How to heal a broken heart: A man’s guide to breaking up & letting go
“When’s a good time to talk?” she asks.
It’s after dinner on a Sunday night and we’re sitting on separate couches in the lounge.
She’s asking this question because things haven’t been good between us.
We had a fight. A big one.
And after a fight there’s always this lingering unease that doesn’t lift until we’ve talked it through.
“We can talk now,” I say.
She asks if we can go into the bedroom and sit on the bed.
She gives me a letter, handwritten on a piece of white A4 paper with blue lines and a red margin. She looks afraid.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“Just read it.”
In that letter, my girlfriend told me that she was leaving me. We had been together for two and a half years.
I thought she was the one. We had been in love. We had been trying to buy a house together. We had talked about having children. And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, it was over.
That night, we cried together. The days and weeks that followed were the darkest of my life.
I went through intense feelings of rejection, loss, grief, anger, confusion, and to a lesser extent, jealousy.
She, too, was upset and confused.
It was the first time that someone had broken up with me. It was also the first time that I’d cared this much about another person. I had no idea how to deal with the emotions I was experiencing. I wasn’t used to feeling so vulnerable and so broken.
My life plans had gone up in smoke. I had to learn to start again.
Break-ups are traumatic. There’s no doubt about it. But they’re also a chance to reassess, rediscover, and rebuild.
Men are less likely to share their feelings with friends, which is why I’m spilling my heart out here.
I know it’s not easy, but you will get there with time.
A man’s guide to love and loss
Embrace the pain
The pain hit me like a tidal wave. I have never cried so much.
The body is flooded with stress hormones at times like this, which can temporarily weaken the heart. This is where the idea of heartbreak comes from.
And I felt it. A deep ache in my chest.
And then the next morning, I had to go to work. I couldn’t tell anyone. I was too ashamed.
Telling people made it more real. Also, I was holding onto hope that we could work things out.
So I stood at my desk in a busy newsroom and pretended everything was fine. But I was far from fine. During the work day, I would fight back tears. Each night, I would go home and let my emotions spill over. If I was alone, the aloneness felt much heavier than usual. I felt like I was living in a bubble of pain. And having to suppress those feelings every day at work was suffocating me.
It wasn’t until I started to embrace the pain that I could start to heal. I had to accept the feelings I was having as part of my grieving process. I had to let myself feel.
This might sound pathetic, but more than once I bought beer, sat in the lounge by myself, and listened to songs that reminded me of her. I let the music wash over me and the let the pain wash through me. I had to feel the deep, dark grip of grief in order to let it go.
It took me months to process the pain. If I had kept it bottled up, I hate to think of how things would have ended up, how it would have eaten me up inside.
Embrace the pain. Feel it. Set it free.
Lean on your loved ones
I didn’t tell anyone else about the break-up for days.
I think it was three days later that I called my mum. It was difficult, because sharing it made it official.
I could no longer pretend it wasn’t happening. But it also helped me to share the burden. It was a weight off my shoulders.
My siblings were next. I got on the phone with my younger brother. My sisters would message me each day asking how I was. A week later, I started calling my best friends.
I only told three of them to begin with. I’m not sure why sharing is so important. For me, it was like each person I spoke to picked up a piece of my suffering and walked alongside me. I didn’t have to face it alone.
Finally, I shared it with my closest friend at work. This was about two weeks later. By that point I was doing much better, but it felt good to be open with him. Right away, he arranged for me to do social things with him and his wife throughout the week and on the weekend.
We had a big drinking session one weekend where we shared a bottle of whiskey and I passed out on his couch.
What I’m trying to say is sharing is therapeutic. Lean on your loved ones. Let them share your burden. Sharing allows people to step in and carry you through the hard times.
Invest in yourself
When you’re in a relationship, you learn (or should learn) to be more selfless.
Following a break-up, you need to be selfish. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. I mean you need to do things that make you happy.
They can be simple things. For instance, I went harder at the gym. I didn’t have to worry about getting home in a hurry to eat dinner and spend time with my partner.
I bought a bunch of books about self-discovery and improvement so that I could use the fire in my belly to fuel something constructive.
I downloaded Tinder and went on a few dates, both to meet new people and to build up my confidence seeing other people again. When my ex-girlfriend found out I’d been on Tinder she was upset, but fuck that. Do what you need to do.
I doubled-down on the business I was building when I’d previously been conscious of spending too much time on work and too little time with my girlfriend.
Invest in yourself in constructive ways.
Do things that make you a better person.
Embrace the pain, but don’t wallow in it.
Get back to living your life as soon as you can.
Rediscover your purpose
This is the thing I struggled with the most. When I was with my partner, I had a clear vision of my future and she was a central part of it.
With her gone, my vision of the future vanished. I had no clear path ahead of me. I think this – my lack of purpose – was contributing significantly to my grief. I hadn’t just lost someone I loved. I had lost the future I was dreaming of.
