only you can ever decide what is right for you and your life.
But we’re going to talk about a few things in this book that will hopefully help you decide. About how all this feels. About the lies your heart tells you when it’s broken. About how and when to get rid of those things that constantly remind you of that person. About how to make the shift away from what has happened—and toward what is happening. So you don’t get stuck in a place where you can’t totally move forward but you can’t totally go back. And then, we’re going to end with what you need to take away from this. And what part you decide to carry forward with you.
Look, love. You and I are going to talk through a lot of how this is going to go. And through these pages, I am going to repeat one thing over and over and over. Hopefully you’ll understand it by the last page, even if you don’t at the first. But—it ended for a reason. It did. Now, whether that’s a forever thing or a just for now thing, only time will tell. But that’s not really what you need to be focusing on right now, anyway. Because the truth you can’t deny (and really need to accept) is that, no matter what, it did end. And so, something was broken if one of you (or both of you) felt the need to end it rather than work through it.
Sometimes people need to grow separately before they can come together. And sometimes your love story is going to end in the middle of the love part for no other reason than it just did. And you are going to have to learn to accept that. As hard as it is.
So I’m going to tell you how it has felt for me, and what I have learned, in the hopes my journey helps you on yours. And to be completely honest with you, I am sitting here starting this book in a coffee shop (the same one he and I frequented). It’s a Sunday. Two days after someone I thought I knew so well looked at me with eyes I didn’t even recognize and said he was done. For no reason at all. And I’m telling you—it’s raw. It stings. I’m still making sense of it. Three days ago, I thought we were living our best life. And now? Now, I’ve spent these past two days sitting in my house—plaguing myself with those never-ending thoughts of why coupled with you cannot go back to someone who will do that to you.
I feel the tightness in my shoulders. The world turns outside my window but seems to have come to a screeching halt for me. I know that may sound dramatic—but I’ll also bet a whole bunch of you will completely understand what I mean. Every time I venture out, I see love. People holding hands, laughing. Every time I turn on the tv or the radio, something reminds me of that person. And like a slap in the face, I am continuously reminded over and over that it is over. And so, somewhere in the midst of all of that chaos, that hurt, I started thinking about how we do this.
The untangling.
How we spend the hours and days and weeks after what I am going to call—the breakup. Now I realize you might call it something different in your world. And maybe you do that because you’re still in school and just starting to figure out your love story. Or—maybe you’re coming out of a ten- or twenty-year marriage with someone you thought was your grow old together person. Or—maybe you’re healing from someone you’ve known your whole life, and you’re much older than you’d ever thought you’d be—doing this whole starting over thing. So because of all those reasons, I get that the word breakup might seem so incredibly small in comparison to what it does to us. To you. Your word might be divorce. Or separation. Or growing apart. But—no matter who you are or what you’re navigating—and no matter what you want to call it—we all have to do this part, love. Want it or not. Ready or not.
We have got to untangle.
And so what does that mean? Well—untangling is the days we don’t really talk about and aren’t good at. The place where so many of us cover up how we feel with avoidance and isolation—slumping into a lonely place where we swipe even harder on dating apps and throw ourselves into fitness and do everything we can to avoid the feeling of feeling. It’s the place where we give in to the fact that we’re alone and it’s our fault and there is just something wrong with us because this keeps happening. It’s the place we swirl around in, dancing with all the things that remind us of a life that isn’t ours anymore. The place where we honestly knew it was broken but still want to go back to—because loneliness is scary. And endings are scary. And a future we’ve never met and can’t see any part of is much scarier than anything we had in our past.
And that is the place I want to bring a little light to.
And I’m going to write this book as I navigate it—so it’s real. And I’m putting more out there than I ever have before because the way I see it—vulnerability is the only foundation we can ever really build anything solid on. It’s what we all hesitate to do—to give—because, well, vulnerability is just about as scary as it gets. And vulnerability gives other people the chance to have opinions about our truths. And that means we can get hurt. Again. Just by putting who we are out there.
So this is the story of how we do a part of life we have to do but never wanted to. This is the story of what we learn from experiences we never thought we’d have and lessons we never knew we needed. I know it’s going to hurt—but I also know that pain is often what teaches us most about what matters in this life. One day, you will be certain of that, too.
Time is an incredible lens. And until it shows you why things had to happen like they did—just trust that these parts you’re living now are all just a powerful way this life is choosing to steer you. As it teaches you, slowly, the beautifully complicated art of untangling your knots.
**
2. “This Cannot Be Happening.”
When it all comes crumbling down.
Things had been different for a few days. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. You know—I’ll just say it came from completely out of the blue. And from where I sat, nothing had happened. We hadn’t been fighting, there were no big life events plaguing us, we didn’t have things we were “working through,” there was no—anything—that would explain what had changed. Or why. And to be honest, the change wasn’t anything I could quite put my finger on, exactly—I guess you could just call it a change in energy.
Now, side note—I’m firmly convinced that some people can just sense things. Call it a gut feeling. Call them empaths. Call it plain old intuition. But whatever it is—sometimes it’s a helpful superpower. And others, it’s just not. When you feel things like that, you can often sense something happening before the person feeling it is even aware they are feeling it. And trust me, that is not always an easy thing to wrestle with. You flip-flop back and forth between talking about it and making it real—or not talking about it, and letting it eat you up inside.
But anyway, something about how his eyes caught mine just seemed—off. Like he was hiding something. And what seemed crazy to me, is this change appeared right after some of the best times we’d spent together. When the rest of the world disappears and it’s just you and that other person standing in time. When words are said that bubble up feelings of yes and trust and maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. Those are the times you can’t see it coming. Endings. Because your eyes are completely clouded with the beginning or the middle of what you hope and pray is your incredible love story.
I thought we had been really good at communication, and so I figured he would let me know when he was ready. So, I gave him time.
He pulled back slowly. First it was the delay in responding. Then it was the wishy-washy level of commitment that settled more in the maybe zone than the outright yes or no zone. Then it was his tone. I remember asking him over the course of a week or so if everything was alright. And rather than opening up about whatever it was that was bothering him, he started to snap a little.
“You
