You Can’t Break a Heart That Hasn’t Been Fed in Years

One day I was having lunch with a friend. We were in the infancy of our friendship and swapping stories. The kind of history that builds new relationships.

She’d been through a difficult divorce.

I was still living an illusion of love.

I craved change yet feared it.

“How do you feel about your ex-husband now?” I asked.

The words uttered before I could take them back. They’d snuck out of my thoughts. A forbidden desire to know what my own future may hold.

“He was a disappointment,” she uttered sadly.

Her eyes slowly lost eye contact as the smile she’d been sporting faded. She took a moment to play with her food. The fork pushing it one way, and then another.

And with that, the moment was over.

The pleasant curve of her lips once again beaming.

I’ve never forgotten her response.

She hadn’t expressed heartbreak.

I believed that it demonstrated tremendous grace. A woman who’d suffered what no man or woman wishes to endure. But she didn’t lace it with agonizing emotion. Instead, she expressed a simple but sad reality.

I thought I suffered from a broken heart.

One inflicted by a man who erased the smile he once swore to protect.

I even wrote “How a Broken Heart Killed the Romantic in Me.”

I was wrong.

You can’t break a heart that hasn’t been fed in years.

My husband had lost the privilege of breaking my heart.

Your heart has to be whole for it to break. It has to be full. It has to be complete. Mine was anything but that.

My heart was bare.

Evacuated by years of loneliness.

The kind of empty that makes being alone sound less lonely.

I confused my divorce with a broken heart because there were moments of heartache. But it wasn’t because my husband broke my heart. It was the sadness I felt for my children, and our family being broken apart.

It was the fear, the change, and the unknown.

Did my husband hurt me?

Absolutely.

But he’d hurt me for years. He’d made me feel lonely for years. He’d lived in his own world for years. The distance between us only grew with time.

The emotional intimacy long extinct.

If it had ever existed in the first place.

My heart had been continually siphoned. A slow burn. A distance between two people who used to be lovers. There was nothing sudden about the hurt in my heart.

It had been gradual.

Ever evolving.

There had been tears, pleading, arguments, and more ugly words than I like to admit or remember. There had been plenty of pain.

A hurting heart…

The long term net of the never-ending goodbye.

I’m not saying that divorce can’t result in a broken heart.

It’s a uniquely personal experience.

There are many commonalities in divorce but there are also many differences. And even those who experience the endless neglect and loneliness of a seemingly forever goodbye may have their heart broken.

I’m simply saying that for me…

My heart was never fed enough to break.

And that I confused (or allowed) a man to earn the privilege of having had the opportunity to break my heart. I assigned more emotion to him than he’d ever given or earned.

I’m also saying that heartache and a broken heart can be interchangeable. I feel a difference between the two.

Heartache can linger.

A broken heart feels sudden.

Like the pinhole prick in a beautifully swollen balloon. A direct hit. The hissing sound rapidly draining all the wonder from it.

I think I’ve only suffered from a broken heart once in my life.

It was sudden and unexpected. A direct hit to my heart. A puncture that made me feel as if I couldn’t breathe. As if I wouldn’t recover. A wound.

Or maybe it’s because…

It was the only time that my heart felt fed, complete, and undamaged.

But as far as my marriage goes, I suffered a lot. As all men and women who endure the agony and inability to escape this type of pain. The ones like me who hold on until they can’t hold on any longer.

Divorce was devastating.

But in my case…

A man lost the privilege of breaking my heart.

A heart has to be whole for it to break.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.