Break Ups: If You’re Hurting on Valentine's Day, Take Heart

“Love Hurts.”

It was a phrase popularized in 1974 by the rock band Nazareth. It’s also a relatable sentiment for people going through a breakup…particularly one as challenging as a divorce.

Expressing from that place of intense pain, the Nazareth song proclaims: “Love is just a lie, made to make you blue.”

Sound about right?

It can be paradoxically comforting to wrap yourself in a blanket of cynicism and victimhood when your heart is broken. And that’s okay. It’s a place where many of us need to be for a while, during and after a breakup. 

I certainly spent my share of time there, after my mother’s suicide when I was a child; after I broke up with my high school sweetheart (for me, it led to several months of serious depression); and after my first marriage ended in divorce. 

Attempting to prematurely rush into some “higher state” of philosophical peace and acceptance can be impossible at best. It can be counterproductive at worst, if by doing so you bypass the healthy grieving process that must often follow the end of an intimate relationship.

There Is Opportunity To Gain A Deeper Understanding

With that acknowledgment, at some point there comes an opportunity to use the pain of love to gain a deeper understanding of what love can do. At least that has been my experience.

For me, one of the greatest discourses on love ever written is the first chapter of the seminal book of poems, The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran.  Here is a portion of that beautiful poem:

When love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

This poem seems to suggest that love brings the potential for transcendence; but as with all things in this matrix, at a price. That if you want to have the transcendence love offers—to laugh all of your laughter, to weep all of your tears—you must be prepared to pay that price.

What is difficult to face—as we welcome the birth of our child, as we vow to live happily ever after at our weddings—is that love will almost inevitably generate heartbreak on some level. This is because it is an unbendable law of nature that all things change and end. Kids grow up and move away; people grow old and die; infatuation fades. And so all things loved must eventually transform, and in doing so, often cause grief.

Is this reason to conclude, as did the writer of the song, that love is just a lie?

You can do that. But there’s another take.

As Gibran’s poem so beautifully relates, love asks us to hold space for all that love brings. Because love is such a powerful experience, it asks us to hold a lot of space. It asks more of us than anything else possibly could. It stretches us and molds us into something far larger than what we could otherwise become.

But it is only by opening ourselves to the full breadth of what love brings that we can reap the benefits it offers. The pain is all but inevitable. But the growth is optional. What I see so many people doing when faced with the pain brought by love—myself included when I’m not paying attention—is to reject it as wrong. We behave as if this wasn’t part of the bargain all along. We close our hearts. We try to numb ourselves. We complain and we blame. We thrash and rail at the unfairness of it all.

And in doing so, we miss the true gift that love seeks to give us.

On the other hand, by applying a little bit of wisdom, humility and courage—by bravely facing and holding space for both the pleasure and pain of love—we grow bigger. We expand our capacity to feel all things. We grow up. We become less selfish. We become able to be grounded when others are panicking; to give wise counsel when others are confused. We grow in our capacity to be with others’ pain. We gain empathy and compassion. We gain access to the mysteries of our lives: why we are here, what all of this means. We become someone whom people can turn to when they are themselves in the grip of pain.

We become “sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.”

Remember. Take Heart.

So on this Valentines day, if you are feeling the pain that only love can bring, take heart.

The great poet Rumi said “the wound is the place where the light gets in.” Many believe he meant that it is our wounds that paradoxically become the portal to wisdom, growth and love. In my experience, that is true.

After spending my share of time on love’s threshing floor, I have found the wounds that were left by my experiences of love broken have made me stronger, wiser, and more capable. Once I made space for all the facets of love, I became someone who could live life more fully. My second marriage (now ten years strong) is as good as it is only, I believe, because I allowed love to shake my roots, to show me where I needed to grow. This can happen for anyone.

In this Valentine’s season, may you find comfort in the knowledge that all things change. May you find healing when you are ready. May heartbreak begin to expand your capacity to love your kids, to love your parents, to love yourself. Love asks, love offers, nothing less.

Peter Fabish is Co-Founder of Conscious Family™ Law & Mediation, offering collaborative divorce mediation, or legal representation with strength and integrity, in metro Denver/Boulder, Colorado.