A heart shattered into a thousand pieces is considered one of the greatest pains a person can experience. Many studies confirm that during emotional distress, the same receptors are activated in the brain as when we feel physical pain. It’s fascinating that when we are betrayed by someone close to us, our brain perceives it as if we have broken a leg. Who among us hasn’t gone through this? You open up, trust, and become vulnerable in the most terrifying way – and then comes the stab. The person you trusted takes a knife and stabs you in the back.
Despite how much it hurts, these traumas strengthen us. They have something to offer, something to teach us, and ultimately, they make us stronger. That is unless you’re someone who longs for revenge. In that case, there’s no help for you – stop reading and go elsewhere. I’m planning an article titled “How to Get Revenge” on February 31st, 2025.
Revenge may tempt us because it gives us a sense of achieving justice, but the truth is that, in most cases, we only end up hurting ourselves. The satisfaction of getting even quickly fades, leaving us with an even greater sense of emptiness in the end.
When something like this happens to you, you tend to break down. You can’t believe that someone could do this to you. It’s usually the person around whom your entire world revolved and for whom you’d have been willing to breathe. Sad, isn’t it? But accept that not everyone is like you, and not everyone feels the way you do. The world is a beautiful yet cruel place where good people live alongside scoundrels rotten to the core. It’s like living in a comic book – you fight evil or become it. It all depends on which side you find yourself on.
After such suffering, when every breath you take is filled with the hope that this isn’t happening, you eventually come to terms with the fact that it really did happen – to you. And you move on. But the way you step forward matters!
If a partner has hurt you and you decide to cope with the pain by dating and seeking one-night stands, this is a common way of dealing with it. However, it’s also a way of proving to yourself that you don’t need that person anymore and that you still have what it takes – while sinking deeper into a single life. In the end, this usually leads to feelings of emptiness and guilt. And so it goes on – day by day, year by year – until suddenly you’re over fifty, and on your online dating profile, under the “What are you looking for?” section, it says “still figuring it out.”
Another option is to shut yourself off completely. After a phase of mourning, you take all the garbage that has piled up on you, crumple it up, and shove it deep into your soul, labelling it “highly toxic.” You start to believe that there’s no one out there who could ever interest you again because they’re all bastards with a strong desire to hurt you. Sure, nearly eight billion people on our round planet were born with one goal: to find you, destroy you, tarnish your name, and hurt you. That’s called paranoia.
So you reject all lucrative offers for dates because you’re scared stiff of what might happen if you open up again. Instead, you prefer to stay alone and isolated, feeding your ten cats every day, and while brushing their fur, you’ll discuss with them how unfair life is.
I understand that it hurts, perhaps more than anyone else, but we only have one life, so if you want to be happy and not feel like you’re running away from yourself, there’s a third option. And it requires immense courage, determination, and resilience – but it’s the healthiest option.
It’s said that we attract what we are, and this statement is about 70% true. In the remaining 30%, we attract some really bizarre individuals – people who want to inject their DNA into you, some questionable creatures, narcissists with low self-esteem, gold-diggers, manipulative liars, and so on. It’s as if there’s been an explosion of such malicious types, and suddenly they’re everywhere. Maybe deep down, you’re one of them, but most likely, they’ve somehow found their way into your life. To be honest, I recommend getting rid of them as quickly as possible. They won’t bring you anything good.
You are the only one with control over your life, happiness, suffering, dreams, desires, and everything life offers. You can either flounder in the mud or finally start living. Don’t let failures knock you to your knees. Blaming others won’t help either because ultimately, whether you want to or not, every evil and good situation in life gives you something. It all depends on how you approach and deal with it.
If you are happy and content with yourself, you will attract people with the same outlook and balance. It’s incredibly hard to achieve, but nothing is impossible with strong willpower and self-control.
It takes time to work through the pain, but it’s essential. This is called the Kubler-Ross model, and it involves five stages: denial – I’ve already mentioned that; anger – learn to work with it, throw things, start boxing, running, physical activity is a real helper in this stage; then bargaining – I call this the “what if” phase. You feel it’s your fault and that you could have changed things if you’d done something differently. But no, you couldn’t, and it’s probably not your fault anyway. It just happened. Depression is the penultimate stage. “Welcome; how long do you plan to stay?” It hurts, of course, but it will pass, and you’ll get through this stage until you finally reach acceptance. It doesn’t always happen in this order, but acceptance usually arrives in the end, even if you tend to slip back into previous stages. Everyone takes a different amount of time, but it’s better to go through it now than to bottle it up and have to deal with it later.
Explore what you enjoy, and try new things—reading, golf, horseback riding, learning, taking courses, sports activities, or social engagements. If you aren’t happy with yourself, you can’t expect someone else to be pleased with you. Give yourself permission to breathe your own air and live your own life. When the right time comes, you’ll attract the people you want in your life.
And yes, it would be naive to think that you’ll never again be gripped by thoughts of escape whenever your brain reminds you of horror-like conspiracy theories about “what could happen?” The fear of getting hurt is absolutely normal, and we all carry it within us. But if you don’t try, you don’t win. We live in a beautiful world, and it’s almost a miracle how everything works and that we can even be here. The fast-paced world created by humans often blinds us, and we fail to see what’s essential and magical. Appreciating the little things and finding joy in everyday wonders is a magic we should all embrace.
-Anna Rajmon
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