“may love find you. even. when you are specifically. strategically. hiding from it.” Nayyirah Wahid
She liked my quote about finding love again.
I liked her post about her recent trip.
The exchange of heart-shaped likes filled our Instagram pages.
This was the beginning of a modern romance.
She was on a mission to travel the world and said she was an independent woman.
She also had 10,000 followers on Instagram!
I’ve never had had hundreds of Instagram crushes.
Well, I’ve had plenty of Instagram crushes but I’ve never actually engaged with an Instagram crush.
What was so intoxicating here was not only was she beautiful and from the homeland but she was spiritual and loved helping people.
A match made in Instagram heaven.
We exchanged messages and continued to become each other’s Insta fans until I decided it was time to share my feelings for her.
How do you tell someone you like them?
Normal people, “Hey, you’re cool and we should talk more to see if we have more in common?”
Me:
“Hey, the universe has parted ways, the divine has awakened and destiny has called upon me to initiate this conversation. We have known each other for life times and we must speak to discuss our future marriage, where will live and how many kids we will have together.”
This is a fantastic first message, if I do say so myself.
Also, a good way to never hear from her again.
I turned the woman I thought I had been waiting a lifetime for into a woman I would never hear from again.
The love of my life had gone silent on Instagram.
We were both on the Titanic when she just pushed me off the ship into the stormy waters to find myself, to fall into an emotional thunderstorm and to frantically search for a rescue boat.
Now, what’s the moral of this story?
Well, first, don’t fall for Instagram influencers on the internet.
(Oh random – have we connected on Instagram? Let’s connect on Instagram here – you could be the next internet crush I fall in love with)
But here’s the bigger point here.
Love.
We rise in love and we fall in love.
This mini modern romance was not of much consequence. It was likely a romance in my mind than in reality. Maybe she didn’t even think twice about me before I sent her an essay professing my love to her.
Yet those real romances that we have gone through in our lives and have fallen hard in are like those violent thunderstorms that took down the Titanic.
When a relationship or the marriage hits the sea floor, you’re likely dead. Or if alive, bruised, battered and can’t breathe by the time you get your head above water.
You don’t need a reinvention.
You need a resuscitation.
You don’t need a recovery.
You need a revival.
The worst breakups take us down and put us out for the count.
You will never feel like getting into the boxing ring of life again after one knockout.
You will never feel like dating again after one hard-fought, knock-down, dragged down breakup.
Please dear God never torment me and try to kill me like this again.
Yet, I am here with a message for you on why you need to get the heck up and give love another try.
No matter how much you were hurt and no matter how badly the other person did you wrong, I want you to know that it is worth giving love another shot.
As much as you have suffered in love, fell in love, drowned in love, knocked down in love, died in love, be willing to give love another chance.
The love that you desire is waiting for you on the other side of the love that destroyed you.
Your job is to heal the wound, forgive the past, rebuild your self-worth, find yourself and show up for love again because love is worth it.
Love will help you become the person that you were meant to be.
Love will help you expand and grow as a person.
Love will help bring you connection, joy, affection and intimacy.
Love will help break down your barriers of what you believe to be possible and break down the walls that are keeping you from fully experiencing life.
Even if love doesn’t show up, keep going in love because I am convinced that the journey to love is the path to love. You are not going to get to the final destination in love until you go through all the stops along the way.
Keep moving forward in love, keep falling down in love, keep getting up in love.
A broken heart is an open heart.
Falling down is an opportunity to rise up.
What’s possible is out there if you can stay focused on the path and stay open to the possibilities.
You and I are on a love journey.
Keep going.
If you haven’t even started, start.
If you haven’t considered the possibility yet, be open to it.
Don’t swear off love because that one cosmic relationship you were in devastated you.
If you don’t know where to start, reach out to me for some support in this process. I’m going to be unveiling some coaching options soon that will help you on this journey to overcoming heartbreak.
In the meantime, check out this book that I wrote. It’s a good first step to finding love, Does True Love Exist? The short answer is yes but love requires your participation.
“There’s no greater battle in life than the battle between the parts of you that want to be healed and the parts of you that are comfortable and content being broken.” Iyanla Vanzant
We had a phone conversation 3 years ago.
At the time, I was thinking she was the nicest and sweetest person I had spoken to.
Yet after one phone call, I went against my intuition, and thought this would be too complicated.
She too lived half way across the world.
It would be so hard to get to know each other.
It would take forever for her to move here.
It would blah blah blah
So I left it at that and went back into my happy world of trying to understand heartbreak, learn how to overcome breakups and learn the steps of letting go.
Little did I realize that it were these very things that was heartbreak and not being able to let go that was keeping my stuck in my own life of dating and meeting new people.
While I was learning about letting go and trying to actively let go of the past, I also found that being stuck in the past does nothing for your love life.
In fact, you could meet the right person and you wouldn’t be interested or care because you’re still caught up with your ex.
You’re still wanting the old relationship to work.
You’re still blaming yourself for what you did.
You’re still hoping the old person comes back into my life.
3 years ago, this was where I was at.
Fast forward to 2019 (the year I wrote The Sacred Art of Letting Go) and this wonderful person who I met is coming to meet me.
We’ve been talking since the new year and I’m curious as to how this visit is going to go.
She’s a simple and spiritual person which in the Indian world of meeting people is a rarity.
She works in helping children in poverty get educated.
I’m wondering how someone so right for me could have fallen off my radar?
And it’s as simple as this.
When you’re stuck in the past, you’re wearing lenses that make you look at everything in the present as something in the past.
You view everything today from a perspective of what happened before.
