by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Realness for the Broken-hearted
Love vs. Relationship: Understanding the Key Difference
One little nugget of knowledge that can save you from your broken heart is knowing that love and relationships are not the same thing.
Love is a feeling and way of being and doing things – an unexplainable and often irrational connection to another person; a relationship, on the other hand, is a structure and agreement between two people on how to share their lives.
You can deeply love someone and still be completely incompatible with them in a relationship.
This is one of the most painful truths to accept, but it is also one of the most freeing – especially if you’re currently trying to make sense of your own heartbreak and what to do about any lingering feelings that you may be holding onto that are stopping you moving forward in life.
A brutal truth is that many of us grow up believing that love is enough – because, like the Beatles sang “Love is all you need” – and so fall into the trap of thinking that if we love someone fiercely or with enough passion then, eventually, everything else will fall into place.
As you get older and wiser, you start to see that ‘love’ is only one ingredient in the recipe for a successful relationship:
Without shared values, mutual respect, and the COMMITMENT to grow together through times that are both ‘good’ and ‘bad’, love alone cannot sustain a partnership – it’s a foundation to build on and so you still need it for the best relationships to do their ‘thing’ but – unless you’re ready to build together – it’s not ‘enough’ in itself.
Trying to force a relationship that isn’t meant to work will only lead to suffering and real love is about acceptance, not control.
This article will help you understand all this so you can move on if that’s what you’re being called to do.
Let’s dig deeper:
The Danger of Closing Your Heart After a Breakup
After a breakup, it’s tempting to shut down emotionally – this is a protective instinct that helps you to stop feeling painful feelings for a while and to avoid overwhelm and nervous system ‘freezing’:
When this happens, you can start to get used to being shutdown and resist opening up again (which you have to do eventually to be able to heal):
You might tell yourself that caring too much is what led to the pain in the first place and so the best defence is to harden yourself and avoid feeling anything at all. But this is a dangerous illusion. When you close your heart, you don’t just block out the person you lost – you block out life itself and your opportunity to grow real and move forward with an eventual smile on your face.
Healing for the broken-hearted always comes back to being REAL and REALNESS always requires facing reality, not hiding from it (“Real always works”, after all). The pain you’re feeling is real but temporary but so is the love (though it it was real it will always be there):
The bottom-line is that denying your emotions doesn’t make them disappear – it just forces them to go underground, festering into resentment, bitterness, and emotional numbness. Love doesn’t need to be suppressed just because it is ‘inconvenient’ – instead, you can still love someone and accept that they are not meant for you.
In fact, the healthiest thing you can do is acknowledge that love, honour it, and then let go of the attachment to what you think you lost or what could have been because that’s the only thing causing your problems and pains to linger unnecessarily.
What’s Real Never Dies: The Power of Acceptance
If the love you feel is real, it cannot be erased, because what’s real is always real – it will always be a part of you, woven into your story and your growth as you move forwards (no matter how broken-hearted you are right now).
At first, accepting this might seem unbearable – after all, why should you have to carry this love when the person is no longer in your life? But love is never a burden; it is a gift, even when it doesn’t lead to the outcome you wanted. It’s a sign that you’re real and you’re capable of great things.
By trying to resist your emotions or force yourself to “get over” someone in an unnatural way, you’re actually just prolonging your suffering:
The real way to move on is to surrender to reality by accepting that love doesn’t always lead to partnership (because ‘love’ and ‘relationships’ are totally different beasts).
Accept that real love can exist without possession. Most importantly, accept that your life can still be full, beautiful, and meaningful even without this particular relationship – embracing this will also be the foundation for attracting a relationship that actually ‘works’ when the time comes.
The Myth of “Fighting for Love”
Movies, songs, and romantic novels all tell us the same sad story:
If you truly love someone, you should fight for them, that you should overcome any obstacle to be together because love conquers all.
It sounds nice and gets us all pumped up and motivated from time to time but, out here in the world, forcing a relationship that isn’t meant to be is one of the most destructive things you can do for yourself and the lives of other people.
Love isn’t a battlefield (despite what Pat Benatar says) – it’s a mirror that reflects back to you the truth of your connection with another person.
Sometimes, that truth is that you are not ‘meant’ to be together. Love should feel expansive and freeing – a place where your nervous system can relax and you feel safe and free from drama – not like an uphill battle where you have to constantly prove yourself or sacrifice your well-being to make it work.
If you find yourself trying to convince someone to be with you, or if they are making you compromise your core values, it is not love that is driving you – it is fear. Figure out what that fear is and you’ll be able to free yourself from holding on and go live your REAL life with somebody who is probably a better match.
