It’s time to move on. The logical part of your brain knows it. Your friends know it (even if they haven’t said it to your face). Your Spotify account knows it because you’ve been playing the same emo songs on repeat for months. But your heart has so far refused to let go of the person who broke it.
Perhaps you’ve already made significant progress. You’re past denial and no longer obsessing over what you could have done— or could still do — to produce a different outcome. You even acknowledge all the things that made this person someone other than your “forever person.” And yet leaving that person and all you felt for them behind you feels so incredibly hard and so incredibly sad. You find yourself at a standstill.
But what if you don’t have to completely let go in order to move forward? What if you could hold space for that person in your heart and still find and embrace new love? Wouldn’t that feel a little less impossible and painful?
There are so many different ways we love people, and most of them don’t have a clear beginning and end. After all, we spend every day simultaneously loving multiple people — our family members, our close friends, our favorite barista, etc. — and none of those loves need to cancel out the others. It’s a misconception that romantic love is any different and that love for a former partner has to be fully extinguished before we can form a new partnership with someone else.
In some cases that does happen, and if you can achieve that kind of closure, be grateful for it; it’s certainly simpler. But often we carry love in our hearts for an ex long after the relationship has ended, and that doesn’t make us less committed to future partners or somehow “stuck” in heartbreak mode. In other words, we can continue to love an ex without being in love with them.
The process of healing and grieving after a relationship ends is never easy, even when you’re the one who initiated the termination. So why do so many well-meaning friends, self-help writers and others make it even more daunting by offering tips and tricks for “getting over” your ex and cutting all emotional ties? Trying to follow that advice can make you feel like you’re somehow failing if you still care.
What if instead you approached recovering from heartbreak more realistically and acknowledged that certain lines might always be a bit blurry and certain feelings might always be a bit complicated? Your ex might continue to occupy a place in your heart — not front and centerstage, of course, but in a quieter background role. And you might do the same in the cast of their life, which is a comforting thought to have when you look back on the relationship from time to time.
It’s often said that when one door closes, another one opens, and I think the premise behind that expression is true: there are always new storylines waiting to unfold after others come to an end.
But when it comes to romantic relationships, I prefer to replace the idea of a closed door with that of a one-way street. You can’t go backwards, but you can still look over your shoulder and see where you’ve been. You can feel lasting, genuine love for the person you shared those experiences with, even if they aren’t the one by your side on the road ahead.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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