As there are many reasons that lead to a broken heart, I will like to confine my discussion within the context of failed romantic relationships.
For those of us who have ever been through one-sided romantic relationships or failed ones, we know how it feels like to be rejected by someone whom we love very much. Although we are often advised by friends to just move on, some memories still haunt us throughout our lives. Much as we know that it's wrong and unhealthy to hold on to sad memories of the past, the memories of our emotional scars somehow still lingers somewhere in the dark recesses of our minds, refusing to go away. It almost seems that sad memories have a way of capturing our attention even during moments of our lives when we thought that we have long forgotten about them.
Yet, we know that we should forget the past and get on with life. So, how are we able to do that with our hurtful past pulling us back while we are moving forward? Through personal experiences, below are a few of my recommendations that I hope will be useful to you.
Let's begin with one of the most effective methods but it's also the hardest to employ, which is forgiveness. We cannot let go of the past if we do not forgive. What we cannot forgive, we retain. This is a fact. Just mention someone's grievances to them and we will often see them starting to lament on how others have let them down or chastising others for not reciprocating their love or care. There will be a few individuals who refuse to dwell further into the past. However, if they merely change the subject, it might simply imply that there's still a tinge of sadness/anger/frustration that they try to steer clear of through avoidance. And this is never good enough. Only when individuals continue to talk about the issue with ease and comfort - to the extent of having an ability to genuinely laugh about it - that we can consider them to be free from their past. It takes a lot to forgive, but this is one of the few things that we have to do to be happy in life.
When our hearts are broken, it seems that there are more nights than days, more sadness than happiness and more failures than successes in our lives. What we do not realise is that what we feel at a particular point in time may not speak well of our lives in the future. It seems to be human nature for us to project what we feel at the moment onto how we will feel for the rest of our lives. This is not advisable as long-term project of being a failure in life may make us depressed. So, what can we do about it? I will suggest putting in an effort to improve our lives in the face of the rejections that we have encountered. In another words, we pull ourselves together, stay optimistic and give ourselves hope. If not, we will stop meeting people, our social lives will stagnate and before we know it, our whole lives will pass us by. We tend to generalise something for everything. For example, when we encounter failed romantic relationships after a few tries, we tend to tell ourselves that this is it. It is over. I will never have another successful romance ever again, which is totally untrue. When it comes to failed romantic relationships, the only way that we can get out of this fixed mindset is to put ourselves once again into the very same place that makes us miserable: the dating scene. This time, we want to prove ourselves wrong. And I believe that by doing so, we can find someone who loves us more than our past lovers, and sometimes more than we will ever love them. And when we find this person, we will realise that all the individuals who have hurt us in the past do not matter any more. This is because their rejection of us has led to someone who really loves us. In fact, we should be grateful to them. And gratitude is always a better prescription for a broken heart than despondency. The song lyrics of Rascal Flatts' "Bless the Broken Road" really say it all.
Even if there are some of us who reject all the recommendations above, there is something that will heal all of us, and we can't avoid it even if we want to. Can you guess it? It's time. No matter how hurtful a remark, no matter how bad a rejection, no matter how deep is the hurt, every emotional scar no matter how painful- fades with time. It is interesting to note that the pain that accompanies emotional scars only returns if we think about it. In another words, we have a choice. If this is the case, we should choose to forgive, or we should at least allow the sad memories to fade and the pain to subside with time. Thus, even though some of us are commenting on how time flies, time has an apparent good side to it: it enables us to heal physically and emotionally.
Knowing this, let us now not focus on the "what-could-have-beens" but rather, on the present moment and what we can do about it in a positive way.