A Reason to Keep Looking for Love After Heartbreak

When I sat down to write this week’s article II felt incredibly stuck. This past week has been a hard one for me and my family. My husband and I had the make the decision to put our almost 15-year-old dog Rocco down.

We got Rocco when he was only 10 weeks old. He was my first “baby.” When we got Rocco I had just finished graduate school and wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. I wasn’t working and wasn’t even sure of what to do with myself but I had Rocco and he and I would spend all day, every day together.

Rocco and I would go to the local dog parks, we went shopping together, sometimes we would even sit together at a coffee shop. I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life but no loss has ever felt like this because he was my constant companion for over 14 years.

When I think about Rocco, my only thought is: I hate this! I don’t want to feel this way!

And then I laughed.

This is exactly what my clients say to me all the time! After a painful break-up, they’ll say, “That’s it! I’m never going to fall in love again because this is too hard.” Or after they’re denied a promotion at work they say, “I’m not going to try anymore. What’s the point?!”

I get it. It’s that feeling, the one we get after our hearts have been broken in two or we feel kicked in the stomach by a deep disappointment, that makes us swear to the heavens above, “I hate this! I don’t want to feel this way!”

But imagine what life would be like if we never took a risk, if we never loved if we never opened our hearts and minds to someone or something new.

As much as I hate the way I feel right now and will continue to feel in the days and months ahead, I wouldn’t trade it for my time with Rocco.

You can’t know great love without knowing heartbreak and pain.

Without one, there is no other. Every time we go on a date, interview for a new job, reach out to a potential new friend, anything…we’re opening ourselves up to rejection and pain.

But if we don’t…then what’s the point? What’s the point of being here and being a part of the human experience.

Even though this feeling of loss and sadness, in a word – SUCKS – I wouldn’t change any of it.

One of my all-time favorite movies is, “Annie Hall” and at the end of the movie Woody Allen says to the camera,

“It reminds me of that old joke- you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, hey doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken. Then the doc says, why don’t you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that’s how I feel about relationships. They’re totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”