Heartbreak, loss, protracted and unwanted single-ness, and break-ups bring up the painful side of connection, when we are torn from intimacy and thrown back into autonomy.
We form attachments to people, we let them know us and become part of our lives, we form oxytocin bonds, and then we suffer the sundering of those attachments. Sometimes these break-ups are slow, and one person has had more time to prepare for it while the other feels blindsided. Sometimes they happen rapidly and take everyone by surprise, even if in retrospect it becomes obvious this was where things are heading. Sometimes they are circumstantial, sometimes behavioral. They suck.
We all deal with break-ups differently, and we may deal with different break-ups differently. Some losses feel easy while others may be gutting. Even for those of us who practice multiple relationships, break-ups may be surprising in their force and repercussions.
While walking of labyrinth of maturation, we go through periods of looking outward for what we desire, and periods of turning inward to find what we desire, and each turn is a part of the same journey toward discovering and becoming our wholeness. It is true that people need people, and it is true that we can be self-possessed and learn to care for our needs. Discussing this, however, we tend to flatten out connection and autonomy and appear to bias one over the other, when truly it’s more a matter of applying the corrective influence when we become too unbalanced in one direction.
The one constant companion in our lives is our Self, and the more we can love and care for our selves, the more resilience and generosity we can offer our loved ones. And the more support, love, and caring we can receive from our networks, the more able we are to love and care for self. Break-ups are an opportunity to turn back toward self and deepen our healing, self-love, and self-knowledge.
Here are some ways we can practice loving ourselves and recentering in Self in ways that will support us as we heal and consider when we’ll be ready to try practicing this kind of love again:
Lean on your supports, and spend quality time alone
When any attachment is broken, we experience unique kinds of grief. Surprising thoughts and feelings may arise, or ones that are all too familiar.
When we’re less experienced in loving and losing, we may believe those thoughts too readily, thoughts like “Love is a lie,” or “I will always be alone.” As with any multiple choice test, any thought that involves the word “always” or “never” is probably false. But it is hard to uncouple those thoughts and the intensity of pain that we must feel to work through, and we may want the supportive witnessing of other loved ones.
A break-up is a particular opportunity to look at the ways we’ve depended on this person to meet our social and emotional needs. So many needs for experiences like touch, emotional connection, validation, and togetherness become sexualized because we are led to believe that only sexual and romantic partners can fulfill those.
This is particularly true for men in this culture, who are subjected to such scrutiny when they have needs for physical or emotional connection, even when they try to meet their own sexual needs. In other cultures and points of history, men were able to be physically and emotionally affectionate with each other, holding hands while walking in public and writing impassioned letters to each other.
But since at least I was a child none of that is acceptable without others insinuating there being a sexual or romantic component. This complicates the ways gay and straight men understand their own needs for belonging and connection. A desire for sex may simply be a feeling of loneliness and desire for any kind of connection. A genuine emotional connection could be mistaken for a potential romantic or sexual experience.
None of these forms of relationship, in practice, have obvious lines drawn between them. Ideally, the relationship would unfold between the individuals according to their wants, needs, and boundaries, and take the shape that supports them both. The problem is simply the inability to reflect upon what needs each kind of connection serves—what does sex mean to me? What kind of emotional support is meaningful? Whose validation “counts”? As we become clearer on our answers to these questions, it becomes easier to talk about these with others, and then to figure out what kind of relationship we’re having together.
When we’re not clear or not willing to discuss, then our relationships tend to be riddled with covert tests and games and deeply complex internal dramas that affect the unfolding of the relationship.
All this to say, when a breakup occurs, you might consider reaching out to your support network for the kinds of comfort and connection you got from your ex. Even better, reach out to as many people as you can, and think of new people with whom you might want to deepen a relationship.
Reaching out for emotional support when one is already in pain is very scary, so take some time to identify what those fears are and how you can help that scared part of you plan for risks. You might be afraid of being disappointed, that a person won’t be available to you when you need them. You can make a plan for how to care for yourself when disappointed, but you also might consider that this is an argument to reach out to even more people.
