How to Leverage a Painful Breakup Into Something Life-Changing
Ditching sadness for self-discovery and opportunity
Breaking up sucks, whether you’ve dumped or been dumped. A swell of insecurity and lack of direction inevitably follows. Painful breakups can spiral us into a dark place where, in severe cases, the loss is all-consuming. You can’t focus on anything but heartache.
Last year, a friend of mine endured a nasty breakup. Her boyfriend of nine months dumped her over a text message just hours before changing his Facebook relationship status to dating somebody else. We spent weeks carefully navigating her stages of grief. When I finally thought we were making progress, I reminded her that the end of a relationship “isn’t the end of the world.”
This was the last thing she wanted to hear.
“Just because you’ve never experienced heartache before doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” she said. “I’m sorry we can’t all be emotionless like you.”
Ironically, this hurt to hear, but I understood where she was coming from. I didn’t mean to minimize her situation. Still, a small part of me felt she was wasting her time being sad. Her ex was a jerk. She deserved better. How couldn’t she see that?
