M. Suzanne Terry

Coffee for two is my favorite (and most elusive) kind of coffee.

I’ve been posting snippets of a story project entitled “How To Unbreak Your Heart” on my writer page on Facebook. This has brought up thoughts about how people respond to those who are hurting. We’re not always great at it. We may say too much that’s not helpful, forcing someone who is already dealing with loneliness and the exhausting grief that comes with it to decide whether to make sure that we know our intention is appreciated while feeling utterly misunderstood or to be honest and risk being more misunderstood and rejected as a result. Or we, knowing that trying to say the right thing is such a fucking minefield, avoid it altogether and just hope everything turns out okay (you know, after they get past the extra alone feeling that comes with apparently having no one to talk to about it).

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have most of them. But I may have one.

When someone you care about is heartbroken, it’s natural to want to ease that for them. One way people have tried to do this for me is by telling me their own harried love stories of doing everything wrong and still getting the relationship, or stories of people who found love despite the odds against them. I’m certain it was meant to help me understand that such things are also possible for me.

It did not do this. Not in that particular moment.

You see, once upon a time, I loved a boy. He liked me just fine and for a moment thought maybe I was a possibility but chose someone else instead. I was dealing with it and would be doing okay(ish), but then I would see one of his posts about how happy she made him, and then I’d have a fresh wound to tend to. As someone who loved him, I loved seeing him happy. As someone who loved me, I hated that it was with someone else.

I felt really bad about feeling that way for a long time. I felt like a bad friend because I couldn’t just get over it. I felt like a failure when I followed friends’ advice to stop following him on social media – to stop seeing all his posts about how happy he was with someone else – in order to heal. I felt like more of a failure when doing so didn’t help me heal any faster. We lost touch, and I still regret the role I played in that. I still miss the great friendship we could have had.

Anyway, when I hear these stories, especially when I’m deep in the throes of loneliness, that’s what comes up for me. I imagine similar memories surface for other people who have been rejected a lot, too.

Does that mean I don’t want to hear about my friends’ happiness? Of course not. I love it when they share the great things going on in their lives, and I especially love seeing people who have experienced romantic deserts similar to my own finally find someone they adore who has the good sense to adore them, too. I’m thrilled for them. I even seek these stories out if I have just gotten back from a boring date or ended the fifth lackluster, going-nowhere online flirtation of the month as a reminder that trying to meet someone doesn’t always end up being a complete waste of time. And you better believe I’ll be posting some stories of my own should such a miraculous happenstance ever occur for me.

No matter how happy I am for friends who fall in love, though, these stories bring up other feelings, too. I can’t help but wonder how many broken hearts or dashed hopes their blissful union left in its wake. I’ll likely wonder the same even if in the future I post such things. People don’t always tell you when you hurt them, and it’s not the happy couple’s fault or something they could have even avoided, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The pain still exists, and bombarding someone who confesses that they are having a rough time of it with stories of other people who got the love that they, too, deserve, is not an encouragement. It’s a cruelty.

I know it’s hard to know how to respond to this particular type of grief. There are so many ways to get it wrong and seemingly few ways to get it right. As a person with a lot of experience playing the role of the not-chosen in these scenarios, I have some tips to minimize the likelihood of messing it up.

Pay attention. Listen to what they say and acknowledge their feelings. Pain is uncomfortable, but my best, most trusted friends are the ones who accept my pain as valid without trying to minimize it or cheer me up. My friends can sit in some pain. It’s really quite extraordinary and really shows me how much they not only love me but respect me. Because on top of the pain, your friend may feel embarrassed or foolish about the situation and thus may think they don’t have a right to feel the way they do. But their pain isn’t wrong, and affirming that can be so helpful. When hurtful things happen, it’s reasonable and healthy to feel hurt. What’s not reasonable or healthy is trying to convince them they shouldn’t.

Stop with the advice. Just stop. First, your friend probably already has an ongoing feed in their head of “If I’d just done or said this, maybe things would have turned out differently.” None of those things are actually true (i.e., when someone loves you, it takes a lot to kill that love, and when they don’t, it’s not something they can be talked into), and the last thing they need at that moment is a parrot of their asshole inner critic. If you truly think you have some insight that you really must share, jot it down and tuck it away for later when they can receive it and thus actually benefit from it. The midst of their pain is not the time or place.

Second, I don’t care how smart you are – you can’t fix it.

Let me repeat.

You. Cannot. Fix. It.

The problem at hand is that they wanted and hoped to be with someone who chose not to be with them. Unless you are in the unique position of not only being that someone but also having the capacity and will to love and choose them back, there’s not a damn thing you can do to resolve the problem. So quit acting like you can. The only thing your attempts to do so are likely to accomplish when they’re already feeling raw and vulnerable is to reinforce their suspicions that there’s something so wrong with them that they have to fix it in order to be lovable.

Encourage them to trust what they need to do next. This is so hard, especially when you think you know better. Odds are that you don’t, though. Different people heal differently. You may need to bounce back from rejection by trying something (or someone) new, but they may need to embrace the wallow for a bit. Some people need to cut all ties because when their hopes for a relationship die, trying to settle for anything less seems unbearable. Some people need to keep in touch, because the thought of losing the person they love not only as a partner but also as a friend seems unbearable. Don’t tell them to do something just because it’s what works for you.

This was long and rambly but it helped me a little to write it out. Hope there’s something here that can help you, too.