- People have said I'm unlucky in love, and I've had my heart broken a few times.
- These experiences haven't put me off from dating or trying to find love.
I tend to get my heart broken. A friend's fiancé recently heard one of my latest dating stories and said, "Wow, she's really unlucky in love, isn't she?" And it's true, I've collected more tales of heartbreak than of love.
But each story leads me somewhere different, whether it opens a new door, provides a fresh insight, leads me down a new road, or gives me renewed hope.
It's true that I tend to get my heart broken, but I also tend to find something good out of each one. While a full recounting of my many heartbreaks would require a novel, I've hand-selected my greatest heartbreak hits and what I have learned from them.
Ends are also beginnings
In seventh grade, a girl stole my boyfriend by inviting him to her New Year's Eve party. I was at Epcot with my family, and he was falling in love — as middle schoolers do — in her kitchen. Yes, I was devastated, but all these years later, that girl is my best friend in the world after we reconnected in a freshman-year creative-writing class and laughed off our short-lived rivalry over poetry.
There are many stories about women becoming friends after dating the same guy, and while our story is nowhere nearly as dramatic as "John Tucker Must Die," that breakup opened the door to a lifelong friendship.
Love comes from unexpected places
After a breakup in college, I bought a cat, and it was the best purchase of my life. I'd never been a cat person, but in the midst of heartbreak, I went with a friend to buy her boyfriend a surprise cat for his birthday (don't ask — they're not together anymore, either), and I left with one of my own.
His name is Oliver, and he's been there for me after every breakup since. I've been lucky to have his love for 12 years. (He's also lying at my feet while I write this.)
Vulnerability is power
I turned my pain into prose and got my first article published after one breakup in my early 20s. That particular heartbreak opened the door to my writing career.
By being vulnerable online, I found community, realized my feelings were valid, and was motivated to keep telling my story. While I've received some unkind commentary, I've always maintained that helping just one person feel seen was always worth it. (And here I am a decade later, still writing.)
It's worth investing in your own healing
A friend took me to a psychic after a breakup in my mid-20s when I was living in New York City. The psychic told me I had a dark, negative aura keeping me from everything I wanted, including love. Yikes. While I did not accept her proposition to heal me with a $200 candle ceremony, I did invest in finding my own path to healing, aura be damned.
I started therapy; I tried Reiki; I joined self-development workshops; I went to sound baths. And, slowly, I developed a healthy, loving relationship — with myself — that I still maintain today.
Learning from your own experiences is crucial
Eventually, in my late 20s, I saw a pattern emerge. After one particular romance, when I was left bamboozled and questioning reality, I finally came across the term love bombing. And it was like I had gotten an answer to a repetitive question I'd had for years: What just happened?
This opened the door for me to become more aware (and avoidant) of narcissistic personalities. It also made me more introspective about why I attracted people with narcissistic tendencies and owning that in my healing.
Despite the heartbreaks, I'm still looking for love
The accumulation of heartbreak led me to move continents right before my 30th birthday. I thought that if I couldn't find love in the United States, maybe I could try to find it in Europe. The last couple of years have been the best of my life, and while I have yet to find love, I have found more than I could've imagined by saying yes to new places, new people, and new experiences. Yes, there has been heartbreak here, too, but I love the life I've built.
I've always been the type of girl who believes in love, and I still do. Despite decades of heartbreak, it didn't break me; it broke me open to many new possibilities.