Foolproof ways to fix a broken heart
He’s spent decades studying heartbreak. Now psychologist DR GUY WINCH has written the manual every woman needs...
bristling indicates our resistance is fuelled by an underlying issue, such as low self-esteem, and has nothing to do with whether they’re right or wrong. Let go of self- critical thoughts. They’re not helpful.
YOU STILL FEEL HE WAS ‘THE ONE’
OUR ‘cravings’ for our ex make us focus disproportionately on their best qualities. We replay all the wonderful moments we shared, imagine their smile, laugh and the times they made us feel happy and content.
We focus much less on their flaws, their annoying habits, the arguments, the times they made us feel terrible and the moments we couldn’t stand them.
By idealising the person and recalling only highly polished versions of our lives with them, we inflate the magnitude of our loss and delay our recovery.
HOW TO FIX IT: Force yourself to have a balanced perspective about your ex. Remind yourself of your pet peeves — their embarrassing eating habits or chronic lateness, your close friends they never got along with or their defensiveness whenever you tried to discuss an issue.
The idea is not to vilify them, but to see the flaws in them and your relationship. you’ll need to remind yourself of these flaws repeatedly and doing so helps ease worries about never finding someone ‘as perfect’ again.
YOU CAN’T BEAR TO VISIT OLD HAUNTS
OUR efforts to manage the pain of heartbreak can lead us to make decisions that spare us hurt in the short term, but increase it in the long run.
One of the most common is to withdraw from places and activities that remind us of what we’ve lost — the cafe you’d go to for Sunday brunch, the cinema where you had your first date.
Shunning places you shared is a bad idea. Avoiding things doesn’t lessen their emotional impact — it supersizes it.
HOW TO FIX IT: We need to ‘cleanse’ our associations with these places, and reclaim them. Revisit favourite restaurants under different circumstances. Take friends for a catch-up or siblings for a birthday. Expect to be haunted by old memories on the first or second outings. After that, the new associations will start to replace the old ones.
YOU’RE NOT SURE WHO YOU ARE NOW
ALL relationships require us to modify how we see ourselves. We substitute ‘I’ and ‘my’ with ‘we’ and ‘our’; we give up individual interests for mutual ones.
But when one ends we’re left dangling and have to reconnect to who we are as individuals. Studies have found that failure to find ourselves again increases and prolongs the psychological distress of a broken heart.
HOW TO FIX IT: We struggle after a break- up because we are unconsciously continuing to define ourselves by our nowdefunct relationship. Don’t let your response to a broken heart — moping or feeling angry — define who you are. Instead, work out who you want to be and which actions support that.
If you love art, but your ex didn’t, get out to galleries. Conversely, if you love cycling and used to cycle with him, don’t stop. Reconnecting to who we were before our ex came along is a vital task, so devote time and careful thought to it.
FINALLY… DON’T WAIT TO DATE AGAIN
PSYCHOLOGISTS have found a single variable that predicts healthier and quicker emotional adjustment to heartbreak — finding a new partner. Going on dates when our heart has been broken can feel inappropriate, awkward, disloyal or just wrong. yet doing so has been shown to ease emotional pain and grief because it reduces our attachment to the person we’ve lost.
Of course no one should sign up to dating sites the day after a split. But we don’t have to wait until we are ‘totally over it.’
We can fight back and move on even if we don’t feel ready to. So get back out there!
ADAPTED by Alison Roberts from How to Fix A Broken Heart by Dr Guy Winch, published by Simon and Schuster at £8.99. © Guy Winch 2018. to order a copy for £7.19 (offer valid to 19/2/18; P&P free), visit mailshop.co.uk/ books or call 0844 571 0640.