Teenage Heartbreaks: How To Make The Best Of Them
Us girls have grown up with this image in our mind of men treating us perfectly. We started off watching princess movies like The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella, where the man ultimately sacrifices something for the woman he loves, or makes her feel loved until the end of time. In Disney films, the boy would mess up but then make it up to the girl, or do something heroic or sweet for the girl that he loves. Now, growing up with that image in our head of men making no mistakes, that’s what we expect entering our first REAL relationship. What I haven’t understood until today, writing this article and looking back at my first heartbreak, is that it’s not the end of the world when you’ve been left by a boy who didn’t know what he had.
It’s not reasonable for girls to expect that a boy will stick to a relationship and never do anything wrong when you’re this age. It’s hard for boys to maintain relationships, because they have other things on their mind. They have sports, a social life and they have raging hormones. This is not a bad thing, and I am not saying in any way that boys are horrible and disgusting and you shouldn’t try dating them. It’s simply the truth. Boys don’t know what they want right now. In the same way that one second a girl will want her boyfriend to drop everything for her, then in the next for him to get the hell away from her, boys are confused and sometimes don’t know what’s right from wrong in a relationship. You can’t blame it on him for breaking your heart, but you can blame it on the fact that maybe this wasn’t the time to give your heart to someone who wasn’t ready.
If you ask any woman over the age of 30 about how they handled their first teenage heartbreak, they’ll probably go into deep detail of how much it hurt. When I was younger, I remember watching movies where the girl’s heart was broken, so her best friend came over and ate ice cream with her as she cried. Then, the next day, she felt better. The truth is, and if you’ve experienced it then you’ll know that is far from what actually happens. You don’t want to see anyone BUT him. You don’t have an appetite. Everything will remind you of him. This heartbreak hurts, and not in the way that just your feelings are hurt. Your whole body aches of that one certain thing, wracking your brain of what you could have possibly have done to prevent it. What did you do to make him want to leave you? What changed from the first time that he knew he loved you and told you it was so?
The biggest thing to remember in a teenage heartbreak is that it’s a teenage heartbreak. You still have 80 years to find another man who will know how great you are, and make you feel like the princess you feel you need to be treated as. You may think right now that there is not a single boy in the world who will ever say the right words to make you blush, who will ever make you feel so carefree and happy. You may think that without this one boy in your life, there will always be something missing, and without this boy telling you how beautiful you are, you won’t believe it yourself. That may be true for a few weeks, and maybe a few months, but one boy is not going to decipher whether or not you live a happy life.
I’m going to unwillingly say something that my Mother has always said to me: You can choose to be happy, or you can choose to be miserable. You can have him constantly on your mind and let yourself feel bad about the fact that he’s not thinking about you as much as you’re thinking about him, or you can let it go. You can watch reruns of your favourite show, you can go shopping with all your friends, you can do things that don’t involve him. Or, you can wallow in your guilt, your sadness and your despair.
There is no escaping this. There is no way to get that sick feeling out of your chest that will constantly make you think negative thoughts. You can’t simply get away from it, though you can escape the constant image of you and him in your head. You can escape sitting in your room, staring at the pictures of you and him, too scared to take them down. It’s a choice on YOUR part. You want the pain to go away, you want to know that things will eventually be fine again, but this isn’t going to be given to you on a platter. You have to make the choice to say in your head, and say, “Well, this is really sh*tty right now, but in a few weeks, I won’t feel as sh*tty.”
If you want to make the best of your breakup? Make the CHOICE to make the best of it. Start talking to a cute boy, but don’t act desperate and throw yourself at him. Don’t trash talk him, because no matter how much he hurt you, he still was once the most important person in the world to you. Unfollow him on Instagram and unfriend him on Facebook if you’re going to get hurt by the photos he’s posting of him having a fun time. Don’t let him have the power to know that you’re hurting as much as you do. And most importantly, have a positive attitude. Know inside that YOU are a special girl, and if he is going to throw away the relationship that was once so special to him, then it’s his loss. He will eventually realize what he lost, whether you think he will or not. You are an amazing, beautiful girl who doesn’t need a boy wake up with a smile on her face. There are a million and one ways to analyze a breakup, why it happened, and how he could possibly do this. Just let it go, and realize that you are 13, 14, 15 years old. This will not affect you for the rest of your life.
