via causal relationships. Everything that makes us the person we are today is linked back to the person we once were, and linked to those experiences that caused us to change our course in life.

When your heart breaks, you’re not sure what to do with yourself because you don't understand why the person you loved so much just walked out on you.

So you do the only thing you can do; you do your best to move on with your life. The problem, however, is you can’t stop thinking about the individual.

He or she was such an influential and important part of your life, and everything you do reminds you of him or her.

In addition, the two of you separating changed you into a completely different person.

You’re not as trusting as you once were.

You probably aren’t quite as optimistic and open to the idea of love. Now, it takes a lot more time for you to trust anyone new in your life -- and this makes dating a bit more difficult.

While I believe every person in the world ultimately wants to be loved, sometimes you just crave the physical. Sometimes you want something superficial and meaningless, yet intense and satisfying. Sex doesn’t heal wounds, but it does take your mind off them.

Sooner or later, all the superficiality becomes mundane. Eventually, you decide to give love another shot. You know you still have a ton of baggage, but you’re willing to put an effort forward to find someone willing to help you unpack it.

You compare every new potential candidate to the one who got away.

And it hurts when you realize most people fall short. But what could you have possibly expected? You loved someone as much as you did because you believed him or her to be one-of-a-kind.

Finding someone else who's even more awesome shouldn’t be easy. If it is, the one who broke your heart wasn’t worth your time.

The harder it is to find someone new to love, the more you realize your last love was almost the right match. The real difficulty comes with each new disappointment.

Every time you fail to find someone to love, the sadder you feel and the more likely you are to drag yourself back into the depths of the heartache.

If it sounds depressing, it’s because it is. This is the thing about love: If it isn't carried along by pain, longing, or worry, it can’t be called love -- at least not the romantic kind.

You'll move on when you're ready.

Often the love we had was far from the love we needed, so finding someone else to love isn’t incredibly difficult.

Unfortunately, there are also times when we find the right individual too early on and don't realize it, missing the opportunity of a lifetime.

With enough time, even this sort of heartbreak numbs itself. The feelings you once had don't disappear, but they also aren’t present either.

You do your best to be optimistic, and you keep reminding yourself there's almost certainly always someone else out there for you -- you just need to find him or her.

You’re floating in this sort of purgatory between wanting to crawl back into your ex’s arms and doing your best to find a new love of your life. It’s an interesting reality, filled with sadness and excitement, history and novelty.

In a world where anything is possible, you keep faith by believing you’ll find love again. Whether it be a past love or a new one, you know you’ll find happiness. And don't stop searching until you do.

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