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Not persuaded that the author's advice to rationalize the faults of your ex is sufficient or necessary for "recovery." I would propose generally that the suffe

Not persuaded that the author's advice to rationalize the faults of your ex is sufficient or necessary for "recovery." I would propose generally that the suffering of any breakup (or loss) is proportional to how much you depended on the other persons reflected view of you for your own idea of self. Getting past it is more of an exercise in self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, and self-improvement than simply knocking down the other to boost yourself up. If you identified as a partner, husband, father, boyfriend, etc. then the loss of that feels like a loss of self. But if the person in your life was just that: another person, in your life, then you can still miss them, but nothing intrinsic to who you are was lost. You are not broken, shattered, or harmed. In this context, suffering is the effect of a residual belief about the completeness of yourself, and has diminishingly little to do with the other person at all. Recovery is not "healing," from a "wound," rather, it is resetting your perspective and accepting who you are as self-originating - and not as reflected by another. Too often, Pascal's maxim "to understand all is to forgive all," is advice given without the necessary condition that you must apply it to yourself first - otherwise it's just a recipe for obsessive thoughts. I would say to someone suffering from a broken heart, whatever it might entail, start with the desire to forgive yourself and whatever happens next, the journey alone is probably going to be worth it.

s-shellfish 8y ago
This is very good advice. However, healing will always take time and experience.
- pcmaffey 8y ago
  My rough estimate is half the time of the relationship. Of course healing is its own journey of ups and downs...
  - delecti 8y ago
    In my experience, length of the relationship doesn't really correlate with length of recovery.
    - rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
      Agreed. I’ve had two serious relationships before my current engagement. Both lasted around two years. After the first one ended, I bounced back fairly quickly because I was so focused on losing weight and studying investing that I adapted to a new sense of self and wasn’t bothered by the breakup anymore. The second breakup resulted in a lot of unproductive wallowing in self-pity. Would not recommend. Anybody going through a breakup needs to find a self improvement project, pronto. Go exercise, or learn to play a musical instrument, or sign up for dancing classes, or head over to Adafruit/SparkFun and see what all that Maker hubbub is all about. As soon as you see yourself in a different light, you will have already moved on.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
balabaster 8y ago
Having gone through a breakup of two marriages now, I would say this is remarkably on point. One thing that I still find myself at odds with is the loss of romantic companionship. It's not a feeling of a wound per se, but it does make you question your romantic value in the world. It can be easy to let yourself get sucked into a negative thought spiral if you're not conscious or aware of it. That's just my $0.02.
agumonkey 8y ago
It can be your self when it represent a lifelong bonding, without that person there's no you anymore, she/he was your emotional outlet, your happiness intake. One can rationalize it and see that it's a distortion of your own perception of reality. I'm still recovering and at times my mind accepts that it wasn't a possible future. I can sense part of my brain unlocked. As if grief was a shutdown of some systems, these probably impede pleasures of living (the one you needed the other to share with).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
arde 8y ago
What I like about HN is that comments are frequently even better than the linked content. This is a fine example.
smacktoward 8y ago
> If you identified as a partner, husband, father, boyfriend, etc. then the loss of that feels like a loss of self. But if the person in your life was just that: another person, in your life, then you can still miss them, but nothing intrinsic to who you are was lost. You are not broken, shattered, or harmed. But the whole thing about a good relationship is that it creates a new, third entity -- a we, that lives aside the old you and I. It's that feeling of creation that makes the relationship so fulfilling. And that's why the end of the relationship is painful; it means bearing witness to a kind of death. Even if your own identity comes out unchanged, you've still experienced a very real loss.
50 8y ago
Reminds me of this note by Osho: The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.

s-shellfish 8y ago

This is very good advice. However, healing will always take time and experience.

pcmaffey 8y ago
My rough estimate is half the time of the relationship. Of course healing is its own journey of ups and downs...
- delecti 8y ago
  In my experience, length of the relationship doesn't really correlate with length of recovery.
  - rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
    Agreed. I’ve had two serious relationships before my current engagement. Both lasted around two years. After the first one ended, I bounced back fairly quickly because I was so focused on losing weight and studying investing that I adapted to a new sense of self and wasn’t bothered by the breakup anymore. The second breakup resulted in a lot of unproductive wallowing in self-pity. Would not recommend. Anybody going through a breakup needs to find a self improvement project, pronto. Go exercise, or learn to play a musical instrument, or sign up for dancing classes, or head over to Adafruit/SparkFun and see what all that Maker hubbub is all about. As soon as you see yourself in a different light, you will have already moved on.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

balabaster 8y ago

Having gone through a breakup of two marriages now, I would say this is remarkably on point. One thing that I still find myself at odds with is the loss of romantic companionship. It's not a feeling of a wound per se, but it does make you question your romantic value in the world. It can be easy to let yourself get sucked into a negative thought spiral if you're not conscious or aware of it. That's just my $0.02.

agumonkey 8y ago

It can be your self when it represent a lifelong bonding, without that person there's no you anymore, she/he was your emotional outlet, your happiness intake. One can rationalize it and see that it's a distortion of your own perception of reality. I'm still recovering and at times my mind accepts that it wasn't a possible future. I can sense part of my brain unlocked. As if grief was a shutdown of some systems, these probably impede pleasures of living (the one you needed the other to share with).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

arde 8y ago

What I like about HN is that comments are frequently even better than the linked content. This is a fine example.

smacktoward 8y ago

> If you identified as a partner, husband, father, boyfriend, etc. then the loss of that feels like a loss of self. But if the person in your life was just that: another person, in your life, then you can still miss them, but nothing intrinsic to who you are was lost. You are not broken, shattered, or harmed. But the whole thing about a good relationship is that it creates a new, third entity -- a we, that lives aside the old you and I. It's that feeling of creation that makes the relationship so fulfilling. And that's why the end of the relationship is painful; it means bearing witness to a kind of death. Even if your own identity comes out unchanged, you've still experienced a very real loss.

50 8y ago

Reminds me of this note by Osho: The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.