Dear Carolyn: My heart is broken. For the third time in my life, at 51, I fell for someone, and now that he’s rejected me, it hurts as badly as when I was 24 and 31.
I’m trying to be happy that I can still fall for someone, but it doesn’t hurt any less than I remember it hurting then. I’m trying to focus on my professional life and the volunteer work I do, but really just want to go to sleep for a year and see where things are then.
In a small town, how to move on? I have fantasies of just getting in my car and driving anywhere, somewhere, nowhere. I’ve reached out to my prior therapist, and to another therapist recommended to me, but she’s not taking new patients.
How do people move on? And why?
— Broken Hearted at 51
Broken Hearted at 51: To fall hard for someone again, I guess, because it’s so great while it lasts?
Or they move on because life has so many other great things. The smell of fresh coffee, the look on dogs’ faces when their people come home, a big laugh, a good cry. The luxury of one’s own company, answering to no one.
A broken heart can dull these pleasures, even temporarily erase them, but your own history tells you that you will recover enough to start feeling pleasure again.
More immediately: Ask the no-new-patients therapist to recommend someone else. I once followed a referral chain like this to . . . I think a fourth name, and it was fine.
And don’t discount the impulse to drive somewhere. Maybe instead act on a scaled-down, responsible, restorative version of it: Figure out something or someone [covid-safe] within driving distance that sounds appealing, make the calls, make the plans, request the time off, etc., and then go see what a change of scenery can do.
In the meantime, maybe give yourself some credit for being open to love at any age, and all it brings, even knowing the chances it’ll punch you right in the gut.
Write to Carolyn Hax at [email protected]. Get her column delivered to your inbox each morning at wapo.st/haxpost.
