What to Do When You Don’t Believe in Love Anymore

It was the rebound that killed me.

I’d just exited my first long-term relationship. It started in college, went rotten before I graduated, and then dragged on for another miserable year. When it was over, I didn’t feel much of anything. I’d stayed busy bouncing from one crisis to the next, numb from a pervasive sense of dissociation, getting through the day.

A few months later, I met a smart, sexy, stylish woman. Our first date ended in a makeout. The rebound felt like a trip to another world, full of playfulness, seduction, and adventure. I felt adored and wanted for the first time in as long as I could remember. It was so much fun, I forgot to grieve the old relationship.

After a month, I felt her pull away. It was time for a bold gesture. I told her I was having the time of my life. I wanted to be her boyfriend. She thanked me for my candor, said she enjoyed being single, and advised me to get tested for chlamydia.

In a moment, all the grief from my entire life crashed down on my head.

For months, I took no pleasure in anything. Listening to music felt like pushing a Q-tip too far into my ear. I drank myself to sleep. I had no hope for the future, no faith that anything would ever feel 1% as good as this felt bad.

I didn’t believe in love anymore.

At some point — whether it’s a sudden heartbreak, a tragedy you’re not ready for, or the slow destruction of your ego over time — you may find yourself beyond hope. You may give up on love.

It hurts. It feels like shit. You’ll swear it could never possibly get better.

Don’t waste this opportunity. If you play it right, there’s gold on the other side.

Don’t numb out. Feel your feelings. Let them burn.

In the thick of grief and hopelessness, it can be tempting to resort to habitual numbing agents. You can binge on food, booze, or bad television. You can watch porn or scroll Instagram. You can numb out.

You can. But don’t.

Feel the pain. Lean into the feelings. Feel them fully, for a thousand years, if that’s what it takes, until there’s nothing left to feel.

What you repress becomes part of you. What you express, you allow to pass through.

Get in your car and scream your lungs raw. Cry your eyes bloodshot. Get a heavy bag and beat the living shit out of it. Do whatever it takes to let the feelings do their worst.

In the wise words of psychologist Stanislav Grof, “the full experience of a negative emotion is the funeral pyre of that emotion.”

Change is inevitable. Do it on purpose.

When you fully feel your feelings, you may get more than you bargained for. Along with the pain of your recent heartbreak, you may be faced with age-old insecurities, childhood attachment wounds, and all sorts of gnarly shit from your past you’d kept inside because you weren’t ready to deal with it.

You may be afraid it’s going to crush you, that your nervous system can’t possibly handle it. You may think, “this will never be over.” Stay with it. If it takes years, stay with it.

When you get to the other side, you may feel like a fundamentally different person. That’s what you were afraid of. You didn’t want to face the full grieving process because your ego was trying to protect your old identity.

You looked to another person for love. For their own reasons, they had to let you down. Now, you’re afraid to meet the person you’re becoming.

Change is the only constant. It’s inevitable. If you want to get stronger, change with conscious intention. Anything else is a crapshoot.

Try new things. Why not?

Heartbreak can crush your old identity. Good. Try a new one. Try a lot of them. All the world’s a stage, and the play’s the thing.

Fill your calendar. Take a trip abroad. Read self-help books and do the damned exercises.

You may not feel anything at first. You may think this is all a waste of time. Very well. You’ve got time on your hands. Make the world your lab.

Just because you’re grieving your old self doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

The bad news: You have to really let go

When my rebound relationship went sour, I undertook an intensive journey of personal growth. I did a lot of therapy, introspection, and grief work. I moved, took road trips, and threw myself into my writing.

It was great. But, in the back of my mind, I was trying to be slick. I hoped that “if I do everything I need to do to get over this, she’ll want me again.” I harbored this hope for many months.

LOL no.

It doesn’t work unless you actually let go.

That can be the hardest part. You may really, really not want to. You may despair of ever replacing that feeling, the meaning of what you lost.

You may have to get creative. You may have to push your nervous system to your limit. You may feel your heart break over and over and over again.

But you have to really, unconditionally let go.

It’s scary, because the unknown is always scary, which is why we crave the familiar no matter how bad it feels. Plunging into the present won’t help you replicate the past. But the present is the only place where anything is happening.

What’s waiting for you on the other side of heartbreak is a mystery. Its potential pleasures, treasures, and opportunities are beyond your wildest expectations. But, to get there, you have to get moving. And that means you have to let go. For real, though.

You don’t have to believe in love

You can give up all your beliefs. In the wise words of cult novelist Philip K. Dick, “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” If you want to know what’s true for you, stop believing in it so hard.

When you lose your illusions, you make friends with the truth. If you ever find “true love,” that’s how you’ll do it.

But you really do have to let go. It’s going to hurt. A lot. It’s better to hurt a lot now than to hurt a little bit every day for the rest of your life. Get it over with. Do what it takes to let go. The people who love you are with you.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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