Today I’m going to talk about the PAIN of heartbreak and the one sure-fire way to make sure you NEVER get hurt again for the rest of your life (no matter what.)
Before I do that though I got a COUPLE things I need to cover . . .
1. I got a LOT of personal messages from folks responding to my “How My Wife Saved My Life” video (particularly on Facebook.) Just wanted to say thanks to everybody and how great it feels to be back and at work again (though my wife is also cautioning me to take it easy even though my natural tendency is to dive right back into the belly of the beast.)
2. I’m doing Facebook Live videos (usually answering questions but sometimes doing other stuff too) 3 – 5 times a week right now. If you’re not already on my Facebook page, make sure you go “Like” it here.
3. SPEAKING of FB live videos, I did one on Friday called “How to bring back the spark when it’s been dead for a DECADE” for a woman who’s been married for 20 years and been in a “dead” relationship for 10. You can check it out here.
OK!
Let’s get MOVING!
Sally (and about a billion other folks over the last 8 years I’ve been doing this) asks . . .
“Mike, I’ve had my heart broken over and over again by men and I’m SICK of it. How do I make sure I never get HURT again????”
Hi Sally,
First off, I get it. In a lot of ways dating these days can feel like running a marathon with razor blades in your shoes. You go and go and go and no matter how hard you pump your legs you seem to always end up bloody (wow, that might be the most disgusting simile I’ve ever done.)
Anyway, like I said above, right here, right now I’m going to tell you the one absolutely-certain way to make sure you NEVER get hurt like that again . . . to make sure your heart stays not just un-broken but absolutely NUMB and impervious to pain like you pumped a giant syringe of novocain right deep into the belly of the hardest-working muscles in your body (with the exception of the mighty tongue of course.)
Ready?
Are you ready to hear this AMAZING technique?
OK, here it is:
Give up.
Seriously, if you want to make sure you NEVER get hurt again . . . that you never feel the exquisite PAIN of being disappointed in a man you give yourself to . . . to skip sadly forward into a future where you never have to be on guard and know with 100% certainty that “that special person” in your life will never disappoint you . . .
Stop trying.
Because that’s really your only option.
See, it’s easy for folks to spout off about the “perfect” relationship. It’s easy to look at those doddering old couples in the newspaper or in memes on the internet who have been married for 60 years and seem so PERFECT in so many ways and think THAT’s what love is.
But what those stories never seem to tell you is that even the happiest couple who’s stayed faithful for decades and sincerely do LOVE each other (and have a form of passion not based on newness and limerence but on a deep and abiding understanding of who their partner is and an acceptance of them for all their glory and all their flaws) have hurt each other DEEPLY.
They’ve snapped at each other out of anger; they’ve taken out childhood trauma on each other without even knowing it; they’ve compared each other to past loves and found each other wanting in ridiculously specific ways; they’ve looked each other in the eyes and through salty tears delivered the worst possible news . . .
Does that mean they don’t love each other?
Not at all. In fact the ability to endure that pain . . . the ability to KNOW that more pain is coming and leave their hearts open because the love and wonder that comes along with that pain is WORTH it is, in my not so humble opinion, what REAL love actually is. A love not based on fantasy and Disney movies (hmm. A lot of Disney movies are pretty violent these days what with their wholesale absorption of Star Wars, the X-men, Deadpool and every other property known to man . . . but you get the idea) . . .
No, a love not based on what folks tell you love is “supposed to be” but based on who and what humans are and the messy, complicated occasionally-awful beings even the best of us can’t help but be when the chips are down and the horror is dawning and our emotional hot buttons get hit like a president bashing a button for yet another diet Coke (heh. I usually keep politics out of these but that was funny.)
Honestly, it’s my Wife Who Taught Me This.
See, if you watched that video I sent last week (for those who didn’t: In it I talked about how I quite literally lost my mind, became the worst possible version of myself and nearly destroyed everything I love in my life — and how only my wife’s dedication and love for me DESPITE what was going on brought me back from the brink) . . .
If you watched that video last week you know that my wife and I have been through the damned fire over the last year. And during that fire we had fights that left us both in tears with raging minds and hands formed into claws.
At one point (when my whole version of reality was distorted by what-turned-out-to-be Bipolar 2 disorder and I was wholly convinced that I was completely and utterly worthless and unworthy of love) I asked her if loving me was worth the pain.
And she looked at me with those beautiful eyes and tears streaming down her face and said:
“Mike, I’d rather have pain with you than pain without you.”
And I was shattered by that. At that moment I knew . . . REALLY knew what it felt like to be loved.
Because (and maybe I’m getting a bit Buddhist here) pain is just part of life. Hell, pain is how we even know we are alive. Without pain (and hopefully occasional) misery we wouldn’t even know what happiness really was.
What my wife knew (and knows – she’s pretty dang smart) was that no matter who you are with . . . no matter how perfect they are for you . . . no matter how deeply in love you really are . . . humans are humans and PAIN is part of the deal.
Before we got married she and I made a promise to each other.
We were cuddling in bed and talking about the future we were hoping to build together.
And we looked at each other and said:
“I’m going to hurt you. But I promise you it will never be on purpose.”
Does that sound unromantic to you? Do you think we should have lied and said “I will never hurt you no matter what?” Do you think we should have made a promise that’s actually impossible for any REAL man or any REAL woman to keep instead?
I don’t. I think the fact that we went into this with our eyes open, accepting each others’ (very real) flaws and acknowledging that if we want to spend DECADES together there are going to be YEARS where things are in no way perfect and may even be a little awful is what makes our marriage so deep and so strong.
It’s what makes our love so very, very real.
Does that mean that you should accept mountains of pain and stay in a bad relationship no matter what?
No, of course not. If you are misery day after day after day . . . if you never feel loved . .. if you wake up every day with your heart aching and a deep and abiding yearning for a man who looks at you and sees the REAL you with all your warts and insecurities . . . if you’re with someone who ABUSES you emotionally or physically (whether they mean to or not) and is unwilling to get help or even try to change then you should leave. You should be “selfish” and you should think of you first (something I know is very hard for most women to do) and take care of yourself and get out.
(And you should get help doing so. Especially if you’re with somebody — male or female — who’s overly jealous and/or physically violent. You don’t deserve that.)
But if sometimes things are good (or even great) and sometimes things are not so good . . . if you’re with someone who you accept for being a REAL man (or woman) and who accepts you for being a REAL woman (or man) then you should understand that the pain is worth the wonder.
And if you’re currently alone and wounded because you were cheated on or because your prince turned out to be a frog (or not a prince at all but just a regular man who would never wear a crown — princes tend to be assholes in real life anyway. Nobody gets out of that kind of status with a generous ego) . . .
Then you need to ask yourself if the pain of love is worth it. If it is, you cry your tears and hug yourself deep and learn to UNDERSTAND men as they REALLY are (which I can help you with, by the way — it’s what I do) . . . .
And you pick yourself up and you go back out there KNOWING that no matter who you meet and how wonderful they are there WILL be PAIN. And it will sometimes be terrible. But it will hopefully be worth it. And you will hopefully not feel alone.
Or you can give up.
It’s up to you.
But as someone who has had his heart broken deeply and thought I would never find someone who would truly ACCEPT me I can tell you it’s worth it.
P.S.
Thousands of women have told me that my “The Secret Survey: What Men Desperately Want You to Know But Are Terrified To Tell You” (which teaches you the brutal truth about men – if you’re willing to hear it) changed their lives and let them finally be HAPPY in a relationship in a way they never thought was possible.
If you want to check it out, go watch this video I did a few years ago that explains why men LIE even to women they truly do love.