Dealing with the Ego’s Reactions: Anger, Resentment, and Bitterness
Breakups don’t just bring sadness; they also stir up anger, resentment, and bitterness. These emotions don’t come from love; they come from the Ego:
The ego hates ‘losing’ – it hates not getting what it wants. It creates narratives about injustice, about being wronged, about how things ‘should’ have been and why the other person is to blame or you’re not good ‘enough’ or anything else that prevents you from facing reality and growing beyond the current version of the Ego that you identify with.
But here’s the truth: Nothing was ever supposed to be different because things can’t be different – things unfolded exactly as they needed to whether we ‘like’ it or not.
Your job is not to argue with reality but to learn from it so that you can become even more REAL. When you let go of the ego’s need to control the narrative, you can begin to see the breakup for what it truly is -a lesson and a redirection, not a punishment.
The Freedom of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools for moving on from heartbreak but this doesn’t mean you have to keep the person in your life. In fact, if the emotions are still strong, it’s often best to take space but forgiveness allows you to release the emotional weight you’re carrying so you can take that space without filling it with baggage.
Forgiving yourself is just as important as forgiving the other person: Maybe you made mistakes. Maybe they did. Maybe you both did. None of that matters now. What’s done is done.
The past cannot be changed, but your perspective on it can – forgiveness isn’t about saying, “What happened was okay” but instead is about saying, “I refuse to let this pain define me any longer.”
It only defines you as long as you keep RESISTING IT (because, as Carl Jung said, “What you resist persists”). When you face it, you can accept it, and it allows you to get moving again (because emotions are e-motion, energy in motion).
Can You Ever Be Friends Again?
Some people can transition from lovers to friends, but this takes time…sometimes, A LOT of time:
If your feelings are still intense, forcing a friendship is a mistake as it will only create confusion on all sides and prevent you from fully healing (because you can’t feel ‘safe’ and have a regulated nervous system when you’re confused).
True friendship after love is only possible when both people have genuinely moved on – if one person is still holding on to hope (or anything else), the dynamic will always be uneven and painful.
Sometimes, the best way to honour the love you once had is to let go completely as this shows how much you respect it. In time, if both of you reach a place of neutrality, a friendship might naturally emerge. But it cannot be rushed and should never be FORCED as that just takes everybody out of the flow of being real.
If You Play with Fire, You Get Burned
There’s a good reason why people say you shouldn’t keep in touch with an ex when you’re trying to move on. If you keep dipping your toes back into the relationship – whether through messages, meet-ups, or social media stalking – you’re only keeping the wound open and it can’t heal.
Every time you engage with them, you reset the clock on your healing and you can’t expect to move forward while still living in the past. Set clear boundaries. Unfollow them or block then if YOU need to (and don’t feel guilty – this is YOUR healing we’re talking about. Create space and grow into it.
You’re not being dramatic – you’re protecting your peace (and that’s the only way you can truly start to heal and get real again).
Being Broken-Hearted is Better Than Having a Closed Heart
Pain is not the enemy:
A broken heart can heal, but a closed heart stays trapped in fear and ego which always stops you from growing, being real, and living your actual life.
If you allow yourself to feel, to grieve, and to process, you will come out the other side stronger and more open to real love when it finds you again. If you don’t allow these things to unfold, then when somebody does come along, then you’ll just bring all of your unresolved pain and problems into the relationship and probably lose out again.
Trust that the experience of having a broken heart is shaping you and refuse to close down. Trust and know that letting go is not the same as losing out and that, in the grand design of life, what is meant for you will never require force because – like we keep saying – what’s real is always real.
Practical Steps for Healing
- Give Yourself Space: Stop checking their social media, cut off unnecessary contact, don’t ask for information that you don’t really want, and focus on your own life and growing real.
- Acknowledge Your Feelings: Don’t suppress your love – accept it, but don’t let it control you by trying to do things with it that your ego wants but the real you doesn’t.
- Write a Letter (But Don’t Send It): Pour out everything you want to say, then let it go. Feelings are always better out than in so do something with them instead of freezing up and resisting.
- Focus on Your Growth: Use this time of isolation to strengthen yourself – emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Work on your ‘stuff’, go to the gym or find some other way to get healthier, and find ways to connect more deeply to the truth about yourself, the world, and reality (you’ll see that you haven’t lost anything real anyway).
- Engage in New Experiences: Travel, take up a new hobby, meet new people. Find yourself again.
- Practice Meditation and Breathwork: Regulate your nervous system so you don’t stay stuck in emotional loops and the threat that comes from confusion and uncertainty.
- Trust Life: Believe that what is meant for you is still ahead, and move forward with confidence. This is the realest way to love.
Letting go isn’t about forgetting – it’s about honouring what was real while making space for what’s next.
The pain will pass, but the lessons will remain and then, one day, without even realising it, you’ll wake up and realise that you’ve truly moved on.
Stay real out there,
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