Adults have a variety of valid reasons why they cannot be emotionally available to each other the moment a person needs the connection—so if you can reach out to five people and connect with the one who can be available, or if you can reach out and schedule time when your person is able to emotionally available, that is going to help decrease the likelihood of disappointment.
Along with that, plan time to be with yourself in an emotionally present way. You might decide to spend an evening alone to journal, or a weekend day going on a walk. Think about the things you enjoyed doing that perhaps fell by the wayside with your partner in your life, and see if you can pick those back up. Think about things you’ve always been curious about, and see if you can make time to do it.
Sometimes people struggle to love and spend time with themselves because of the dreaded fear that this means they are a “loser” or some other variation of being a social failure. Certainly this time is going to require you be present with your pain and these stories, but you might be surprised at how gentle it ends up being.
Consider instead that you are spending time with the one person who is truly going to be here with you for you your entire life. You might not like that person right now. You might not even know them that well. You might be afraid of them, and have good reason to think they won’t be there for you. At the same time, you can begin building trust in yourself, getting to know yourself, discovering what you appreciate about yourself.
One possibility is that you may well grow in confidence, self-love, and self-acceptance, which will make your life a lot easier. Another possibility is that you begin to engage in a life you truly enjoy, and increase the likelihood of meeting other people who also enjoy the same things. Then you will find friends and partners who match the life you want, rather than worrying about matching your life to the friends and partners you want.
Cultivate what your ex provided for you
One implication of Jung’s psychological conception of the Self and its complexes is that we are all capable of wholeness, or are already whole but identified with only small parts of ourselves and blind to the rest.
In my adult life, I’ve worked with this suggestion as a practice for finding what in me is unbalanced or missing and working to develop it—or, in many cases, helping my other parts get out of the way for that innate capacity to emerge. “Individuation,” Jung’s name for his process of psychological maturation, actually means “becoming whole” and not “becoming unique and separate” as one tends to assume today, although the process includes both experiences. For it seems that becoming whole doesn’t mean that we all end up the same, exactly, but that we discover the mixture of wholeness that we are.
Those whom we desire and whom we hate are mirrors of the wholeness that we are but are as yet unable to own. It’s the enormity of feeling that tends to be a clue. The person who gets under my skin within minutes of seeing them, or the person that I start feeling awkward and insecure around, or the person that I fall madly in love with—I may start by seeing something in them that I despise, admire, or love, but these qualities are also within me.
We seek to become whole through seeing in others what we want to own for ourselves, or are reluctant to own. In the cases of intense anger and hatred, spending time looking at the ways I practice the same quality or participate in the undesired patterns is how I become whole. When I find someone particularly condescending, a know-it-all, robotic, aloof—I’m skewered. It’s not that I need to like them, but if I can start having more kindness for the ways I’m a know-it-all, I’ll be less irritated by fellow know-it-alls and even better able to stop myself when I fall into the habit.
When we have loving acceptance for our parts, our parts begin to trust us more, and so we develop a practice of deep relationship that looks on the outside like control. When we strive to control ourselves, our parts cannot trust us to listen or consider their needs, and so we develop a practice inner conflict that looks on the outside like self-sabotage.
When it comes to breaking up with our beloveds—or, for that matter, crushes on people we’re too activated to do anything about—it’s worth taking time to explore what it was we desired in them. Why did this person of all the billions of people in the world get me so wound up? What did they give me that I’ve been wanting so badly?
This might all be really heady, and your answers might be “sex,” “we went to the gym,” or “I liked their parents.” That’s a fine place to start. Keep going deeper – what did I like about doing this together? What was different about being with them versus another person? What qualities did that experience have? How did it feel?
This is another process that could be done multiple times and take time to unfold, and will be different as we grow into different relationships. For me, I’ve often found it difficult to relax and have a good time, and I’ve tended to cling to people who seemed especially fun and spontaneous and prioritized enjoyment. I value my steadiness and discipline, so I’ve never been able to fully embrace their ways of being. But after one break-up, I reflected on the ways I loved my partner for taking me to concerts and theater shows, and started making more efforts to track bands I wanted to see live and buy tickets.
