‘Surviving Heartbreak’
I went through my first real heartbreak earlier this year.
In my experience, heartbreak is akin to being harboured with an overstuffed backpack of emotional pain you are obliged to carry around for the foreseeable future. You can feel its contents bruise against your spine but in the first couple of months the idea of trying to unpack it is far too daunting. Having your first heartbreak at twenty is also a uniquely jarring experience. You feel too old for teenage melodramatics, but stranded in such unchartered territory, the thought of being saddled with the responsibility of having to behave maturely is unthinkable.
So, what does one do to shift the weight? I was left with very limited options… Self-destruction remained a non-starter because tragically I have a very strong support network. Retail therapy was attempted then abruptly halted due to my chronic unemployment. ‘Getting under someone new’ perished equally as fast, when my first attempt at a post-breakup one night stand landed me awkwardly trying to escape a man with a foot fetish. I couldn’t even hide away and rot because my relationship happened to implode during my last couple of weeks at university. My ex was already holding my favourite jumper hostage and I'd be damned if I was going to let them steal my last month of being a student. Therefore, the only real option left was to put on a brave face and muddle through the summer, trying not to bleed out in the process.
I do believe this method was successful, as truthfully, I have not thought about this relationship since August. My mourning melted away alongside the long nights and my shoulders, although aching, were free again. That was until a couple of weeks ago when, through the accidental purchase of the wrong deodorant, I found myself surrounded by her scent and thrown painfully back into our memories. Further exasperating this predicament, since Boots was having a sale that fateful day, I now have four unopened sticks of that deodorant teasing me from my cupboard. Properly inconvenient. I have since lost the receipt, so surrounded by the ribbons of ‘ocean mist’ (and mild self-masochism), I figured I’d autopsy my heartbreak and tell you the key things I learnt.
1. Date someone who wears off-piste deodorant like imperial leather.
2. Let yourself lose the breakup.
This is going to be controversial but hear me out. I am unsure if this is a universal truth, but where I reside, the person who ‘wins’ the breakup is the individual who appears the most unbothered. Common law decrees, once the dust settles, both parties must participate in an ancient ritual of feigning indifference. The intention of this choreography is to signal to the world that your ex-partner meant nothing to you, so you are completely unaffected by the breakup. Logically this dance makes sense, as after all we are guided by pride, however, I find this performative apathy utterly frustrating.
I saw a video the other day of a ‘dating guru’ suggesting that showing no emotion during a breakup and in the occurring aftermath, is the superior methodology. The idea being, by donning a frosty facade you are demonstrating that their words don’t affect you, successfully ‘getting them back’ in the process. I find this ideology exceptionally flawed. Firstly, showing emotion is not something to be demonised, it is not embarrassing, and I can’t help but feel that peddling ‘emotional repression’ and borderline dissociation as the ideal is harmful. You are not Harvey Spector finalising a merger, and bringing a level of corporate coolness into your most intimate moments feels oddly dystopian. There is no ‘right way’ to handle a breakup, if you are emotional, by God be emotional. If you cry, and therefore by modern standards you ‘lose the breakup’, then lose. I sure as hell did. It's important to remember that the person you are ‘competing’ against is no longer going to be in your life, how they perceive you is irrelevant. So please, you are not sociopathic, and if you feel and love deeply, don’t try to tame your authenticity to save face.