When you’re not working towards a future vision, everything in life has less meaning.
When I was over my job and still working 40 hours a week, I would tell myself that it was an investment in my future. I would think of the children we were planning to have and the house we were planning to buy and it gave my work purpose.
When that purpose was gone, everything felt meaningless.
The thing is, I didn’t have all of the insight I’ve just shared about purpose when I was in the midst of it.
Thankfully, one of the books I ordered after the break-up was Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
The book came highly recommended by a lot of the people I look up to. The key message I took from the book was that without a vision of your future – without a purpose – life is void of meaning.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor Frankl
So I had work to do. I had to rediscover my purpose in life. What am I living for now? I started with a simple document that I titled: Blueprint for a Better Life. This is the first line I wrote: I am a free man. I can do what I want. I can go where I want. I will create a better life.
I proceeded to outline the five things that are most important to me and created micro goals that would help me to achieve those things.
It was a mission statement.
I was essentially reprogramming my vision. I was rediscovering my purpose.
Do something drastic
As I only had myself to worry about, I could take all of the risks that I couldn’t afford to take previously.
Keep in mind that I’m potentially more prone to recklessness than some people. So what did I do?
First, I bought a little camper van. I’ve always wanted a van and it seemed like the perfect time to treat myself. Then, I moved into the van. I parked it in the middle of town and continued to go to work each day while living in the van. I showered at the gym each morning and ate a decent amount of takeaway food. I loved it. It was tiny and lonely, but it was my little refuge.
I did this because I didn’t want to pay rent. Also, I wasn’t planning to live in it for long.
That’s because I also quit my job as a journalist.
Then I booked a one-way ticket to Bali. I was going to take a real shot at starting my own business. It was a dream of mine to be self-employed. I figured that cost of living in Bali would allow me to take this risk more easily. Bali is a popular location for remote workers and I thought I could tap into that community.
Also, I wanted a change of scenery. I needed to get away, meet new people, do something a bit wild.
All of this gave me direction and purpose while helping to take my mind off the break-up. It was fun, adventurous, risky – all of the things that make life exciting.
Build yourself up
The break-up knocked my confidence. I felt rejected. It made me question myself. What is it about me that isn’t enough for the person I loved most? Am I adequate? Will I ever find love again? Can I ever trust anyone again?
I was faced with a lot of questions like this. It’s destructive self-talk. It serves no other purpose than to bring you down. I know because it crushed me.
Before I could build myself back up I had to come to terms with myself. I had to search deep inside my soul. When I moved to Bali, I thought it would be a wild ride of making friends and making love. The universe had other ideas for me.
My first month of travel was a deeply lonely time. I barely interacted with anyone else. I went on a couple of dates but struggled to make meaningful connections. I felt like these women could see through me. They could sense that I was still broken. I had to learn to accept myself again. I had to learn to love myself again before I could let anyone else love me.
One of other books I bought was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, which introduced me to mindfulness. The book helped me to identify that destructive self-talk for what it was. It helped me to realise that I am not my thoughts. It led me on a new journey of self-discovery that culminated in a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand where I learned about the concepts of impermanence and attachment.
I also had some heart-to-hearts with family and friends. They built me up from the outside. They fed me truths about myself. They told me I was more than adequate. They told me it was her loss, not mine. They told me I was a great guy and I would find love again.
You don’t know how much I needed to hear those things.
But I had to build myself up from the inside. I had to wrestle my demons. I had to believe in myself and silence my self-talk. No one else could do this for me.
I achieved this by spending a lot of time alone. I forced myself to confront myself. In silence and solitude, I started to build myself up.
Mindfulness and meditation helped. But it’s also true that time heals all. It took time – several months, in fact – to build myself up. It’s an ongoing process.
You just have to be willing to face the pain and the darkness. You can’t just ignore it and hope it will go away. That’s not healthy.
Only once you confront your brokenness can you start to rebuild.
Nobody said it was easy
I’m writing this having been through all of this and come out the other side a better, more confident and self-aware man.
I’ve come to learn that sometimes a person is in your life for a season, and then they’re gone. And that’s OK.
Nothing in life is permanent.
I’ve learned to let go.
Enjoy love when you’re in it. If it continues, that’s magic. If it ends, that’s OK too. Life is a journey. Pain and loss are part of that journey.
It won’t be easy. But it will be OK. You will be OK.
Epilogue
I should note that, since writing this, I’ve met another young woman and we’re now doing life together and deeply in love.
My current partner, who I’ve been with for more than a year now, is a true treasure and we couldn’t be happier.
Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but I’m so glad I went through the suffering I did to find the woman that I have the privilege of sharing my life with today.
So wherever you’re at right now, don’t give up. Don’t stop believing in love.
