How to Love Again After a Broken Heart

Healing from a broken heart is surely no easy task. The ending of a bad relationship can evoke many frightening emotions that prevent us from fully starting a new romance. We all put up walls to protect ourselves from heartache, which causes us to shut people out from loving us. This can create trouble in a relationship and prevent it from thriving in a healthy manner. Loving again after heartache is at times difficult, but definitely not impossible, especially if you truly love your new partner. Here are some tips for getting past the heartache and opening yourself up to a new relationship that has the potential to offer you a lifetime of happiness.

Decide what it is about past relationships that have hurt you. Make a list, if it helps, for you to determine what things previously went wrong. Recognize what was done to you by former loves and know that it was not your fault. Figure out what mistakes you may have made, if any, so that you can vow to change things in your new relationship. Realize that what was done to you cannot be undone, but can be healed only by you and understanding that you have grown and changed from those previous relationships. Pulling out the feelings and putting them down on paper can help to relieve the hurt you feel. Once you have dealt with the emotions, put the list away and find closure as you file it as gone.

Give your new relationship a chance. A new love means a new start. Try to let go of the pain and realize that not all relationships are the same. No two people will be alike in a relationship and what happened to you before is not likely to happen again. Also, you have good knowledge now of what it's like to be hurt, use this to keep yourself on guard, but not to the point that you shut your new partner out. Slowly open yourself as much as possible, day by day, until you feel comfortable letting your partner in. Give your new partner a chance, but only give as much as you can without fear. As you get more and more into the relationship, you'll be able to trust and feel comfortable. This will help you to move on from the hurt and break down emotional walls that prevent you from being truly happy.

Talk to your new partner about your fears. Sometimes the best way to make a relationship work when you've been hurt before is to talk about that fear. This doesn't mean your opening yourself up for heartache. It merely means you're accepting that you are scared and need to deal with those emotions in a healthy way. If your partner is loving, he will listen and understand. Tell him how you've been hurt before and how that makes you feel. Help him to help you by letting him know what he can do to calm your fears. Most caring partners want the other to be happy and are willing to do whatever it takes to make the relationship stronger. If you have trouble with feeling vulnerable, let your emotions out a little at a time, but keep the lines of communication open. You'll feel so much better if you just get your fears out.

Talk to a counselor or close friend about your fear of being hurt. Sometimes we are not able to deal with past relationship pain on our own and need someone objective to talk to. This also helps if you find it hard to talk to your new partner. Tell someone you trust how you are feeling about this new relationship in comparison to your old ones. Let out your fears and explain what it is you are scared of. Be honest so that you can finally close old chapters in your life and open up new ones. People outside of us can usually see things that we are unable to recognize and can help us to deal with issues better than we can alone. You may find that you come up with some great ideas for healing from prior hurt and how to make your new relationship thrive freely from the pain.

Avoid taking out your fears on the new partner. Even if you are still bitter, you should not hurt the new person you are with just because you were hurt in the past. Your new partner only deserves the best if he is good to you and playing games, hurting him with words, or misbehaving in the relationship will make it fall apart. Try to be objective and recognize that you are in a new place and time. If you find it difficult to play fair in the relationship, you may need more time alone. However, you should discuss your actions with your new partner so that he can either try to help you or make a decision about what he wants to do. Two wrongs do not make a right so treating someone else disrespectfully is not the way to go about things. The last thing you want to do is hurt someone new because you were hurt in the past.