This brings us to the ‘social media’ of it all. The common consensus is if you unfollow and/or block your ex you have ‘lost’ the breakup. Again, I suggest you let yourself lose if the following criteria apply…
A) You are an avid Instagram stalker and/or bruise the viewed function on your stories with an obsession (we know whose name you are looking for…)
In the first month after our relationship ended, I found myself stalking my ex-girlfriend's Instagram incessantly. I became ever present on her profile, a virus lurking on her page, rifling through her tags and comments, desperately trying to find any new trace of her in the pixels. A moth to a flame, every time I opened Instagram, I would automatically search for her name. I eventually realised that I couldn’t heal my broken heart because a figment of the girl I loved was still in my life, if only two-dimensionally. I decided the only way around my new compulsion, was to cut myself off cold turkey, and in all honesty, I think it was instrumental in helping me move on. By denying myself access to her digital Rolodex, she slowly stopped being constantly on my mind. I would pick up my phone and not immediately think about her until eventually I didn’t at all. Admittedly by removing her from my socials, she no longer had a front-row seat to my post-breakup glow-up. I would be lying if I didn’t slightly regret my decision when I posted a particularly sexy picture in a racy holiday purchase. Maybe she would have seen those pictures and regretted breaking up with me, perhaps she wouldn’t have, but it would have made no difference to my healing either way. Trying to evoke a specific emotional response from someone no longer in your life is far too time-consuming anyway.
B) If they posted a new partner, you would be devastated.
Back in the day, you might have bumped into an ex at the supermarket, and I’m sure the image of them holding hands with their new lover would have been seared into your eyelids for weeks. But what you wouldn’t have had to contend with, would be sitting on your sofa, greasy-haired and eating a family-size bag of crisps, absentmindedly refreshing Instagram, then out of nowhere being assaulted by a photo dump of your ex and their new girlfriend. Attacked from within your living room, utterly barbaric. Eventually, I didn’t even want to open the app because it spiked my anxiety so much. I didn’t want to unfollow her because I felt that was an admission of defeat, and I desperately didn't want to give her some twisted form of satisfaction. This is so silly because, at its bones, social media is ‘for you’. I was causing myself mental anguish to lick at my wounded pride. We are not designed to emotionally navigate that level of access into our ex’s lives, so you are not weak if you are not ready to see a stylised montage of them moving on. It wasn’t until I unfollowed that I felt a sense of relief, let yourself doom scroll in peace, that is far more important than this digital duel.
3. Don’t download Hinge straight away.
(this includes all dating apps BTW, no loopholes…)
As tempting as that endless reel of potentials is, let's be honest, you won’t talk to anyone, you just want to feel desired. Not to sound like a broken record but trying to pre-emptively fill this new person-shaped hole with meaningless online flirtation and digital flattery, will only make you feel more alone.
There is an indescribable emptiness to heartbreak, a deep vulnerability that renders you fawning like a lame animal, a painful dance of self-distortion, as you become accustomed to the smoking brand of your loneliness. Accompanying this symphony, from that ‘5ft9 tomboy fem’ sized gash in your heart, leaks a steady stream of your self-esteem, leaving you fresh prey for any distraction or crumb of affection. An addict going through withdrawals, craving a numbing agent with shaking hands, it's easy to mistake the allure of a dating app for a comforting escape. Alas, the dopamine attached to these matches is finite, and in the lull between notifications, thumb aching from the endless scroll, your heartbreak will rear its ugly head and seem even more painful. As, while searching through that sea of curated profiles, you will eventually be hit by the stinging realisation that you find none of their eyes comforting or their smiles endearing… because they aren't her, and she’s all you want.
The horrendous reality is, instead of trying to numb yourself with digital ghosts, ‘you will just have to be sad’. I remember hearing this mantra repeatedly in the weeks following my breakup and, in full transparency, it filled me with rage. Even now I can still feel the pressure of those well-meaning words pounding under my eyelids, suffocating my inhibitors and making me want to scream. Perhaps it is my childish sense of injustice, but I find the sentiment deeply unfair. After all, why should I, the wounded party, be lumped with this smarting anchor of sadness for the foreseeable future. Tragically life is unfair and sometimes the medicine is disgusting to swallow, but without it you will pinwheel into emotional repression and the quick fixes of ill-intentioned talking stages.
I don’t have much more advice on this I'm afraid, you simply must grit your teeth and bare it. Do the things you love, and I promise you, eventually you will start to miss them less and less.
