Falling out of love is one of the hardest things we as intelligent humans can go through. When we lose the person we thought we would love forever, we have a hard time imagining ourselves ever feeling love again. It’s important to realize that just because we may never regain the feelings we once had, it does not mean we won’t ever regain the ability to love in some capacity or another. While your life may never be the same after falling out of love, that doesn’t mean it will always be worse.
Love will come back when you’re ready to move forward
Perhaps the most difficult thing to do after losing the one you love is to move on with your life. You’ll feel as if the rug has been pulled out from under you, and will have an incredibly tough time getting back on your feet. But sitting around and wasting time wondering “what might have been” won’t get you anywhere. No matter how hard it may be, it’s imperative that you stand up, dust yourself off, and move forward with your life.
Just because relationships end, it doesn’t mean they were complete failures. There are always lessons to be learned from your past experiences, no matter how traumatic they may have been. In fact, we should squeeze as many lessons as we can out of these traumatic experiences in order to make them useful somehow. If you don’t learn anything from the loss of a past relationship, you’re going to move forward only to make the same mistakes later on in life.
Love will come back when you change your expectations
I’m sure you already know this, but no relationship you have in the future will be exactly like the one you’ve recently come out of. Even if you happen to reconcile with the same person, things will have changed, and the relationship will be different. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
Think about what you expected from your last relationship, as well as what your partner expected. Perhaps your expectations of each other were largely what led to your break up. Perhaps one of you expected too much, while the other put in too little effort. Maybe you expected things would always work out. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
Again, learn from your past experiences with love. Maybe your former partner didn’t give the love you expected. Maybe the next person you meet will. Maybe you’ll never experience the same feelings you felt in your last relationship. Maybe you will. Just don’t expect it, because you’ll spend all your time comparing possible future relationships to your last one; that’ll only guarantee you never feel love again.
Love will come back when you regain your passion for life
Being in love is great and all, but it’s only one of the literally millions of experiences you can possibly have in life. If you’ve recently had your heart broken, it can be hard to see everything else laid out in front of you, but believe me: it’s there.
Instead of spending all your time missing the way things used to be, create new memories on your own. Do some of the things you’ve always wanted to do. Travel. Learn to cook a new recipe. Check out a museum. Whatever comes to mind, don’t sit around wishing you could do it with the person you used to love; just do it.
As I’ve said, you’ll never meet someone exactly like your former love, but that’s okay. It wouldn’t be good if you did. But when you start to regain your passion for other parts of life, you’ll put yourself in a position to meet others who share the same interests. Doing the things you love allows you to meet people who may simply become new friends, but you also might meet someone who completely changes your life.
Love will come back when you don’t need it to survive
I don’t want to say that you get “used to” being in love, because when you’re truly in love you cherish every single moment you spend with your significant other. But when you’ve been with someone for quite some time, it’s easy to forget what life was like before you met them. Reclaiming your identity as an individual might be one of the toughest parts of breaking up with a partner. But it needs to be done if you want to move forward with your life.
Not only should you actively reclaim your passion for life after a breakup, but you should also focus on simply living. A lot of people, after a breakup, look for love from anyone they can find because they are afraid they won’t be able to make it on their own. Don’t do this. Not only is it not fair to the other person, but it’s also not fair to yourself.
Have faith that you can live as an individual. If you have to prove it to yourself in some way, do it. Reclaim yourself as an individual before looking for love again. If you’re going to look for it anywhere, start with yourself.
