Loss Investment

I don’t think you realize what a breakup is until you go through one. Your world turns upside down. Your plans are no more executable. You don’t know what you’re going to do tomorrow because the person you were going to spend it with is no more in your life. You don’t know how to process your emotions because the one you always processed it with is no more there for you. The anxiety from uncertainty. The loss of appetite. The unexpected physical pain from the emotional vulnerability. The extended hours of sleep to ignore reality. The crying in the shower. I think Bollywood breakups are more realistic than Bollywood love stories. You would assume that you would want to go back and undo the entire relationship to not go through the breakup pain? That’s the surprising part, no I wouldn’t undo it. I would do it all over again. I think you only feel pain if it was good. And if it was good, then it’s time invested and not time lost.

We need to normalize falling in love with people we can’t imagine our entire lives with. It’s one thing to simply love someone, and another to want to do life with them. I thought love was enough in relationships because more often than not that is what the world lacks. But love is definitely not enough. There’s so much more that needs to work out in relationships than just love.

“When you choose a life partner, you’re choosing a lot of things. Your eating companion for about 20,000 meals, your travel companion for about 100 vacations, someone who will deeply influence your children, your primary leisure time and retirement friend, your career therapist, and someone who’s day you’ll hear about 18,000 times.”

Tim Urban

We need to normalize first loves not being the lasts. My high school best friend once said – “I want to fall in love once, and if I’m lucky enough only once”. I never understood what it meant because I always thought that you can only fall in love once in your life. Because you only fall in love when it’s meant to be. But that fairly tale we grow up reading and watching movies about, is a disaster. People are flawed, have baggage, and relationships require effort. Every romantic relationship in your life has a purpose, but it might not be to stay together forever as a couple. It sucks now, but in the grand scheme of things, your life is your fairy tale and you write it the way you want to. You can choose to sulk, regret, and hate your life, or call it a love story with a journey to discover the love for yourself. And I know its easier said than done, but you have to believe in it before acting on it, right?

I know you hate waiting. I know its sad waiting for the day you will wake up to feeling at peace again. It’s sad when all you want to do is see your ex and choose temporary happiness over long term happiness. Because its comfortable, easy and most importantly love. But if you can’t begin a relationship without dating, how can you can’t end a relationship without grieving? What would it be worth if you were over it in a day? It takes time because you invested your heart, mind, and soul into something beautiful that can’t be replaced. Relationships, good or bad; people, good or bad, cannot be replaced. Moreover, if two years ago I showed you the person you have become today, you wouldn’t believe me and call the journey too difficult. If I show you where you will be two years from now, I promise you, you’ll be proud of yourself.

It’s important to give yourself time to heal. Tangibility makes things easy to understand because we can sense it with one or more of our five sense organs. Which is why we tend to understand physical pain better than emotional pain, rationality better than emotions, and physical health problems better than mental health problems. Tangible issues are also easy to solve because the problems are well understood. Emotions and feelings take more time to resolve than expected because how can you solve a problem that you can’t see but can only feel?

Unpopular opinion: We hear so many couples breaking up ‘because of COVID’. I believe that you won’t breakup if you’re a couple who can fight it out together as a team. You part ways when you’re not a team in the first place, or are struggling to be a team. So I don’t believe COVID is creating distance for those who would otherwise be together. COVID definitely challenges relationships in different ways. But if you’re a team, its always a win-win. If you can’t be a team, who are you?