I don’t think loving someone means you have baggage and are incapable of forming a healthy, committed, in-love relationship with someone new. I think when you still want the other person is when you create baggage and then are incapable of having a healthy, committed, in-love relationship with someone new.
And there’s the difference: I don’t want him. If I wanted him, I wouldn’t have shut him out of my life. I knew by doing that, I was setting myself up for a lot of hurt and longing, but that was something I did to myself, and in the end, I was protecting myself from having my heart broken any further by a liar.
As I’ve said before, I will always love him in some weird way, but I don’t want him. And I think that’s something a lot of girls need to separate. I listen to a lot of my girlfriends talk about their bad loves and how they still love them and what should they do because these feelings won’t go away.
My advice? My advice is to own them, to realize that yes, you truly were in love with this guy and he really turned out to be a jerk, or for reasons beyond both of your control, it ended and now you don’t know what to do. It’s okay to still love somebody, but it’s not okay to keep yourself in an unhealthy or hurtful situation or relationship, or to allow that want to keep you in a vicious cycle.
You can’t control who you love, but you can control how they can and cannot hurt you.
If you truly loved someone, then that never goes away, but you learn to deal with it differently, and one day, it won’t matter anymore in that way because someone better will come into your life and you’ll find a completely new kind of love. But before you get there, you have to stop wanting the other person.
For me, I started to stop wanting him when we broke up. The very minute it happened was when I started to lose the want for him. It wasn’t until probably last spring that I stopped wanting him completely. All together, it took nearly two years from the start of the relationship and about a year and a half from the breakup. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I truly loved this person and separating my love from my want and from him, was not an easy lesson to learn.
But I did it and so can you. The key is, to just start focusing on you. Start doing things just for you. I went to graduate school, I got my nails done and a massage every once in a while, and I started a new career that I had always wanted to do. Then, the rest kind of just fell into place.
I think it’s pride that keeps people from just embracing the fact that they got screwed over. I know that was the case for me. I just felt stupid and for many months; I didn’t deal, I just distracted and punished myself. It wasn’t until I focused on me and what I wanted that I was then able to separate my want of him and my love for him. In the end, I owned it and moved on.
In essence—say it, own it, separate it, and work to move on. It’s all you can do and really, it’s what you have to do.