We can and ideally will do this practice in long-term committed relationships as well, for that is one of the ways that we mature together. When we’re still with our partners, it’s easier for us to continue leaning on them to provide the quality we want for balance—but that starts to get wearying and problematic, especially when they’re leaning back.
If one partner always feels like they have to be the steady, unemotional “rock,” and another partner feels like they have to bring the passion, intimacy, and enthusiasm, both may begin to feel stuck and resentful in their roles. The passionate ones usually would love to see more enthusiasm from their rocks, and the rocks often would love to trust that they don’t have to be the one to hold it together all the time.
What’s scary is that our relationships tend to become less stable when one, or ideally all partners begin to integrate the unowned qualities. Reliable scripts no longer work. Old agreements are up for renegotiation. As our identities are invested in being a certain way, and we learn that we could be many ways, it’s normal to spend time wondering who we really are, and if we chose our partners based on stories that no longer apply.
When we can do this work in partnership, it feels slower and messier, but each partner becomes freer to grow in a new way, and potentially together they can mature into stronger partnership and new adventures. When we do this after a break-up, we have more ground and freedom to direct our growth and consider the kinds of partners we want in the future. If there’s a pattern that keeps playing out, doing this work could help you break out of that pattern into something new—or help you to realize when you are starting the pattern again with someone new.
Often I think of this image of partners leaning on each other. If everyone is leaning on each other, there is a collapse when one partner needs to step away. If everyone is pulling away from each other but trying to stay connected by holding hands, again a collapse occurs when one wants to step away or even move closer. But if each partner can support themselves and then reach out to hold hands, there are more options for movement while staying connected.
Most of us cannot imagine giving ourselves the kind of loving, kind acceptance that we hope our partners will give, and it does take practice and support to develop. We all experience feelings of loneliness and relationship ruptures that require self-reflection, whether we have one partner we spend all our time with, or multiple partners with whom we can connect. We learn the practice of loving ourselves through experiencing being loved, but cultivating this ability to love ourselves as deeply and skillfully as the love we desire is worth at least one hundred partners.
Create a version of the story in which you are okay
In a process of grief and especially when there is heartbreak and sorrow, we tend to create a story about what happen. Frequently several stories, contradicting and painful, in which we seek to identify what went wrong. This is a highly productive practice in that it helps us to create structure around our pain and distill the lessons that will help us live into a better future, but we can also get stuck in stories of blame and pain that do not have much room for growth.
When our young ones are hurt, they want to find blame. If we think of this as a normal developmental thing, it makes sense. Children need some sense of order and causality for safety, and in the process of learning to navigate the world start coming up with stories and rules to make sense of things. This tends to involve blame, making things someone’s fault.
Blame itself goes both directions. Either it’s your fault or my fault. That’s the other hallmark of young thinking, that simple dualism. As adults, we may be able to understand that life is more complicated. We might watch two of our beloved friends’ relationship collapse and understand that both have valid reasons to be mad at the other but feel like it’s impossible to take “a side.” That blame and side-taking is a young need, and in its way it’s valid—my young parts need to know that people will have my back if I need them.
My adult self, however, knows that when my relationship with a loved one falls apart, I still have to figure out how to coexist in the same world as them. Our friends and interests may continue to overlap, or simply living in the same town means we’ll run into each other again. For people in very small communities or subcultures, asking people to take sides could be very destructive or backfire horribly.
In the process of healing from a breakup, we may need to begin with a blaming story. If you’re like a lot of people I know, you’re likely to go through a lot of blaming stories, sometimes cycling through several in ten minutes. It’s all his fault, if only he’d done this instead of that. But then he only did that because I was so mean to him, so it’s my fault. But then that was actually a lie, I found it, because he did that before I was mean to him so it’s his fault.
