The "Broken Heart"

Ah, what is a “broken heart?” We define the psychic angst associated with the break-up of a love relationship as a “broken heart.” When we end a romantic relationship, for whatever reason, we feel all the resultant emotional trauma. We feel anger, we feel loneliness, we feel betrayal and we feel hurt and anguish. We have developed a term for all of this, the “broken heart.”

The analogy of this psychic trauma to damage to the heart is actually quite fitting. If we consider, for the sake of argument, the heart as the organ related to love (often the organ more accurately associated in this regard is much lower on the anatomy), then a broken heart is analogous to a heart attack. When we have a heart attack, one of our coronary arteries becomes blocked; as a result, blood flow is cut off to that area of the heart and the result is dead tissue. In some cases, the damage is too great and the heart can no longer function properly, this results in our death.

Our body, in order to heal the wound to the heart, begins to form scar tissue. Scar tissue draws the ends of the healthy tissue together and fills in the gap left by damaged tissue, but scar tissue has two differences from normal healthy tissue, it is much stronger that healthy tissue, but it is also less sensitive and feels less. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

When we get a “broken heart”, the body does the same thing, we form psychic scar tissue, which is stronger, but it is also less sensitive and feels less. Thus, each time we suffer a broken heart, we are stronger for the experience (“What does not kill us makes us stronger.”), but we also are just a little less sensitive. Every time we suffer a broken heart, we become more cautious, we are less likely to fall in love so quickly. We protect ourselves from future heartache, making more certain the next time we fall in love, we are even surer of its validity. Of course, a problem develops when we are hurt so many times and so much scar tissue has been formed that we can no longer feel. We essentially can no longer love. While this situation would seem to be relatively rare, it is most certainly a terrible situation and creates a way of life that lacks love. Sometimes, the damage can be so bad it actually kills us or, in reality, causes us to kill ourselves.

So, what do we do to cure a broken heart? We fall in love again. The contradiction boggles the mind. We seek another person that makes us feel less lonely, less hurt, less angry and less betrayed. Interestingly, we take the same risks we took with that person that broke our heart. If we do it too son, we risk falling in love on the rebound; a false love that almost certainly results in another broken heart. The rebound relationship feels like love, acts like love and, for all intents and purposes, is love, but it is not the real love that lasts. It is more like a crush; it is the love that happens when we are feeling all those terrible things that result from a prior relationship, gone bad. It is us settling for less because it makes us feel better, at least temporarily. The rebound relationship fills in all the holes we feel in our very soul.

So what is the answer to curing a broken heart? Don’t be afraid to love again, but don’t be too hasty. Go through the grieving process associated with the failure of your love relationship. Guard against falling in love out of desperation at being suddenly alone and having no partner, and whatever you do, don’t go back to that individual that broke your heart in the first place. You are going back out of habit, and out of a desire to not be alone. We have all been there, done that. It is just part of bring human.