Love Lessons
Ah, yes, the exquisite agony of heartbreak. We who have experienced it know that romantic love is a fall-in, crawl-out proposition: When you're bonding with that special someone, everything is wondrously effortless; when the relationship hits the skids, getting through an ordinary day feels like climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen. But every instance of heartbreak can teach us powerful lessons about creating the kind of love we really want.
The only way to graduate from Heartbreak Academy is to really master the material, and that means absorbing crucial lessons about your true self, your true needs and the nature of true love.
How to Make It Through Heartbreak Academy
I was in my first semester of Unilateral Torture 262, a class I'd taken three or four times already, when I stumbled across a concept in a psychology textbook that finally allowed me to learn my lesson and move on. I don't remember anything else about that book, but I recall one crucial sentence perfectly. "Some patients," it said, "mistakenly believe that their loneliness is a product of another person's absence." I stopped and reread this maybe ten times, but it still baffled me. I could have sworn that my loneliness was a product of my ex-significant other's absence. If not, then what on Earth was it?
Finally, slowly, over the next several days, weeks, years, the light dawned: My loneliness, and the antidote to it, did not come from the significant others I'd loved and lost. I'd been emotionally isolated before I ever fell in love. Something about certain people helped me lower the drawbridge over the moat that separated me from the world, but in the final analysis, I was the one who'd actually done the trick. The power to bring me out of solitude—or to push me back into it—had never belonged to any other person. It was mine and only mine.
This realization is the most important thing you need to get through Heartbreak Academy with minimum effort and maximum positive effect. Realizing that your heartbreak is not a product of the other person's absence brings the pain into an arena where you can work with it, instead of riveting your attention on some missing lover you may never see again and could never really control.
Your Heartbreak Study Guide
Each time you find yourself longing for the love that was, asking yourself the following study-guide questions will help you learn the lessons of heartbreak and move on to a relationship that works.
The only way to graduate from Heartbreak Academy is to really master the material, and that means absorbing crucial lessons about your true self, your true needs and the nature of true love.
How to Make It Through Heartbreak Academy
I was in my first semester of Unilateral Torture 262, a class I'd taken three or four times already, when I stumbled across a concept in a psychology textbook that finally allowed me to learn my lesson and move on. I don't remember anything else about that book, but I recall one crucial sentence perfectly. "Some patients," it said, "mistakenly believe that their loneliness is a product of another person's absence." I stopped and reread this maybe ten times, but it still baffled me. I could have sworn that my loneliness was a product of my ex-significant other's absence. If not, then what on Earth was it?
Finally, slowly, over the next several days, weeks, years, the light dawned: My loneliness, and the antidote to it, did not come from the significant others I'd loved and lost. I'd been emotionally isolated before I ever fell in love. Something about certain people helped me lower the drawbridge over the moat that separated me from the world, but in the final analysis, I was the one who'd actually done the trick. The power to bring me out of solitude—or to push me back into it—had never belonged to any other person. It was mine and only mine.
This realization is the most important thing you need to get through Heartbreak Academy with minimum effort and maximum positive effect. Realizing that your heartbreak is not a product of the other person's absence brings the pain into an arena where you can work with it, instead of riveting your attention on some missing lover you may never see again and could never really control.
Your Heartbreak Study Guide
Each time you find yourself longing for the love that was, asking yourself the following study-guide questions will help you learn the lessons of heartbreak and move on to a relationship that works.
NEXT STORY
