Dating : Painful Lessons From Double-Sided Heartbreaks

Every relationship I’ve ever been in has had a predetermined expiration date. They all follow a formula. I meet someone, I fall for them, we start hanging out, we start hooking up, they fall for me, things are great for a while, sometimes I open up – sometimes I don’t, and eventually, things grow stale. I don’t talk about my feelings, I start to close myself off, I realize that I can’t do this anymore, I care for them deeply but not in the way that they care for me any longer, I realize I’m going to have to hurt this person, I rip it off like a bandaid, usually without warning. They walk away shattered, I walk away shattered, eventually we move on. It starts over.

After I get out of a relationship where I’m cognizant of the fact that I’ve hurt the other person, I tend to avoid any sort of emotional involvement for a while. I do this because I hate causing the people who I care about pain. In these relationships, I do care for the person, more than it might seem from my last few sentences. I put an exceptional amount of energy into my intrapersonal relationships. My friends, family, and romantic partners are the most important things in my life. I thrive on genuine human connection, and I firmly believe it’s the most important thing in this life. In a lot of my past relationships, I’ve cared for the person so incredibly much…just not in that same romantic way that I used to. It can be hard to explain to other people.

To try and prevent the apparently inevitable double-sided heartbreak with romantic partners, sometimes I employ a specific tactic. I leave myself emotionally removed from these “relationships” (a term so ill-defined in today’s world.) I eventually fall for someone new and start the formula from the beginning, except this time, I’ll spend months exclusively hooking up with this person. However, this time I’ll leave out personal details, I won’t share my inner thoughts or feelings, a subconscious way of keeping emotional distance, trying to prevent the inescapable. This is not only ineffective, but it’s also not me, and it eventually ends the same.

No one ever told me how hard this life is or how hard relationships can be. I grew up thinking that one day you would look at someone and know. It would click. You would be aligned. You would want the same things, have the same passions, have the same approach to life. I believed that when you found someone you were “meant” to be with, it would be like 2 perfect puzzle pieces. Sure, maybe you would fight, but those disagreements would be inconsequential in the end. Now, at 26 I’m finally understanding that is not the case.

I recently went through one of my “relationships.” We both fell hard and fast, but it didn’t follow the classic formula that I’ve experienced countless times. It was different. I was open early on, and I tried to express where I was at emotionally. It didn’t go well. It went pretty terribly actually. For starters, I shouldn’t have started have broached the subject drunk, but that’s a whole other lesson that I need to learn. I won’t go into the details, but it involves packing my bags at 3 am, standing outside in a city that is not my own in the pouring rain, and one 5 am hotel check-in. The next day we spoke in a more sober state, but the damage was done. Things had been said that couldn’t be taken back, but we left things much better than the night before. I can honestly say that it’s the most open I’ve ever been about my feelings with someone who I was romantically interested in. So what I have learned from this?

I was conscious of my own feelings, and I was open about them with someone I cared about, more than I ever have been. Unfortunately, those didn’t align with what they wanted, but that’s all you can do. The one thing I overlooked before all this is that I sort of assumed that I wouldn’t be sad if I was open, honest, and vulnerable. That is not true. I’ve learned that doing that doesn’t remove the sadness or the heartbreak, but it does remove the regret and a lot of the hurt in other ways. I know that this will eventually lead to better, easier, quicker, and more honest healing for both of us in the long run, and that’s what is the most important.

Humans are messy. We’re complicated, we’re utterly individual, and we’re almost too sentient. I’ve had the pleasure of watching my brother and sister-in-law build a beautiful life and family together over the last 9 years. However, this life is not free of hardship. There are fights, there are disagreements, it gets ugly. But it is love. They have shown me what a healthy partnership in this wild life can look like. They’ve never pretended to be perfect and I’m so grateful for that. Through their partnership, my sister-in-law and I have built our own relationship. We have become extremely close, in fact, I prefer to call her just my sister.

I’ve started to have more honest conversations with my brother and sister as I try to navigate this life. I hear both sides of their struggles and their problems, and it’s given me great insight into what I’ve been missing. I feel like I have been misguided. Very rarely are people a perfect match with no friction, no problems, or no mess. Rather than those two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together, they’re two pieces that fit pretty well, but there are some parts that don’t fit exactly. There are some gaps, some overlap, but they do fit. Most of the time it takes work. It takes speaking about hard subjects. It takes helping another messy, complicated, individual, sentient human to see what’s going on in our own heads. And that is terrifying. Our minds are the only space we have on this planet that is truly ours. Where we aren’t judged, where we can feel freely, where we can be our true selves. Choosing to share that with someone is scary. But I’m learning that’s what it takes to make relationships work.

What do I know? Nothing… I’m still single for a reason obviously, but I’m trying to learn from my past experiences in a way that I never have, and it’s helping. It’s helping me to identify when things are working, when they’re not, and how and when to share my thoughts with a partner.

I’ve learned that being honest hurts, being open hurts, being vulnerable hurts. But that hurt is necessary when you care for someone, or you’re trying to make something work. Sharing your thoughts leads to experiencing simpler emotions such as sadness or heartbreak. These are by no means easy but when opposed to the complex emotions of resentment, regret, and confusion that come from the alternative they’re certainly healthier and more manageable. Things are always going to be emotional when you’re intertwining your life with someone else’s. However, when you put yourself in a position to share your thoughts and partner with another human you have, in turn, added simplicity to the experience.

Love,

Hunter