There are two ways to go about a broken heart. You can choose to keep it locked up and isolated so nothing can harm it again or, you can strengthen it by looking at the experience objectively, identifying where your guard was let down and mentally making a vow to proceed with caution next time, while ensuring your trust is always earned.
It’s funny how until someone betrays your trust, it’s so naturally easy to give. Once stung, however, it becomes a lot more difficult.
Here are the steps you can take to help you move on from a painful situation and learn to give your trust to someone new.
1. Recognize That You Are Still Alive And Kicking
Some people are just not capable of living up to your trust. Hard as it is to be cheated on, lied to, or talked about behind your back, the fact remains that you are still alive and kicking. Remember the old saying, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”? The one good thing about a broken heart is that it can’t kill you—the sun will definitely rise again. So don’t sweat it.
2. Moving On Is The Best Revenge
Right now, you may be thinking about ways to get back at the person who betrayed your trust. Often, we think about how we can make someone feel the way that they have made us feel. We try to find a way to get inside their head and do to them what they’ve done to us.
The fact is that the best revenge you can ever have is to move on. Even if someone discarded you, cheated on you, or did something really awful, showing them that you are stronger than you appear, have more integrity than they do, and that you will be better off without them is the best way to find it within yourself to move forward and trust again.
3. Don’t Give Of Yourself As Freely Next Time
When someone mistreats us, we like to feel as if we were completely powerless in the situation. Seeing it as the fault of someone else rather than ourselves absolves us of any guilt or responsibility in our own pain. Rarely do we get hurt when there wasn’t a sign in front of us that we didn’t want to see. Likely, your intuition told you there was something wrong long before you found out what they were doing to betray your trust. When you do find someone to love again, make sure that they are worthy of your trust. Don’t discount those things that we often overlook or downplay when getting to know someone. If you have an intuition about who they really are, acknowledge it. Don’t look the other way or think that it’s just you being overly sensitive.
4. Think About All The Things You Gain From Trusting
There are many people in your life whom you have trusted. Don’t let one person determine how you maneuver through the rest of your life. Even if it was a bad situation, using that one experience to determine everything that will ever happen after negates all the love and support that you have from other people in your life. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is going to get hurt a couple of times while here. You can’t let one bad relationship overpower all the lovely ones that have spiced up or that will spice up your life.
5. It’s Okay If Things Change
Often, we wish for just one second that the world would stop spinning. A good thing today has the potential to become bad tomorrow. The good news is that what hurts right now is going to be less hurtful in a couple of days and will only get better from there. Wanting to return to the past to sort out what happened, stop the situation from coming to fruition, or freezing the good in time just isn’t possible. We move from one relationship to another throughout our lives. That is not a bad thing. Sometimes, you have to learn to let go and recognize that everything changes, both good and bad, and that is totally fine.
6. Be Honest About What Happened
When you decide to love again, its best to enter into a new relationship while being open and honest about what you have been through. It’s a good idea to, over time, gradually let them know what has happened in your past. If you don’t explain to them what perspective you are coming from, they may read your need to keep yourself closed off as something lacking in them. Remember, your new relationship has nothing to do with your old, so don’t take it out on them. If you take things slowly and are open and honest about your battle wounds, and if they are willing to slow things down and take it one step at a time, you can build trust back together.
7. Take A Look At The Big Picture
If you never let anyone close enough to hurt you, then you won’t get hurt again. That may be very true. Think about why someone was able to hurt you. Being in love with someone or giving yourself wholly to another human being is what we were all put here to do. But if you choose to keep yourself hidden from the world and not trust anyone to come into your life or heart, then you will be sacrificing the feeling of love and the connection that you can have with someone else. As true as it is a horrible feeling to be hurt, staying safe from it can’t in any way be compared the beautiful feeling of having someone in your life.