“It felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest.”
– Jennifer Lopez on Ben Affleck, in her memoir True Love

“In the beginning, you tamp down the animosity for the kids’ sake. “I’m not going to deny that I went through the wringer. But I don’t think I doubted we’d end up here. That was always my dream, that the kids can have two loving parents that show respect for each other. And I feel that’s what they have.”
– Elin Nordegren on Tiger Woods, People

“I think when I came into marriage—especially when you’ve had divorced parents like myself… You’d want to try even harder to make it work and you don’t want to fall back into a pattern that you’ve seen happen in your own family. I desperately want it to work; I desperately love my husband and I wanted to share everything together. And I thought that we were a very good team.”
– Princess Diana on Prince Charles, 1995 Panorama Interview

“[Divorce is] very humiliating and very isolating… But, by the way, if it’s not painful, maybe it wasn’t the right decision to marry to begin with. Those are the appropriate emotions. When people get in your face and say, ‘This will pass,’ you think, Are they crazy? I’m never gonna feel any better than I feel right this minute. And nothing’s ever gonna make sense again. And I still have moments where I’m like, ‘Nothing’s ever gonna make sense again.'”

— Reese Witherspoon on Ryan Phillippe, ELLE

Why do we continue to allow ourselves to be hurt? I suppose it has something to do with knowing you have nothing to lose by loving and everything to lose if you don’t. I believe that. I also believe that each experience, each encounter no matter how insignificant it might seem, bears something transformative. And ever expanding. Who I am, and all those amazingly scary, difficult-to-digest events that have brought me here. To this particular moment, to this particular place.

Here are tips to help you recover from break ups

ACCEPT THE PAIN

Accept that you will have to go through some pain. It is an unavoidable truth that if you loved enough to be heartbroken, you have to experience some suffering.

When you lose something that mattered to you, it is natural and important to feel sad about it: that feeling is an essential part of the healing process.

The problem with broken-hearted people is that they seem to be reliving their misery over and over again. If you cannot seem to break the cycle of painful memories, the chances are that you are locked into repeating dysfunctional patterns of behaviour. Your pain has become a mental habit. This habit can, and must, be broken.

This is not to belittle the strength of your feelings or the importance of the habits you’ve built up during your relationship. Without habit, none of us would function. But there comes a time when the pain becomes unhealthy.

Don’t Fight Your Feelings A break-up is often accompanied by a wide variety of powerful and negative feelings including sadness, anger, confusion, resentment, jealousy, fear and regret, to mention a few. If you try to ignore or suppress these feelings, you will likely only prolong the normal grieving process, and sometimes get totally stuck in it. Healthy coping means both identifying these feelings and allowing ourselves to experience these feelings. As hard as it is, you cannot avoid the pain of loss, but realize that by experiencing these feelings, they will decrease over time and you will speed up the grieving process. The stages of grieving frequently include: shock/denial, bargaining, anger, depression and eventually acceptance.

Keep busy. If you wake up early take a walk, go out to breakfast or do something around the house. Try a little “retail therapy” (go shopping) or enjoy the decadence of going to a movie in the middle of the day. Many businesses allow their staff to take “mental health days” if needed. If you can’t sleep do the crossword puzzle, read or watch TV. Don’t sit in your room and ruminate, you have to free your mind so your heart can heal.

Don’t try to mask your pain by trying to find a replacement. We all know the term “rebound relationship” these happen when we (unconsciously) use another person to fill the gap that’s been created by the ending of a relationship. These transitional connections can feel healing in the short term, but if you don’t process your pain appropriately you will not be able to be in a fully committed partnership.

 Give yourself permission.

It is okay to be smile again. It’s okay to find something funny and have your curiosity evoked. It’s perfectly fine to dwell on other matters besides your old love. It’s acceptable to feel those first flutterings for someone else. It’s okay to have your heart beat for something, someone else again.

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I like to think that it really takes very little to survive after our heart’s been very broken — some gumption, a little bit of hope, the daring to dream again… and patience. Know this now: The time has come to stop wasting your heart and time in anger and obsession – re-living the pain of relationships past. Be thankful for the lessons and life experiences this relationship has taught you, and be hopeful for the future. Know that there are better things to come and welcome every new experience that comes your way with open arms—they may just exceed your expectations.