The Other Side of Heartbreak

Some melodramatic ramblings on being the one to call things off

I had this little journal entry sitting in my drafts with the intentions of turning it into something a bit more structured, however on reading it I found I liked the rawness (even if it is a little bit melodramatic) and so here it is… for once it’s not me getting my heartbroken.

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I’m not used to being on this side of heartbreak. Being the unfeeling one. It makes me question if I am still capable of feeling, or if my tough outer shell has solidified so much that my heart is fully protected. Why couldn’t he have protected his heart? That’s what I assumed we all learnt to do by the grand old age of 25, the shell completely hardened—or just the final stages of prefrontal cortex development.

I felt sad when I made the phone call, but, and I hate to admit this, there was something affirming in the realisation that I had broken someone’s heart —that I could have that effect on someone. Because I’d never knowingly had that effect on a boy before. But I also wondered about the role I played. Were my carefully worded responses to his confessions of feelings not enough to convince him to guard his heart more carefully? Had I been too open, too vulnerable, in conversations that I enjoyed, but didn’t see as the precursor to great any great love? What’s the point in throwing away good conversation?

I’ve got good at being vulnerable while keeping the shell intact.

But equally, I never said anything I didn’t mean at the time. I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t. But sometimes it takes stepping back from a situation to admit to yourself it isn’t right. And you can’t stay with someone because you feel guilty for leaving.

You tell yourself he was a fool for falling so fast, all the while feeling slightly smug that this time you were the one who was fallen for. You wonder if this makes you a narcissist—although isn’t everyone a little bit self-obsessed nowadays anyway. Blame instagram and TikTok.

But part of the uncomfortableness of it all is knowing exactly what it’s like to feel from the other perspective. The endless daydreams, the construction of your ideal life where they become the centrepiece—one partially constructed in your mind, and partially real. The assumptions they make, because they don’t yet truly know you.

I’m told that by the friend who set us up that in hindsight it would never have worked out because he wants a big family one day in the not too distant future. Did he assume I wanted that too? The very proof that he didn’t know me.

But of course he wouldn’t know, because talking about these topics on a third date seems a bit much. The idea that someone is making up a false version of you in their head is scary, because how could they be in love with the real you at this early stage, when they don’t know you yet.

You’ve never been the ‘you’ with him that’s the version of you when in love. Some people remind you how you most like to talk, how you like to be. But he isn’t one of them. And there’s not much to be done about that.