This process is really painful and confusing and helps us to really look at what we may call our “parts.” Rather than trying to come up with the “real story” right away, you might consider taking time to journal all these different stories and letting those different parts have their perspectives heard.
“A part of me feels angry and lied to.”
“A part of me is desperate for her to take me back and wants to call and beg her right now.”
“A part of me is relieved that I never have to see them again.”
Allowing and acknowledging this multiplicity may feel scary and overwhelming at times, but it’s a lot more normal than we think, and giving ourselves permission to have contradictory reactions is deeply soothing. It helps us stop feeling a sense of urgency that we have to figure out “the truth” or “the right answer” and take action. It is, in fact, learning not to take sides within my own internal battles, but to listen to each part of me and understand and validate the feeling, while allowing all these other parts to have validity as well.
Over time, as we tell these stories, we may begin to arrive at a kind of narrative that is more nuanced and less reactive. It gives us space to have our valid feelings about what happened, but it also creates possibilities for growth and different actions in the future. Blaming feels powerful but may put us in a state of powerlessness—if it’s all something you did then I don’t have any influence. And if it’s all my fault then I don’t have any grace or space to have boundaries. But when I can be honest about how we all participated, I don’t have to own everything that happened, but I can take ownership of my piece of it.
This story might begin to look like, “I noticed early on that she wasn’t always honest and up front about her feelings, but I thought if I could be kind and patient then she’d start to open up and trust me more. But I wasn’t honest with her about how much I didn’t feel I could trust her, so I started asking these annoying and intrusive questions and had less and less patience with her, so she became even more guarded.”
It’s worth checking out our stories with trusted friends or professional supporters who are able to listen in a way that’s nonjudgmental and on our side but also supports our accountability. There are ways we can take blame or responsibility for things that are simply unacceptable, especially when on the receiving end of hurtful and abusive behavior.
Part of the work we are doing is learning to identify our habits of blame and get feedback on what responsibility we are taking or not taking which ideally would happen with the person in question but often does not. Hearing “you did nothing wrong, this is all on them” is useful and appropriate at times, and we can accept that and continue to dig for a place where we can grow.
What’s most important is that we tell a story in which we can be okay in the wake of the collapse. A story like “love isn’t real” or “people will always hurt me” is not a story of okayness, though it may be one we have to tell for a while. A story like, “I got hurt, but I’m okay now,” may be one that takes more work to believe, but we can keep working on it our whole lives.
Be gentle with yourself
After writing this, and before its scheduled post date, I had a conversation with a person grieving a break-up who wondered how long the process would take. Writing this post is, in its way, an effort to give us something to “do” while time does its natural process of helping us to heal. It may give the illusion that we can speed up the process, which is wrong but in a way it is right.
What we can best do is get out of the way of our psyche’s natural tendency toward healing. If all we did was sit in quiet, loving witness, watching our inner conflicts and pain without turning away and without trying to do anything, we could watch ourselves naturally repair and grow. This is very difficult for most of us.
Trying to “do” or “fix” may end up slowing our process down. When we rush into another relationship, or we try yet again to have a conversation with our exes to get closure but end up re-enacting the toxic communication patterns, we are in some ways getting in our own way. Trying too hard to rush the healing process. But totally checking out and numbing also gets in the way of healing.
These practices suggested above are, in their ways, practices to help us get out of the way of our own healing. In this recent conversation, I thought of what happens when I pinch a nerve. Part of my body goes numb or loses functioning, which is quite distressing, and may last a lot longer than I want. The parts of me that get nervous I’ve ruined myself or will never get the functioning back may want to obsess about repairing the problem, but there is only so much that can be done.
While doing whatever therapies are relevant, we still learn to live with the numbness and reduced functioning. One day, I may notice that I haven’t noticed the pinched nerve in a while. Something that caused so much grief sort of disappeared when I wasn’t paying attention. Healing from heartbreak is like that, too. It’s so present, inescapably so at times, and then one day we realize we don’t remember the last time we thought about it.
Striving for a definitive resolution, unfortunately, does not work. Patience and continuing to live does.
