Why Broken Hearts Are Beneficial To Our Well Being

By Amirah
Pride Sex Columnist

If you are looking for certainty in life, you will have better luck finding it in the certainty of one day being six feet under, than in falling in love and embarking on a relationship. Yes, we all, if not most of us love love. We look forward to the fluttery feeling of hyperactive butterflies in our stomachs, the anticipation of the late night calls, and awkward drives to dinner or to the movies. Who doesn’t love the tension surrounding the first kiss, even if you come off suave and smooth, the geeky squirmy person inside of you can tell stories, and people for centuries have been singing about the first time love was made. So, what happens when the butterflies die?

The older we get and the more life we live, the more we evolve in our knowledge of love and relationships, which has a natural progression towards experiencing more heartbreaks. We are no longer living in a time when high school sweethearts get married and experience growing up, and growing old together. People are waiting until they have accomplished dreams, and fulfilled visions before jumping the broom. Many people are opting to not get married at all, and more importantly, people are taking their happiness seriously—no longer willing to spend their lives with spouses or partners that make them unhappy. The more we date, the more we value ourselves, the wider we cast our net, is the more we have to lose.

I’ve had my share of relationships, all come with fond memories, and the music imprints to prove it; I’ve also experienced my share of heartbreaks, with two being accurately labeled as earth shattering. In one instance I found myself on the floor of a hotel shower clear across the border, crying out to a God I wasn’t sure I still believed in, asking him why did he allow such pain to fill my soul and numb my heart. That was when I became confronted with the benefit of our heartbreaks. Granted, as I was knee deep in shower water mixed with tears, learning life lessons was the furthest thing from my mind, as I embarked on the healing process. However, I came to appreciate the process of putting my heart back together, I cherished the moments I gazed into the mirror of my broken heart, and learned about who Amirah was, and I grew. That is the purpose of heartbreaks: to grow, to evolve, to experience gratitude and to breathe sweeter breaths when the process of healing is over.

Each heartbreak, has taught me different lessons, such as the age old lesson: sex is not love. It’s a naive lesson to learn, yet many of us regardless of age, and experience are still learning this lesson. A partner will jump through the hoops you put in place to quantify love – to snack on the cookies. And who can blame him/her? Sex is awesome, it’s connecting, it’s pleasurable, and it’s a prize for which many people will work hard, if even never to want it from you again. Are more love quantifying hoops the answer? Maybe not—redefining what you want your love to look like, will help lessen the pain at your relationship’s end, if it ever comes.

Time does heal all wounds, and that time is different for everyone. No one should tell you how long is an appropriate time to mourn a breakup. The relationship ended, it died, and the emotions you experience are a lot like losing a loved one close and dear to you, and mourning their death, because that is exactly what happened. It may take weeks, months, years, or your entire lifetime to move through the healing process, and that is ok.

There is no one prototype for healing. You can heal from a broken heart by falling in love with someone else, that path to healing doesn’t work all the time, and it can result in accumulated baggage if you don’t fully allow the process to work; and even if it is a Band-Aid for the moment, healing from a broken heart is all about the moments. Allow loved ones to show concern for you when your journey of healing is leading to self-destructive, and dangerous behaviors. Include reaching out to those you trust in order to talk, and rant, vent, and cry. Move, if you need to, take up a hobby and enjoy the fresh air on your face, lock your doors and dance to corny songs, watch movies, and cry when you feel the need to. Heal the way your heart leads you to, it knows how to come back together again.

You will always remember your first, whether it’s the first person you discovered sexual intimacy with, or the first person you took a vacation with, the fingerprints of your ‘first’ will always remain on your heart. Don’t despise the memories you created while the relationship was still alive. Running away from these memories will lengthen the healing time, because everything becomes a trigger; a smell or a song. Passing a particular location while walking or driving down the street, will cause all of these memories to come flooding back into your system. Sit in them; allow them to wash over you; smile and breathe in those moments; cry through those moments, as they will pass.  Crying will not hinder your healing, it will help you find the gratitude along the way.

Learn the lessons. Self-introspection is vitally important when finding the benefit of a broken heart. We are not perfect, and it’s important to hold ourselves accountable for the death of a relationship. From this point on, unless your partner was abusive, this becomes all about you, because if you continue to focus on your partner, you will find yourself in a cycle of blaming, shaming, and continued unhappiness. Take this time to learn about you, the kind of person you were in the relationship, and the kind of person you want to be and can be apart from that relationship.

Through all of my broken hearts, the most valuable lesson of benefit I learnt, is that my happiness is the most important characteristic of my personality, and it has taken me a long time to solidify that in my spirit. The truth remains that everyone’s benefit is different, and although my lessons may not be your lessons, we can all find comfort in knowing that a broken heart is a common human experience, and where there is pain, there can again be love.

Do you have questions or problems regarding your sex life? Amirah can help you with answers. Your name and information will not be published. Amirah welcomes your feedback! Send your comments or questions to: amirah@pridenews.ca. Follow her on Twitter: @I_amAmirah.