Heartbreak sucks.
Especially when you’ve laid down all your walls for that one person you envisioned a full-blown future with – putting every other human of the 6 billion on the sideline.
There are two types of people in the world:
1)Those who will refuse to give up – after being torn apart by someone they would’ve least expected.
2)Those who will just give up on the idea of intimacy and love.
Sidenote: If you’re a person who’s highly emotional and driven by the power of love; then this is definitely going to resonate.
On the contrary: if you haven’t experienced a heartbreak that quite frankly left you sobbing throughout your sleep, then this will definitely be a wakeup call.
Either way, you’re going to get something out of these 3 lessons because I assume you’re human – and that you’re capable of feeling.
1) You aren’t responsible for healing each other.
Let’s just say that if you’re playing the savior or the victim in a relationship; chances are you’re very likely in an unhealthy – even toxic – relationship.
These types of relationships suck up & drain the living sh*t out of your life. And there’s only one way out: that’s through communicating the following to your partner and understanding that you are only responsible for healing yourself while supporting your partner to the best of your ability.
Signs that you should pay direct attention to are: feeling drained emotionally, experiencing excessive feelings of guilt and have a loss of energy to keep up with basic daily chores in life.
The main takeaway from this lesson is that your role as a partner is solely being there for them.
And please, do not play the role of a therapist with your partner. (I’ll come back to that in another article – but I urge you to avoid doing that till then).
It’s more likely that the attention you’re giving to their pain is reinforcing their behaviour to act the way they are. It may well be satisfying their need for attention, hence, dragging you down the dark hole with them.
While I am an avid mental health advocate, I am also an avid advocate of: get the f*ck out of a toxic relationship.
Not everyone is trying to get help.
Misery loves company.
Sometimes, it simply shouldn’t be your burden. At the end of the day, we’ve all got our fair share.
You’ve got to acknowledge that you’re doing well more than enough to be of support with tenderness, love, and care. What more can someone ask for?
The hardest lesson I ever learned was that sometimes you need to pull the plug and bear the short term side effects in return for your long term sanity and wellbeing.
2) There is no stronger bond than friendship.
So you’ve had the passionate, great sex. Then what?
Then comes the “sharing our lives part”.
That’s the part when you actually live, eat, breathe, sh*t and sleep together.
That – in other words, is friendship.
The most successful relationships are built on strong bonds of friendship.
Being close friends with someone means feeling a deep sense of joy and comfort around them for who they truly are. That type of interest is much deeper than today’s common (you’re hot – let’s f*ck) type of interest.
That type of interest, however, involves one key dealbreaker – trust. If my mother wouldn’t have gotten a panic attack when she found I’d booked an appointment at a tattoo parlour, I would have tattooed “TRUST” onto my wrist.
There is no quality or characteristic in a relationship between any two greater than trust. With trust comes respect, and with respect comes the type of love that lasts for good.
Unconditional love.
Without trust, your relationship with any human being isn’t bound to last.
It’s that simple.
‘There is no stronger bond than friendship – built on trust.
3) Attachment is the root of all suffering.
That’s the type of attachment that disrupts a person’s ability to function without another.
We’ll dive into the healthy type(s) of attachment in a separate article – but for now – it’s imperative to understand that the kind of attachment we’re talking about is the co-dependent type of “love”.
Picture a scenario where you’ve fully depended on a partner on making you feel an emotion necessary for your mental wellbeing, ie. acceptance.
With that type of attachment – “love” – in place, just like air: without them, you’d suffocate.
That is the root of all suffering.
That is attachment – not love.
The unconditional type of love doesn’t account for such toxicity.
Unfortunately, the way we’ve all been conditioned, into seeing mad, crazy and wild love, has always been through a depiction of suffering.
From Romeo and Juliet to Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez.
We’ll stop there and assume you got it…
This lesson taught me that not everyone means saying the infamous three-letter word. In fact, most “I love you’s” could easily be placed with “I’m madly attached to you”.
It’s almost like a hit of dopamine that rushes down one’s system.
That rush, however, like a snort of cocaine, is insignificant when the high dies… or when sh*t hits the fan.
“Stop hopping around shopping for others to be with.”
We all know someone who’s always in a relationship.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned as a 22-year-old, in today’s dating culture is that people are extremely hurt inside thus find refuge latching to others, for a sense of validation, mistakenly, in the name of love.
That’s the real root of deep pain and suffering.
That’s why Empower Mag is personal to me.
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