Dear heartbroken ones, I hope you took to your bed yesterday and are still there. Here are four more musts for getting through this hideous time. As you can see from the previous four ways to survive heartbreak hell, my concern is not in reconnecting. It’s in rebuilding. Rebuilding You. Then, perhaps, and only then, is the idea of reconnecting possible. So, let’s go through it where we left off.
5. Eat well. Don’t you have enough deprivation right now? Don’t even think of going on a diet while you’re recovering from a broken heart. You’ll probably lose weight anyway, but you might as well nourish yourself. Stuff yourself with salads and protein and fruits and liquids–things that make you feel good now and will make you feel good tomorrow, too. Think that way (today AND tomorrow) and you’ll be less likely to binge on the stuff that makes your eyes puffy and your skin blotchy. Indulge. Don’t punish. Hint: At night, warm some skim milk, throw in a splash of Kahlua and vanilla and a mouthful of brandy, and even a cinnamon stick if you have one, and you’ll feel soothed and sleepy.
6. Forget about Information Management. It makes not one whit of difference whether the world thinks you broke up with him or he broke up with you. Attempting to control who knows what is not only futile, it’s demeaning. What’s important is that YOU know what happened, and that you come to accept it, and that you even come to learn something important from it not only about your choices but about your participation in whatever it is that happened. But meanwhile, who cares, really, what others think? In the end–I hate to tell you–but they don’t care, anyway. It’s momentary fodder for the gossip mill, and that’s it. You’re no more humiliated for having been left than you are for being the one who leaves, and people will do with the information whatever they do with it.
7. Fake it at work. As much as I’m telling you to indulge in every way in your home and with your best friend? Don’t, at work. Right now you’re staying home, I hope. But once you go back to work, be there. Your public persona need not be untinged by unhappiness, but you must not be unhinged by it: you must remain flawlessly effective. Losing a job, or a boss’s respect, on top of losing a lover….well now, that would be a true nightmare.
8. Do not circulate. Do your job at the office and then go home. What’s to circulate, anyway….your tale of woe? No. Don’t allow any well-meaning buddies to fix you up, and don’t call the guy on Match who wanted to meet you two months ago, and don’t put your sorry face back on Facebook. Not yet. Give yourself this time to wallow (privately) and don’t try to make nice to the world. It won’t work anyway. You’ll go out with that guy and cry. You’ll get little winks and flirts and want to hurl yourself out your window. To have fun, you must be capable of it: It’s not time, yet, to get on with your life. Do injured wild animals race of to frolic in the fields? No, they curl up and lick their wounds. And they do nothing till they heal. And go out when they’re stronger. You do the same.
And when you ARE stronger, you’ll be amazed at how much stronger than ever you feel. Healing a broken heart, if done properly, is a like a short course in self-psychotherapy. You know more about you, more about what you’re willing to put up with, more about what you want. We’ll come back to this. Meanwhile, sip on my hot love potion and sleep well.