Brokenhearted reader struggles to get on with life

Dear Carolyn: My heart is broken. For the third time in my life, at 51, I fell completely for someone and now that he’s rejected me, it hurts as badly as when I was 24 and 31.

I’m trying to be happy that I can still fall for someone, but, [fork] — it doesn’t hurt any less than I remember it hurting then. I’m trying to focus on my professional life and the volunteer work I do, but really just want to go to sleep for a year and see where things are then.

In a small town, how to move on? I have fantasies of just getting in my car and driving anywhere, somewhere, nowhere. I’ve reached out to my prior therapist but her medium — all by phone/skype now and I have a lot of anxiety about that sort of contact — doesn’t work for me, and to another therapist recommended to me, but she’s not taking new patients.

How do people move on? Why do they move on?

Broken Hearted at 51

To fall hard for someone again, I guess, because it’s so great while it lasts?

Or they move on because life has so many other great things. The smell of fresh coffee, the look on dogs’ faces when their people come home, the transcendent sense of connection from reading a thought well-expressed, the first watching of a great movie, the feel of a friend’s hug, the chance to yell like an idiot when a team wins, a big laugh, a good cry. The luxury of one’s own company, answering to no one.

A broken heart can dull these pleasures, even temporarily erase them, but your own history tells you (see above) that you will recover enough to start feeling pleasure again.