You lose interest in today or tomorrow because of this weight that is holding you back.
The problem of trying to meet new people when you’re stuck in the past is that the new people and the right people for you may seem like the wrong people for you!
You’re so blinded by the lenses of the past that you can’t see things as they are.
I have no idea where this is going but I can tell you this.
The relationship you want and the person you want might be around you and might be closer than you think but if you can’t let go of the past, your view of relationships might be skewed.
You won’t be able to find the very person you’re looking for if you’re stuck in the past.
The solution?
Do the work.
Walk through the 12 steps of letting go.
Yes, I have a book on the topic 🙂
Practice actively letting go each and every day.
Similar to grief, not letting go means unprocessed emotions and holding onto something that once was.
The longer you hold onto what was, the heavier it weighs you down in life.
You can’t be open to what can be when you haven’t let go of what once was.
I’ll let you know how things are unfolding on my end.
Where are you in the process of letting go? Hit reply on email or sign up for the blog to join me on my journey from heartbreak to love.
After a serious and committed relationship ends, you begin to have weird thoughts swirling through your mind about the future.
First comes the hurt and the pain of having gone through a breakup.
Then comes the blame towards yourself, your ex and others that caused the breakup.
Finally, comes the sad and lonely thoughts about your future, along with your fears that you will never love again after a breakup.
I can personally attest to many of these common beliefs that came in and out of my life after my divorce.
I think the belief that I held about the future was that I would be alone again for the rest of my life and that no one would ever love me again.
It’s at points like that you begin to ask yourself what’s the point of living and what’s the point of life?
Thankfully, I’ve come a long way since then.
I realize that many of the beliefs that I developed post-breakup came from a place of grief yet it took me years to overcome them.
Our mind has a way of playing tricks on us and leading us to dramatic and untrue spaces of thought.
Here are some of the most common beliefs that went through my mind as I thought about finding love after a breakup.
These might be thoughts that are whirling around your mind too.
Please read, reflect and let me know which ones resonate the most with you.
All you have to do is hit reply to this email and fill me in.
Of course, if you’re not on the email list, please get on it!
10 Common Beliefs About Love After a Breakup
1. I will never find love again and be alone forever.
Just because one person ended the relationship with you, you believe that you won’t find someone and be alone the rest of your life.
You think love will pass you by and you’ll spend the rest of your life by yourself, withering away into oblivion and dying a peaceful death surrounded by loyal furry friends.
2. No one will like me or love me again.
Since your ex didn’t like you and fell out of love in you, you believe the other 7 billion people in the world are also going to dismiss you for the terrible person you are.
Love only happens once in your life. It happened. Now, it’s over and you will be living in solitude for several more decades.
You had your one shot at love and it didn’t work out.
3. No one will accept me once they see the real me.
You got to know someone, spend years with them and were in a relationship with them.
Since you believe that something is wrong with you and you scared your ex away, you believe that you will scare everyone else away too.
Once people get to know the real you, they will run for the hills.
There is something permanently damaged about you that no one can accept you for who you are once they get to know you.
4. I am permanently broken
Once again, your relationship ending with your ex will help you see that you have issues. Serious ones that you developed since a child or through other life trauma.
You’ll realize that you’re permanently broken or there is something so flawed with you that no one will want you ever again.
This is not a temporary condition. You were cursed from birth to be broken and unlovable.
Well…there’s always the next life.
5. There are no good people out there.
You take all your previous relationships and all of your recent bad dates to conclude there is absolutely no good people out there.
Everyone is a deadbeat, a dud or a deadbeat dud.
Why even bother dating when people are bad, unavailable, uninterested, boring, evil…
6. I will repeat the mistakes of the past.
You made many mistakes in this past relationship which you hold yourself solely responsible for.
You ruined a perfectly good relationship with a perfectly good person.
You feel like you’re an immature, unworthy, cruel person who causes massive pain and hurt to the people they love.
7. I will choose the wrong person again
You made a mistake in choosing your previous partner. You are pretty much guaranteed to pick someone just as bad the next time around.
Since you did such a poor choice of choosing someone compatible, you believe that you’re going to draw someone into your life who’s just as lousy and bad for you.
8. If I don’t know myself, how could I know what I want in a partner?
After the tsunami of a breakup, you have lost a sense of self, a sense of purpose and a sense of being.
You don’t even know who you are and what you want out of you life.
You’re so lost, how could you possibly be clear on who you’re looking for in a partner?
9. I don’t want go through heartbreak again.
You’ve been through it once and it was more unpleasant than a visit to the dentist.
You cried in bed for months, never went out in public and felt like digging a deep hole and hiding out in it for years.
You’ve experienced serious heartbreak and similar to heart attacks and getting your wisdom teeth pulled, once is enough.
10. I don’t want to feel unworthy again.
Your ex made you feel terrible about yourself.
They made you question your self-worth and your confidence.
You felt so terrible about yourself as a person that you would never let anyone do this to you again by having another love after a breakup.
So you’re going to have super-high walls around your heart and make sure that getting to your heart is going to be 80 times harder than getting tickets to the next Hamilton show.
You would rather push people away, hide from people and make people angry at you than allowing someone to get close enough to you to make you feel unworthy.
To find love after a breakup, pick up my book, Love After Heartbreak, here.
Which of these beliefs most resonate with you? I would like to hear from you via email about your own experiences, thoughts and beliefs after a breakup.
I help people overcome their devastating breakups and divorces and find love again. Instead of visiting the Himalayas, sign up below and join me. I am taking a writing break but will be back soon.
This guide is free. A ticket to the Himalayas is $2000. Your move.
