Whether it’s that first heartbreak at 17 or the umpteenth at 38, having a broken heart is never easy.
And despite the old adage that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, anyone who’s had their heart broken will tell you it certainly doesn’t feel that way at the time.
Having your heart broken is the worst pain in the world. But just like death and taxes it will happen to all of us at some point.
We all have our ways of dealing with pain and rejection, but these wise words from wise women who have loved, lost and made it through to the other side might give you a few more options for coping next time.
Daisy Buchanan, author of How To Be A Grown Up
I cured my broken heart with quarter bottles of champagne and M&S steaks for one. I genuinely thought I was unloveable, unfanciable and unfit for human consumption, but I found some solace in the fact there had to be some good in me because I could cook a bloody brilliant steak.
I also bought myself a lot of flowers. I knew I was over him when I woke up one day and thought: ‘Why does my room look like a f#%$g church?!’
Laurie Penny, author of Bitch Doctrine
The best cure for a broken heart is a book. No matter how weird and twisted the end of your relationship, someone else has been there before you and written about it – and perspective is a great healer.
Other than that, I always throw myself into work. No boy or girl is worth sacrificing your passion or your future over. Have a cry, spend a day moping and watching soppy films, then get the hell out of bed and get on with your life.
Bryony Gordon is a columist for the Telegraph and author of Eat, Drink, Run. How I Got Fit Without Going Too Mad
Heartbreak, though it feels bloody deadly, is actually just a healthy and positive sign that you are well on the road to meeting ‘the one’.
There were several times in my twenties when I thought I would not be able to live without someone, I was that miserable. Now I’m eternally glad they dumped me – because in breaking my heart they also opened it to the man I have a beautiful daughter with. So, yay to heartbreak!
Sali Hughes is a writer, editor and broadcaster and author of Pretty Iconic: A Personal Look at the Beauty Products That Changed the World
Getting over anything huge like a break-up, a death, a job loss, is never about big decisions and grand gestures (I actively discourage making life-changing decisions during life-changing times).
Healing occurs through tiny choices made every day. ‘Today I’m going to get dressed and put on some lipstick,’ ‘This morning I’m going to take myself out for an amazing breakfast/call my mum /clean out a kitchen cupboard/go for a one-hour walk’ – these are the sorts of actions that start to make life more pleasurable again, and in incremental steps, get you back to where you need to be.
Dr Therese Debaurvoir, clinical psychologist
I realise one of the hardest things for a person with a broken heart is ‘just feel it’, but that’s exactly what you have to do – there is no short way out.
Here’s [a] sometimes difficult truth you have to face: You have to properly grieve in order to move on and you have to ‘go through it, not around it’.
It’s only through going through intense pain and dealing with it head on that you can eventually resurface as a stronger person, and the pain can stop having a hold on you.
Here are some other things you can do that might help.
Good luck!
Via Grazia
