It Is Okay To Let Yourself Love Again After Being Hurt

When we get our hearts shattered into a million pieces, we become bitter. We are so hesitant to the idea of letting someone else in again because our last relationship ruined our entire perspective of what love is actually supposed to look like. We convince ourselves that we won’t be ready to ever put ourselves through that kind of hell again, so instead we’ll just write off the idea of love completely.

We use a failed, unhappy relationship as an excuse to not be happy in a new one, and it is self sabotaging at it’s finest.

After you’ve been hurt you relearn how to stand on your own two feet again. You gain a certain kind of independence that you haven’t experienced before and start to truly appreciate your solitude. The biggest downfall of being so good at being on your own is that you no longer desire affection from anybody else. You stop noticing when someone is making a genuine effort because you’ve adopted the habit of ignoring it all together. When you have the chance to make a connection, you’re probably subconsciously contemplating every way it could go wrong before it even has a fighting chance.You tell yourself that self-love is the best love, and that itself is more than enough for you. You hide behind your emotions with a mask that you’re not ready to take off yet. You have finally found comfort in your own safe space, your own little world, where no one else will ever have the ability to harm you. And honestly, you can’t even imagine the idea of letting somebody else take care of you ever again, because you’ve learned that’s only something you can do for yourself. There’s no way you’ll allow yourself to be the dumbass who gets their heart broken once again.

So instead, you pretend like you don’t have one to break in the first place.

You become closed off, and even standoffish because the last time you actually decided to put your trust in another person they completely sabotaged it. You’ve seen first hand how cruel this world can be, and how having feelings can and will destroy you. You trick yourself into believing that if you’re the heartbreaker, that’s how you’ll avoid getting yours broken.

But, the truth is that breaking someone else’s heart won’t protect yours from getting broken. And, to be honest, sometimes I don’t know which is worse, being the heartbroken or the heartbreaker.

We all have moments that have left their mark on us one way or another. We all have memories we associate with pain and weakness, and times we don’t like to revisit. And while we shouldn’t spend the rest of our lives apologizing for these moments, we shouldn’t hide from them either. Because honestly, heartbreak is unavoidable when it comes to the game of love. And you never really know when the time will come to get yours broken. But, if you choose to spend your whole life ready to push love away before it gets the chance to find you, you might just miss out on some amazing people, moments, and connections. We’re all carrying our own demons, with our own stories to tell, just hoping that there’s someone else out there that our demons can coincide with. Having a broken heart does not mean that you are broken. There’s actually a certain strength that comes along with letting yourself be vulnerable after being hurt, and it’s beautiful in it’s own broken way.

So you can keep your heart guarded for as long as you wish, but when you do decide to open it back up again, I hope that this time you find everything you’ve been looking for and more.