Self-Love and Opening Your Heart Again Once You Have Been Betrayed
Being rejected, abandoned, or betrayed can help you learn to love more deeply…starting with yourself.
Once or twice in life, we have all experienced the soul-wrenching pain of being hurt by the one we love. Love can feel so innocent, so fraught with possibility, so euphoric, and passionate. We think the same way, we eat the same foods, we love the same bands, shows, and comedians. We are in awe of one another. Then, the unthinkable happens and we are betrayed, neglected, abandoned, or rejected by the one person we trusted more than anyone. We are taken down into utter darkness. We are held captive by feelings of anger, confusion, powerlessness, unworthiness, and grief. We believe thoughts about ourselves that are along the lines of: “If only I was more, better, prettier, smarter, thinner…then he would still want me.” We go through the grieving cycle until we are accepting of what happened and then we move on to love someone else with the same excitement and passion that we felt…wait. Do we do that?
I will argue that no, we do not do that, but we should! I am not suggesting that it is easy to do. Most of us close down, feel afraid to love again, or feel lonely in our relationships because we block off our hearts to love just in case we get hurt again by the one we are with. And this all stems from early life wounding, trauma, or abuse or even from the catastrophe of being left by the one we love.
How can we learn to open our hearts again and to risk them being broken once more? It is not an easy task. The thing about the heart is this though: when it breaks, it actually breaks OPEN. Or, it can. When we have felt rejected by someone who did not have the capacity to love us the way we needed, we can actually use it to become even stronger in our self-love and self-worth. Being rejected over and over by a person or people you love or respect can truly show you that you need no one to fill your cup but you. You start to have your own back and to trust yourself fully. You begin the deeper process of loving yourself and making you your own priority in your life—in the good way, not in the cold and narcissistic way.
Then, when love comes along once again, you can dive deeply into it without fear because you know that, even if you can’t know if this person will love you forever or not, you will be okay anyway. Trusting in your ability to survive a loss like this is like being Superman. You are made of steel but have a heart of pure love and tenderness.
Realizing that if someone has hurt us in the past it has nothing at all to do with us and everything to do with them. Now, I am not suggesting that there are not times when we do things in relationships that are not so pretty. We all make mistakes and we can’t be perfect all the time in any given circumstance. Sometimes the person we love simply cannot handle what we are doing on our end. It takes two people to make a relationship work. If two people are willing to go the distance, be open, honest, and vulnerable and love each other no matter what, I believe love can work. Sometimes, however, a person will simply not be able to handle love due to their own wounding or to be able to handle what you might be dishing out, whether that is the “annoying” way you eat, the way you express yourself emotionally, or the way you are too secretive and emotionally unavailable. When we stay closed off to someone or are emotionally unavailable because we are afraid to be hurt again by someone, that can trigger our partner’s deep feelings of being abandoned once upon a time and that can make them want to run away and close the door on us. Love can be tricky and confusing.
Love does not have to be a mind game, however. When we work at loving ourselves first and foremost, we can start to distinguish when it is our issue and when it is theirs. When we love ourselves and trust that we can handle anything that comes our way, it benefits both people. We know how to be open and loving to our partners without fear and this gives them the opportunity to feel safe, secure, confident, and loved. This can potentially help them learn to love themselves or to at least start on that pathway. All relationships are about becoming conscious and self-aware, so if you have made mistakes in relationships, just know that this is very normal. It is all about learning, healing, and growth.
Self-love is how we move forward and open our hearts again.
The person who ditched you is also going to be learning as well. We can still hold love for them and wish them the very best growth on their journey. This is also not easy to do, but forgiving people helps you more than it helps them. It helps your heart breathe easier because once it has had the time to grieve the loss, it needs the emotional freedom that is forgiveness to move forward. Your heart actually prefers the simplicity of forgiving people as it is wise and knows that people are only acting at the level of self-awareness that they are at currently. Nothing is personal and if someone acts in a harmful way, it is only because they have not become aware of their greatness yet. One day, they will know who they truly are, just as you are learning that too. No one who has inner peace would ever harm another being, or if they did, they would do it in a more loving way and try to minimize the depth of the pain they are causing. Without both grieving your loss and forgiving and accepting what is, the heart becomes hard and closed down, bitter, and jaded. Emptiness, loneliness, and wanting to isolate can become a way of life when you haven’t felt the pain of being betrayed. Eventually, physical illness ensues.
So, grieve all of your losses fully and see how strong you get. See how much less upset and bitter you feel. Always choose you and your self-love first and you will be following your heart and your truth. Emotional freedom can be yours!
Contact me to schedule a free one-hour Discovery session so you can be on the path of self-love and emotional freedom.
