3 Things To Remind Yourself If You Think You'll Never Fall In Love
There might be more than two kinds of people in the world, but I think there might be only two ways to feel after a breakup.
You might be a completely rational person who knows that all things, including emotions, are temporal and you never doubt that you'll come to meet somebody else. If you're this kind of person, you're basically an android, and I'll never understand you.
The second kind of person cries into their pillows at night, nursing their heart, which is now a burnt-out cinder. If this is you, welcome! You are a fellow wallower.
As wallowers, we are very good at convincing ourselves of the absolute worst-case scenario after every heartache. With breakups, this means we become completely convicted that we will never love again.
This isn't true, no matter how much it might feel this way. When you get too deep in your wallowing, here are some things to tell yourself and patch that heartbreak back together:
1. You Don't Need Love To Look Fabulous
It can be really hard to see yourself that way, especially if you have been brutally dumped. Rejection is a major kick in the old self-esteem, but that doesn't mean you can't be your own admirer.
Even on the days when you feel absolutely hideous and unlovable, go to the mirror and pretend that the person looking back at you is actually a friend. Pick out one nice compliment to give that friend.
It can be as simpe as, "Your hair looks really nice today," or "You have the prettiest eyes."
On the days when I've been super heartbroken, I've found it hard to find anything beautiful about me at all. That's the most painful thing about heartbreak I think: It makes it hard to love yourself when you're in the thick of it.
If that's the case for your friend in the mirror, do something that will make them feel better. Buy a new outfit, if you can afford it. If you can't, draw a bath. If you don't have a bathtub, put on Solange and dance around to "Cranes In The Sky." See? Solange understands.
When you start to feel like yourself again, and your self-esteem meter ticks back up a few notches, you'll feel desirable again -- and when that happens, you might start seeing other people as desirable, too.
2. Not Being In Love Is So Much More Fun
Maybe everyone else in your town is an absolute cheese face. Maybe you've dated everybody in your entire city who is worth dating.
Maybe you've decided that love is way too painful, and you're not going to come near it with a 10-foot poker for the foreseeable future, and that's why you're never going to fall in love again.
That's chill. I'm a big fan of not being in love. Here's why: I'm a pretty great girlfriend. I remember birthdays, I send gifts, I aggressively tend to you if you are sick, and I support your dreams. If I'm not in love, I get to do all of that for myself all the time.
Of course, it's harder to do this if I am still obsessed with the person who doesn't want to come near me, and sometimes, I have to wait out those feelings until I can manage to invest so much in myself.
It's not so much "being your own boyfriend" as it is "being your own magical nanny figure." I want to be my own Rosie O'Donnell in Harriet The Spy, providing kernels of wisdom to my sixth-grade heart:
Hey, there's no overarching love story in Harriet The Spy, aka the greatest film of our generation.
When you are your own magical nanny figure, you get to focus on just being a kid (even if you're a kid approaching 30). That means you get to lay off of being so concerned about love for a while, and learn how to explore.
You're really never going to love again? Wow, now, you have so much more free time on your hands. You can start a band, or finally finish that erotica you started before you met your ex. Maybe you can apply to that graduate school in Finland you were thinking about.
3. It Happened Once, And It Will Happen Again
The lamest thing about love is that, when it happens to you, it somehow convinces you that you were in an absolutely unique situation that can never be replicated again.
Your relationship was an abnormality on the evolutionary timeline. You and your ex are the only people to have ever fallen in love, and the earth will become a cinder, scorched out by an exploding sun, before it ever happens again.
Obviously, you know this isn't actually true, but it sure does feel like it at the time.
People and their love are the same everywhere. That doesn't mean that you and your ex weren't unique in all the ways that make you both uniquely you. If you add up all the quirks of your particular relationship, you probably were pretty special.
But love? It happens all the time. And it doesn't only happen to other people, because it obviously happened to you at some point.
If you feel like you will never fall in love again, the greatest proof to the contrary is that it has already happened to you before. That, and the fact that the future is mostly unpredictable. A feeling is not your fate.
Love might not be happening now, and it might not come again for a long time. But that doesn't mean it won't happen again.
And when it does, it will probably be at the exact moment you stop looking for it.