4. Don’t go on a solo ‘empowering’ hot girl walk to clear your head in the days after your breakup. You will end up crying on the street over a chicken select and accidentally make awkward eye contact with the person who lived in your first-year block, who you haven't spoken to since freshers.
5. Lean on your friends and family.
Let yourself be held while you cry in Pret. Buy Lebanese food and binge the Tinkerbell cinematic universe with your housemates. Explain the situation over and over again until it loses its flavour. Don’t let them drag you to a rom-com… it will be too soon. Call your mum at midnight on a Thursday. Annoy your brother with Facetime and hope the connection doesn’t freeze mid-sob.
Let yourself be cared for. You are more loved than you know… romantic love is deeply overrated anyway.
Ps, Maybe buy them brunch as a thank you.
6. Remove the rose-tinted glasses
Disentangling from what you thought your relationship was, from the reality, post breakup can be one of the hardest things to face. In most cases, your relationship wouldn’t have been perfect… how do I know that? because it ended. I’m not suggesting you pull apart every memory, tweezing away at the tapestry until you ruin the whole image, but sometimes stepping back and looking objectively at the picture can help.
In my case, despite all the love my ex-partner and I generated, on reflection, I don’t think we ever truly knew each other. Despite my attempt at subversion, we were a symphony of sapphic cliches, the most significant being that our relationship accelerated at an alarming rate. When you know very little about a person you naturally fill in the blanks with your own assumptions and although the picture you create may be beautiful, it is an unreliable portrayal tainted by your imagination. Both dreamers by nature, I fear we fell in love with the idea of each other, and we were both never going to live up to the characters created. I don’t believe this experience is unique, as a generation we have been spoon-fed romance since birth, breeding an intense desire to be loved that can often obscure the reality. A real person is complicated and rough, but there is so much beauty in learning someone’s uniquely uneven texture. By falling for a person altered by your imagination, you are only stealing those wonderful moments from yourself.
For me, reflecting on why we ended served as a huge wake-up call. Forever on a doomed journey of self-improvement, I wanted to mould my breakup into something I could learn from. In this instance, I now know I need a more solid foundation, built by a deeper understanding of my partner before I storm into a relationship. I need to live in the moment, feel the weight of their flesh in my grasp, as falling for a character alive only in your head, leaves you both with nothing tangible.
7. Do fall in love again
The phrase there are more fish in the sea is overused for a reason. They weren’t your person, this is a completely devastating revelation, but at the end of the day you will find someone who is. Take a moment to breathe, heal and grow, then when you are ready (if finding a partner is something you desire) get back on the horse.
Having to start again is so intimidating, as there are several unpleasant elements that have to be faced: the defeat that surrounds having to re-download dating apps, their subsequent deletion leading to your pre-ordained joining of a running club, pulling a hamstring, and the unavoidable tedium of small talk. If you add to this conundrum the extra pressure of trying to find ‘the one’ you can easily be overwhelmed. To counter this, I suggest casually dating for a bit. The media presents dating as this gruelling task, a never-ending hike through the desert until you find a lucky oasis, salvation, preferably shaped in the image of Pride and Prejudice's Colin Firth. However, as most of us will be dating for a while before we find our ‘person’, viewing dating through this clouded lens taints a large proportion of our early adulthood with a greyish hue. In my experience ‘dating’ can be so much fun. I suggest you try basking in the pre-drink butterflies, tan in the intrigue of getting to know someone new, and if all goes tits up, giggle over a cheap glass of wine with your friends as you detail anecdotes about your failed romances. If you get bored, take a break, but if you want to find someone, shifting through your local singles, is usually a trek you will have to take, so you might as well enjoy the view. The biggest takeaway is don’t take things too seriously. Maybe if you don’t you will have the confidence to dangle yourself over the bar at your university leavers do and start tipsily chatting to the bartender. Maybe you will demand he take you out for drinks. Who knows, you might start to fall in love all over again… but that’s a story for another day.