Here’s Why You Have to Take Responsibility For Your Own Broken Heart

Whether you got dumped or you were the one doing the dumping, breakups hurt if you ever cared at all about your ex. While it’s easy and natural to want to cast blame at your former partner, you’ll heal and begin to move on more quickly if you own up to your part in the breakdown of the relationship. Here’s why it’s so important to take responsibility for your own broken heart:

  1. You chose to be in the relationship. No one can promise that love will last forever, so any time you get into a relationship, you have to know on some level that it might not work out. That doesn’t mean that the experience won’t be worth it even if things end — there’s always something to be gained from every guy you date. However, it’s important to be realistic and realize that a failed relationship isn’t the end of the world, even when it feels like it might be.
  2. There’s always a lesson. You might get tired of people pointing out that there’s always a lesson to learn from every failed relationship, but they’re right. In fact, there are usually 1,000 lessons to learn — and the faster you learn them, the faster you can stop reliving them.
  3. Only you can heal it. Your broken heart belongs to you and you alone. You can’t fix it by asking anyone else to do anything about it. All the support in the world can only go so far, and healing always requires your internal strength to overcome anything else that’s being thrown at you. Time is usually involved in healing, but approaching your heart with a bit of humble tenderness can help speed things up.
  4. It takes two people to get there. Even if you had the rug pulled out from under you completely, there are probably some things you’d do differently in the next relationship (or if you had the chance to go backwards in this one and do it over again). Be honest with yourself about what those things are so that you can vow not to repeat the same behavior again.
  5. Blaming the other person only gets you so far. Of course you’ll have your moment where you’re pissed at that loser, and you probably should. But if you put everything on him, you’re ultimately just taking away your own power in the situation. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, and trying to make it someone’s is only going to bring the healing process to a grinding halt.
  6. Taking responsibility is not the same as blaming yourself. Even if you don’t like how you dealt with a situation, owning your choices and actions is a reminder of how powerful you actually are. You make an impact, and that’s a good thing. You don’t have to beat yourself up about it, but acknowledge that you had a part in what went down.
  7. You have to take responsibility to really let things go. If you never step up to the plate and take responsibility for your part of a failed relationship, you’ll stay stuck in the place of “why.” You might never hear everything that you need to hear from the other person, but you can do your own work and find a certain amount of peace with it.
  8. Heartbreak isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You think of heartbreak as a horrible thing but in actuality, it can end up shaping your life in amazing ways if you keep an open mind. Breaking your heart open can create the space to allow more love to flow back in.
  9. You won’t attract new love if you’re acting like a victim. If you try to move on while you’re feeling like a victim, that energy will move on with you. You’ll be more likely to assume the worst in new people or assume that someone should be fixing you along the way, when only you can actually do that.
  10. Being responsible in one area of life will extend to the rest. Taking responsibility for your own broken heart is also a powerful move to make towards taking responsibility for everything else in life. We have to own who we are and what we’ve done to move forward authentically, and living with that sort of clarity is what really helps us learn and grow.
Kate Ferguson is a Los Angeles local and freelance writer for a variety of blog and magazine genres. When she's not writing, the UC Davis graduate is focused on pursuits of the entertainment industry, spin class, and hot sauce. Look for article links, updates, (and the occasional joke) on Twitter @KateFerg or @WriterKateFerg, or check out her personal blog ThatsRandomKate.blogspot.com