I'm someone who has always loved love.
I've loved the feeling of being loved, loving someone else, leaning into different love languages, seeing others love stories, and so on and so forth. What goes hand in hand with love, however, is heartbreak.
As someone in their 20's who has gone through her fair share of crushes, relationships, break ups, make ups, and break ups...again...I can say that when I look back I've realized that the heartbreak aspect of love can sometimes be the best part.
Girl....huh?
2023 was a very rocky year in terms of my love life, I'll be the first to admit. I was in an overwhelmingly unhealthy relationship for the majority of it that has taught me a multitude of lessons as it pertains to love and heartbreak.
One one hand a break up down right stinks because, yes, you're losing someone that you loved, someone that you felt was your best friend, someone that you felt was your better half and were trying to build a future with --
at the same time though, this moment of heartbreak and cutting that tie with someone is also cutting ties with an old version of you. As you grieve the loss of the relationship you're also grieving the loss of that version of yourself who was in the relationship. That's why I've started to try and look at break ups as a rebirth.
We all know the post break up glow up that we want as a means of revenge (but, if you have them blocked....right?...then they won't see this glow up so who are you really getting revenge from?), but it's not until enough time has passed that we can look back on these relationships as the catalyst for what made us change into a person who is way different and way stronger.
We've been shown how we don't want to be loved, we've been shown how we better want someone to love us, and more importantly we are taught the ways in which we weren't loving ourselves before. It's a passage way to nurture the self validation for ourselves that was lacking.
In a roundabout way, this is all to say that break ups can be what propels us to love ourselves so dearly that we find the strength and courage within to accomplish the path of life that we solely desire.
You can hear more about my thoughts on break-ups on my podcast: The Healthy Self.