An Open Letter To Those Who Seek Love After A Breakup

You know you shouldn’t do this. Get into a relationship and search for love so soon, download that dating app, and obsessively swipe right just to pass the time. You know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway. And to be honest, I don’t blame you, because you deserve to feel loved.

You deserve to know what it’s like to be noticed, to have someone look at you with admiration, someone whose eyes cast an illuminated glow as they seek to discover the depth of your beautiful sweet soul.

I want to preface this by saying I understand the wishes of your world and can recognize that what you want more than anything is to have a love that lasts.

However, I want you to ask yourself this: If right now, you were given the person of your dreams, the person that wants to be your everything, the person that considers you their world, would you be in the place to receive their love or would you take this love, your prized possession, holding it tightly in the palm of your hand, and find a way to destroy it all? 

I think it’s important to understand that although we yearn for love more than anything, there will be times in our life when we are incapable of giving our own. In this time, after leaving a relationship that was once your all, a time when you’re at your lowest, when you’re looking for a lifeboat in a sea of dying dreams, it will always be one of those times when we are forced to put our desire for love aside and let it be. 

I write to those who just recently lost the love of their life and even to those who made the decision to write the epilogue to a love that was once their forever. I write to those who desperately seek love as a means of distraction; I write to those who have faced a heartbreak so unbearable that they cannot fathom walking through the valley of vulnerability alone to heal from what once broke them. 

If you take anything from this post, let it be this: Although you may not be ready to greet love with open arms today, one day you will be. 

By now, I’m sure you ask yourselves, how can I be ready to love again? And in all honesty, I may not have all the answers, but what I do know is that I can tell you a reason why you’re not ready, and that reason is time. 

If you experienced a breakup yesterday, a week ago, or even months ago, you must accept one thing: Right now, you will not be looking for the love you deserve. This is because although you may even despise your ex, their absence continues to grow excruciatingly painful, manifesting a sense of longing for them or anything tangible that could remind you of who they once were.

This is problematic for two reasons, one being that if they gave up on you and chose to disintegrate your love to dust, you shouldn’t be ransacking the dating scene seeking someone who is even remotely a replica to them.

You shouldn’t do this because you don’t deserve someone who decided you weren’t worth pursuing. You shouldn’t do this because the outcome will be the same, with you lying loveless and alone with a love that vanished with the wind.

The second reason is even more problematic; I say this because what do you think will happen if you fail to find the person that resembles your past love? What will happen if the people you meet don’t set your world on fire, burning fervently with passion like the love you once procured? I’ll tell you. 

You’ll return back to the one who once set your world on fire, the one who decided to leave and watch it burn. 

I know that it’s challenging to set your dreams aside and tackle the torment of facing loneliness in the wake of a recent heartbreak, to hold yourself back from running to the possibilities of relationships that hold the promise of forever. And just like you, I know what it’s like to feel the need to run back into comfortable arms that once elicited a sense of security that felt like home.

But I urge you with everything that I am: Please do not do this. Because at the end of the day, we are not looking for feelings of comfortability, we need to look for the one who will love us through all things.

Know that in your loneliness, you are not truly alone. Although you may not think so, you will grow in your moment of darkness, and you will no longer seek relationships because you need them. Instead, you will let love in when you’re ready. You will do this because you will remember the nights like these when you were on your knees begging for the pain to perish; you will remember that in your worst moments, although you were lonely, you made it through misery without the method of drowning yourself in someone else. 

I urge you to sit patiently in your time of sorrow so when you’re given the person of your dreams, the person who wants to be your everything, the person who considers you their world, you will be in a place to receive their love, your prized possession.

I urge you to stay still and leave love alone because when given the opportunity, when you’re able to hold love tightly in the palm of your hand, you will thank yourself for the nights you were suffering on your knees from the wound that was lacerated to the bone.

You will thank yourself for taking everything you had in you to get back up on your own.

And because of your perseverance, you will live the life you always wanted with a beautiful endless love that will never leave.