A perspective about love and relationships.

I recently heard the Dierks Bentley song, “Different for Girls” Which is essentially a song about how it’s harder for girls to get over a broken heart. Which is all really just a matter of perspective, I know people who never really loved their S.O (Significant other) And when things don’t work out, they move on pretty effortlessly. At the same time, I’ve seen people break up because they didn’t feel that spark or attraction anymore, yet they still suffered, because they had grown attached to the other person, a lot of times they still even like the other person but things just didn’t work out.

As a guy, I’ve had female friends who I tried consoling tell me that I don’t know what it’s like to have a broken heart. They’ve explained girl’s feel things deeper and more profoundly than I ever could, because I’m a guy. But I can speak from experience, everyone feels heartbreak. Men are not immune to these effects; we can’t just turn it off, or rush into someone else’s bed and move on. In truth, we don’t know really know how to handle or deal with a broken heart. Partially because we’ve been told our whole lives that “boys don’t cry.” Or to Man up, whenever we’re feeling down, or depressed. So we don’t express ourselves by crying and eating ice cream, or having a girl’s night. Because a guy doesn’t want to bring down our friends, we really don’t want anyone feeling sorry for us, or looking at us like we’re weak. I’ve seen my guy friends drink themselves into oblivion and crying about the one who got away.

Heartbreak for me though always hits hard and it never gets any easier, it does in fact get harder. Because with every failed relationship, I learn more and more of myself, then I become more reluctant to get involved with anyone again. So when I do fall in love again, it’s never on purpose, it just sort of happens. Then I give that person more of myself than I had with my last relationship, because I’ve learned from past mistakes and I’ve been given the chance to mature more emotionally. But when those relationships fail, I can act childish, petty, sometimes I just break down and cry for days and weeks at a time, but most of the time…I just feel emptied out and hollowed. At my best, I can simply walk away avoiding any drama and the long drawn out breakup. You know when you find yourself both angry that they’re leaving, hurt by it, and depressed all at the same time, where a part of you wants them to hurt as much as you’re hurting, because if they’re hurting too, it must mean they love you too and maybe the two of you can work it out and get back together…But usually that never happens because of you said, it did something that’s unforgivable, or incredibly hurtful.
More recently, I suffered yet another heartbreak, now upon writing this as of now, I have no idea where our relationship stands, I don’t know if we’ll get back together, or not. But I can tell you it hurts. A hurt so profound I’ve been diagnosed with stress-induced cardiomyopathy, in lament terms, it translates to broken heart syndrome. Yeah I didn’t know it was a real thing either and as I sat there in the doctor’s office, I found out people can die from it. In broken heart syndrome, a part of your heart temporarily enlarges and doesn’t pump well, while the rest of your heart functions normally or with even more forceful contractions. Researchers are just starting to learn the causes, and how to diagnose and treat it.

The bad news: Broken heart syndrome can lead to severe, short-term heart muscle failure.

The good news: Broken heart syndrome is usually treatable. Most people who experience it make a full recovery within weeks, and they’re at low risk for it happening again (although in rare cases in can be fatal).

And I will tell you now, it sucks, from the shortness of breath, to the chest pains, and knowing the longer it affects me the more damage it can cause my heart. So the romantic part of me can’t help but think, it’ll be something else to someone who actually dies from a broken heart, not to sound morbid or depressing, but a part of me finds the prospect of dying from broken heart syndrome to be a bit romantic. The writer and creator in me can’t help but imagine what wondrous works of fiction someone might write about me upon hearing my story.


But I digress. Losing someone I care about…hurts, and I can’t help but sink into what feels like a bottomless pit of despair. I feel broken, incomplete and confused about everything that happened and what’s going on right now. Now I know for man being in a relationship with someone for over a year might not seem like much for them, but for me, it’s a lifetime. And it hurts, and all I want is to get her back, granted we’ll have to rebuild some trust to move forward and leave the past behind. I understand the situation, or I think I do. She was/is my best friend, my lover, the best part of me, who made me feel like the king of the world. I still sometimes find myself glancing down at my phone in hopes of seeing a message from her.

I won’t lie, I’m an emotional wreck, and I’m struggling just to hold it together, which I’m managing, just barely. I can barely sleep, I can barely eat, people at work keep complimenting my weight loss, and wanting to know my secret. So to say because I’m a guy, I’m incapable of getting hurt, that as a I guy, I’m impervious to heart break, I want to say bullshit. We’re all capable of feeling a vast array of emotion. I feel like a flower that spent years soaking up the sun and suddenly without warning the sunny skies turned to grey and someone took my sunshine away, depriving me light. I don’t even feel like I’m alive, or that I exist, I’m just going through the motions, pretending to be alive, fake smile, empty laugh, doing just about anything to just be left alone.

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I believe the whole stereotype about guys just hooking up, or going to bars and drinking away their pain comes from how some of us just want the hurting and the emptiness to stop, to go away. So they try to fill the void with whatever they can, booze, women, even drugs. In the past I’ve tried two out of three but it didn’t really help, just made me feel worse afterwards. All any of us can ever do, is try to forget for a little awhile, but no matter what we do, the memory of what we once had and held so dear always comes back to haunt us. We hate ourselves, we might not always admit it, but we do. We blame ourselves for screwing up, believing that if we just did more, or cared less that maybe, just maybe things would have worked out. We regret every hurtful thing we said in a moment of anger, or jealously. I know in the past, I’ve occasionally said or done things that I regretted, and wished I could take back. But you can’t take back a word after it’s been said. You can’t turn a lie into the honest truth.


I guess what I’m trying to say is…everyone falls in love, but sometimes by different degrees and at different times. You may be with someone now who makes you happy but a part of you is scared, or thinks about being with someone else. But I have spoken to several people who told me they had their doubts in a relationship, thought about calling it quits, but for whatever reason they chose not to and realized they did love the person they were with, but didn’t really appreciate or understand the scope of that love. Sometimes it’s when you risk losing something forever that you realize just how much it means to you. Which is why I think we say the phrase, “If you love something let it go, if it comes back it was always meant to be,” but I also believe in fighting for what you want and I believe the moment you stop fighting for love, it can become stale. Which is why I always try to find new and cool things to do together a couple and I why I never stop flirting even after I get the girl, because I learned to appreciate love and I learned how to make sacrifices, as well as compromises.
I don’t care what anyone’s sex is; we’re all still capable of feeling things like joy, sadness, love and heartbreak. My dad is one of the strongest people I know, I can count the times I’ve seen him cry on one hand, using just two fingers. The first time being when he and my mother got a divorced, it didn’t matter that they fought all the time, or that he would sometimes avoid going home just to avoid another fight. He still loved her, as flawed as she was and is, he still loved her, even though he really didn’t even know, or understand why. But that’s how love is, it’s unexplainable, it’s crazy, and it makes morons and fools of us all.