Lessons Learnt From A Broken Heart - In Search of Mr Darcy Edition
There are few people on this earth, especially if you are over 40, who can say they've never had their heart broken. It’s almost a rite of passage. Heartbreak has tremendous power. It can hurt, enlighten, destroy, strengthen, shatter, sadden, transform, illuminate, empower and…change lives. It has inspired countless songs that can rip your heart right out of your chest (shout out to Leonard Cohen). It has left poets broken and beautiful, and it has been pretty much the plot in every rom-com I’ve ever obsessively wept over (shout out to Nicholas Sparks and The Notebook.)
I mean, if you are living life, how can you avoid it?
You Can’t Hide from Heartbreak
Do you stay in? Isolate from society? Not take any chances? Hell no. That’s not living—that’s just surviving. You can’t go through life fearing love. To fear love is to fear life, even after your heart has been pummeled to the ground and you’re not sure if it will ever, ever start beating again.
And this is something I know about.
Lessons from a Romantic Failure
Now, if anyone knows how to crawl out of an embarrassing romantic failure, it’s me. In fact, I’ve written over 80,000 words about exactly that in my memoir, In Search of Mr. Darcy: Lessons Learnt in the Pursuit of Happily Ever After, now proudly available all around the English-speaking world.
On the surface, it might seem like part love story, part drunken angry girl text (which I’m fine with, by the way), but what it really is, is a survival guide. Or according to THE SUNDAY POST, ‘Hope-filled and life affirming. A Must-Read for any woman worried about life after 40.’
Ready to Move On?
So, are you willing to give up feeling crappy and get over his (or her) ass? Because I’d like to take the next 600 words or so to share some inspirational quips, quotes, reflections, and lessons I’ve learned. Call it a little motivational cheat sheet to help get your broken-hearted self out of your sweats, off the sofa, and into the world of living.
Lessons I Learnt While Searching for Mr Darcy
They cannot kill you in a way that matters.
You’ll be sad for a while and then you will just stop giving a fuck.
How they said goodbye will tell you everything about why they weren’t the one.
Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.
The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are.
The truth will set you free, but first, it will piss you off.
When someone treats you like an option, help them narrow their choice—do them a favor and remove yourself from the equation.
Sometimes you don’t get what you want because you deserve better.
Real love can only be killed by neglect or narcissism.
Just because you’re feeling sad after making a decision doesn’t mean it’s the wrong decision.
Your trauma is not the most important part of you.
Some things have to end for better things to begin.
If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.
What they did to you is their karma. What you do about it is yours.
You get more of what you tolerate.
Life’s problems are only temporarily solved by day-drinking and assault eating.
Sometimes temporary people teach you permanent lessons.
The greater your capacity for love, the greater your capacity for pain.
So if you’ve stumbled upon this blog, perhaps the universe is sending you a message. Take solace; you are not alone. Stop beating yourself up about stuff you didn’t know before you learned it.
I recognize getting over someone who you thought was your ‘happily ever after’ is not as easy as flipping a switch. But nor do I believe in Sex And The City’s Charlotte York’s formula that it takes half the total time you were with them.
Stop mourning what might have been. Take a breath, and look for the lessons, and dare I say gifts. Because you might not see it yet, but man, it is a gift. And they do not get to decide how the story ends based on the few chapters they helped write—this is your story, you decide. So please, don’t waste one more day stuck in the shadows of your mistakes. And if this helps at all, know that if some people marry prison inmates, your choices can’t be that bad.
What I like about this conversation (aside from how well it goes with wine) is that it brings us closer. For the more we share, the more we realize just how much we have in common.
So, to all those men who broke my heart, whose hearts I broke, the men I loved too much or failed to love enough, they brought me here, to this delicious moment in time…talking to you.
Love is never the mistake, my friends.
And here are three words you need to remember. YOU GOT THIS!
With tremendous love and gratitude…Christina
In Search of Mr Darcy: Lessons Learnt in Pursuit of Happily Ever After is available at Indigo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Audible , ebook or where ever you like to buy your books.
For more info about Mr Darcy or the author click here.
