Overcoming Heartbreak: Learning to Love Again

By: Naiya Smith

I hurt him because he hurt me. At that exact moment I understood the true definition of the saying ‘two wrongs do not make a right’. Though I had succeeded in hurting his feelings, mine were still hurt. Coming to grips that another female experienced the man that I loved made me feel like I did something wrong. After finding out about him cheating, I asked him ‘why did he do it?’ He responded by saying ‘I do not know’. He did not understand how much that ‘I do not know’ hurt me. My heart would have been able to deal with him saying that ‘she was pretty’ or ‘he was in the mood’, but hearing his response helped me understand that he did not think about me when he cheated, his only concern was the walls that he was about to explore, and as far as he knew, I would not find out.

I had put my guard down and loved him…on purpose. I explained to him that if he cheated, it would break me. I never experienced a heartbreak to where your heart actually felt like it was broken; where the sun shining in the morning annoyed me because it made me feel like I should be happy but instead I was depressed. I never experienced sex with him because I was not ready for it. I would appreciate it when he said that ‘he’d wait to have sex with me’ but it never dawned on me to read between his words. He said ‘he’d wait to have sex with me’, but he failed to include other females.

I always heard of the saying ‘all men cheat’, but when you are in love, you do not look at your man as “all men”. I did not think that he had a reason to cheat because I believed that our relationship was enough for him, but I believe there is a difference in when a man cheats and when a woman cheats. You see, woman, we cheat with our emotions; we leave home because our man isn’t making us feel loved and appreciated. I am not saying men do not leave home for the same; but most of the time men cheat…because they aren’t as emotionally attached. The fact that he did not stop and think about what he was doing before he actually did it made me question his use of the word ‘love’.

I remembered him saying ‘I love you’, but I wanted to know if he actually meant it, so being the investigator that I am, I asked him. He responded by saying that he ‘really did love me’; I became more pissed. He cheated and he had no explanation for why he did it but he loved me. Am I the only one confused?! You see when I think of the word love, I believe that pain can come with that; but I think the pain should be accidental. Cheating is no accident.

I was so upset with him that I could not scream; I calmly expressed my pain and after him hearing my pain, he had the audacity to say that “I-am-sorry”. Please somebody tell me what I was going to do with a sorry? Reality was he was not sorry that he had sex with the girl, he was sorry that I found out. If the information was not told to me, I would not have found out, and he would have never been sorry. I believe he apologized thinking that he would solve my pain, but just as if you were to break a glass plate and apologize to it, it will not be fixed!

In an attempt to work it out because I did love him, he had the nerve to tell me that I did not know how to let stuff go. Am I not human to forgive you for what you did, but unable to forget? I tried to look past him cheating, but imagining another woman touching and loving on the man that was mines is something I cannot let go!

I was listening to Beyoncé one day and her song ‘Resentment’ came on. It was as if my heart break was finally understood! I was not the only woman who tried to take back the man she loved, but was unable to because my broken heart was still bleeding. Each time he kissed me, I imagined her being able to kiss him. He considered it insecure when I questioned his “female friends”, but I am very secure with myself…what I was insecure about was him understanding what he had.

I assumed that he would understand my pain if I cheated. Though he and I did not put the title back on our relationship, we were acting as if we were a couple. I did not have sex with another man, but another man experienced my time; being that he received conversations and text messages. When he found out about the other man, it broke his heart. It was not petty; it was what I thought would make me feel good.

As Christians we are supposed to believe that God can handle stuff better than we can, but in the words of Madea “God take too long sometimes.” I wanted to see him cry; I wanted him to feel the pain I felt. He expressed his hurt to me, and at first I felt like I had accomplished something. I did not think it was funny to see him cry, but I felt like we were even…until he got over it and entered another relationship with another female. He was moving on and I was still in love with him. Having a new man in my face did not cure my broken heart.

Hear me when I say that getting even does not make anything even. When a man gets his heart broken, he deals with it for a while and then finds another woman. When woman get her hearts broken, most of them turn our backs on love.

Like most, I began to dislike the thought of love; not knowing that was I expected too much from the use of the word. Love is a feeling. As humans we cannot control our feelings, the only thing that we can control is our actions. I had to put two and two together and learned that love was not to blame in that previous relationship. A relationship does not live off love but on the two people experiencing it. When someone says ‘I love you’ we all have different expectations of the actions behind those words because we all have different definitions of the word. I have to come in contact with someone who sees love the same way as me.

I do not feel like it was my fault that he cheated; but I do feel like I had a role in the time that we wasted. It was not my fault that I was unable to look past the fact that he cheated, but it was my fault that I did not admit that I was not going to be able to trust him anymore. I loved him so much that I wanted him to be in my presence, but I lost so much trust in him that I wouldn’t give him the title of being “my man”. I did not want another woman to have him; and I did not want him to have the luxury of being able to call me “his woman”.

It’s crazy how all of this stuff happened a year ago and thinking of it still brings pain. The difference between me then and me now is…I am okay with not communicating with him. Of course I miss him sometimes but I can live without him. A mother warning her daughter if the risk of a heart break and a father trying to shield his daughter from the pain of a fuck boy will not make her avoid love. I feel like to experience love you have to get your heart broken. You have to understand that love is a risk; that there is a big possibility that the person you are in love with is going to hurt you, but because you love loving them, you are willing to take the risk.

I used to become bitter when I thought of him, but I had to give him acknowledgement of the good times. Reality was, he was more than just my boyfriend, he was my friend. When I needed to vent, he’d listen and when I needed encouragement, he’d give it.

It was hard for me to let him go after he cheated because we grew a bond. I never knew what having a homie, lover, friend felt like until we had a deep conversation one night about our lives and then fell asleep holding each other. My life felt like it was complete with him in it. I was experiencing a Love Jones and was enjoying it.

Maybe I gave him too much responsibility. As humans we expect so much from people to the point where when they disappoint us, we no longer want to communicate with them.

The older I get, the more I understand that God brings folks in our lives for a reason. I feel like I experienced love with him to give me an introduction of life with the word.

When we ended, I decided to place a band aid over the scars that he caused, but the thing about band aids is when they get wet, they fall off. Getting tired of applying new band aids, I decided to deal with the bruises until I got to the point where I was okay with seeing myself love again. There is no way that my ex is going to make me so bitter than I am unable to experience the man who has the same definition of love as me.

Maybe all men do cheat, but there has to be a man out there willing to think about me before cheating. A man that loves me so much that he doesn’t want to do anything to hurt me. I understand that we are human, and as humans we are going to make mistakes, but let the mistake be a damn mistake.

The next man that I love has to have the same definition of what cheating is and what love is; I know you cannot avoid pain but let’s try to stop some before they happen.

Maybe God will bless me with experiencing love again. I remember my Grandma telling me that my Granddaddy asked her before he married her if she would be able to stand with him ‘in the rain’. She told me she responded by saying ‘As long as you are trying to lift the umbrella’. I will not say that I know exactly what she meant, but I feel like she was saying ‘I’ll stand in the rain as long as you are trying’. I guess she noticed him trying each time it rained because they stayed together until my Grandma passed on.

I don’t believe true love ended with our Grandparents generation; I feel like now everybody is too afraid to take the risk of love, but I refuse to be afraid. Love looked too good on my Grandparents for me to turn my back on it. In the famous words of Michael Jordan “I’ve failed over and over and over again in life. And that is why I succeed”. If love felt good with my ex, I can only imagine how it would feel with the right man.