The pain of love

How do you mend a broken heart? How do you stop the tears from falling ... You don’t.

You just pretend it’s not hurting until enough time passes that you wake up one day and the sun really does feel warm again and hope seems like something you can pin to yourself again.

Sounds dramatic? Yep, drama does go hand in hand with love, especially love gone wrong. If you’re lucky enough to have experienced love – the kind of passionate and burning love that inspires people to write love songs and heart-felt novels – then you’ll know you have to be prepared for the train wreck of the “death of love”.

So how do you get through those days? Well there are many options. The trick is getting through with dignity. And with as few hangovers as possible! Of course it’s easier to fall into a bottle of wine, a box of tissues and torture yourself with memories of how it
used to be and how perfect the future would have been. Not a lot of bloody good doing that. If it’s truly over, it’s time to pull your socks up, take stock of all the good things in your life, wipe the slate clean and get ready to start again.

Again? Yes, believe it or not you will want to do this all again. With exception for the train wreck part of course – we all ultimately want to find true love.  I once heard true love described as “friendship on fire” and think it’s an apt description. It also implies it can go both ways! But if your heart is hurting, don’t give up on love. It is truly worth the risk of pain. Learn from the past by all means. See if there is a pattern or a clear danger sign – if your partners have never really treated you with respect, maybe you’re not projecting yourself as deserving of it. Or if they have never really been able to commit maybe it’s time to seek more mature qualities than how a person fills out their shirt.

There’s definitely some space here for a little self analysis and development. But my point is, there’s probably no need for too much.  Just let go of the questions, accept it’s done and look forward to each new day.

Focus on the things that you are fabulous at, that do make you happy, and do them. Replant a garden, get some DIY home jobs ticked of your list and reward yourself with quality time with friends and family. The key to a successful happy life is looking after the most important thing – yourself.  So be kind to yourself, keep fit, mentally strong and looking good and remind yourself of all the good things. If it’s over, you have to believe that you’re better off alone than with the wrong person. Believe in yourself, that you are on the right path, and the pain will ease.

And then, when you’re ready and feel like you again, you will be so magnetic with your self-awareness and strength.

And if you have loved yourself along the way, truly taken the time to nurture yourself, then you will realise that you have never lost love at all. You have it in you all the time, and no one can take that away. Even in the most bitter coldness of the hardest days, you realise you have an eternal summer within yourself.

What a woman wants is to find true love, but she needs to know that she can survive anything if she believes in the power and beauty of her own heart.

Have a great month, and don’t forget you can email me any questions on What Women Want to [email protected]

Abby x