Breaking Hearts

With red eyes, she quietly whispered confessions of a broken heart.

Part of 'figuring this whole thing out' is getting your heart stomped on a few times. This process does not always require the involvement of other people, but the healing process normally involves blaming them...



"you give until you've given up and you are sure to find the perfect man"

A few nights ago I was talking about my romantic past. "I've had my heart broken a few times," I admitted, "but I've never broken anybody's heart." The statement rolled out of my head, as many statements do, before I had ever consciously conceived the idea. And so began me analysis of it.

Have I really never broken somebody's heart? The first few times my heart was broken, I know that I was hurt while the other parties were left unharmed. I was young, and naive - without a layer of ice permanently surrounding my emotional centre. Like tumble weeds, those people blew out of my life, and I eventually got over it. But then came the bigger breaks...

The first time I may have broken somebody's heart is something I have refused to take ownership of. I was older, but no less naive...and my innocence hurt me more than he led on it hurting him. When it ended, I was sick, both physically and emotionally, and I've always blamed him for that. I've only recently began to forgive him for everything that's happened. And taken some responsibility for creating an environment where I could get hurt. The strangest thing is that we've both left a channel open for forgiveness to flow through. Which makes me wonder about his emotions...

I thrive on analyzing relationships, the behaviour of my peers and even their emotions. It fascinates me, and I also feel I have a lot to learn from others. Educated as a social scientist, I will never be able to turn the analysis off. A colleague told me the other day that the analysis makes life worse for me. Analyzing these things keeps it ever-present in my mind, which inevitably leads to me being attached and getting hurt.



This video is truly incredible and worth watching. If the video isn't working, go here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigqKfLWjvM


The last time my heart was broken, I was told to sever all ties with the individual involved in the breaking of it. "Don't agree to be friends," my good friend instructed me, "because no matter what happens, you'll always have this hope that the friendship will become something more than that." That hope, as I have learned, is toxic. Logically, it makes sense that this hope runs both ways. If I cling to a friendship wishing that it might one day become more than that, does it not make sense that the other individual is doing the same? Likewise, if I cling to the friendship because the hope of it makes the pain of the heartbreak less severe, could he not be suffering from the same pain?

Somewhere, somehow, Greg Bernhardt and many other romantic advisors to women are clasping their heads in agony. Has my broken heart - now mended and encased in ice for safe protection - still managed to turn me into a desperate woman looking for a man to love? Or, is it worse than that? Has my ego created this person who thinks her strength of love demands to be returned? Or, merely, have I become sympathetic enough to realize that those "jerks" out there who break my heart have feelings of their own?

This morning I woke up looking into the amber eyes of a male who will never break my heart. Well, at least until he passes away, which is merely a fact of life. It's the best relationship I've ever had, and it will last the length of his life. Not all love is romantic in nature. It's a bit like being a mother... In fact, I've been his surrogate mother since the day we met - and there's no Oedipal complex with that. We fight, we play, I care for him and he cuddles with me when I'm mending my broken heart. Maybe I am "that" lady, but it's ok. I have a lot of love to give...and Jito soaks all of it up, when he wants to.

And that may be the greatest lesson of love out there. You can't force it. Even when you find it, you can't cling to it. You can't control the breaking of a heart - whether it's yours or anybody else's. The only thing you ever control is yourself...and how you mend your emotional wounds...