What does heartbreak feel like?

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Since Tapas forumers are a significantly older community than I am used to interacting with (there are married people here, for chrissake) I figure I should try to take advantage of it and do some emotional research. ^^

What does it feel like to have your heart broken, by love or some other means? Is it anything like trying your damndest to pass a course and failing anyway? Because (although it's certainly depressing) that is the closest I've come to such a deep, wretched emotion...

[fattackycats]

There's two ways to feel heartbreak: emotionally and physically. You can feel one or you can feel both. There is some science to "physical" heart break, but I won't get into it. It has more to do with chemicals, hormones, stress, and how going through heartbreak causes your body to think there's something wrong so symptoms include heightened weight loss or weight gain. Some people say they feel a literal chest pain. I felt pain in my gut, like that butterfly nervous feeling. I would get sick thinking about the breakups.

But emotional heartbreak is different for every one I think. There's a process, like with grieving a loss. You''l feel it all. Depression, anger, self-deprecation, anxiety, loneliness, and confusion. I think, for me personally, the worst part of heartbreak is I question my identity. I've been in long relationships where when I come out of them, I feel like a huge part of myself is gone and won't come back or be filled. That takes lots of time and LOTS of introspection to get over. And it hurts like hell wondering if I'll ever be loved or love again. It's scary. I can't even express it in words.

I will say, the older you get, the more relationships you have, and the more you learn about yourself, it can either get easier or it can get harder - especially when you truly care about someone and that ends. It all depends on you. If you take every break up very personally, it will hurt you more than if you appreciate the time you had with that person, learn from it, and move onto the next until you find the person you want to be with forever. We all change and grow. We all put power into things.

Heartbreak is sooo difficult to describe, but honestly, such a crucial thing to experience as a human being.

[fattackycats]

Obviously I am talking about romantic heart break earlier.

Now when it comes to trying REALLY hard at something and then miserably failing (like a test or course), that too can be considered heartbreak, albeit slightly different.

Sure, you might feel all those emotions I listed before, but I think the thing to lose here would be your sense of direction and what to do next, not so much who you are. Say for instance you practiced a thing really well for a competition and then didn't even make the cut, well you might think your time was completely wasted learning that thing and now you feel disheartened about continuing that pursuit further. Well, it's all a matter of things gained. If you feel like you didn't learn anything from that experience, then it was time wasted.

I think romantic heartbreak is a little worse (personally), but they are very similar in a lot of ways. In both cases, there's a sense of loss. You lost time or you lost your value.

[HGohwell]

I'm not entirely sure it was love, but it was definitely strong and definitely the strongest and most effected I've ever felt.. And it was sort of like going into shock at first. I imagine it depends on the situation and the person, but for me I was sort of lead along and then dropped without ceremony and cut off and it was like going into shock. I hate using this to describe something because it really means nothing but it's the best I can do: it was a sort of numbness.The closest I can equate it to was when I was let go from a job I really enjoyed without any warning and quite brutally for being too political on social media. It was sort of quiet and I didn't cry or get upset (which is odd because I'm a self admitting crybaby). Perhaps grief is a similar description, it is a loss, but I've never lost anyone every close to me so I'm not sure.

For a while (and I think to an extent even now) it felt like there was something given away, especially that first time, that's never really going to come back.There's a true to them saying the first one cuts deepest, I think. And that you close yourself off more after. I still get sad sometimes thinking how you can give so much of yourself to someone and then simply be tossed aside. Even after the shock passed, I never really got angry, just sort of sad that I must never meant have meant as much to them as they did to me. I never really did any of the stuff you see in fiction, like crying over ice cream or shutting myself away or rebounding, I just sort of carried on with life, tried to talk to them a bit and still be friends and eventually let that relationship slip away.

I definitely think that numb shock is the best way I can describe it even though it's a sort of nothingy description. It's not anger or sadness or pain it was just sort of knocking everything out of me.

[ZombieOwl]

I don't know how much it counts, but.... Before I started dating my boyfriend, a mutal friend asked him one day "How was your date last night?" Now, I had been crushing on him HARD... for MONTHS, and had been struggling to do the flirtings and the like.

When I heard it, I felt my pulse stop, I couldn't breathe and my chest was tight. I ran to start work(we were in the same workplace at that time). My head was spinning and I thought I "lost him/my chance", cuz, OBVIOUSLY he'd get snatched up by the first person to come along cuz he's obvs perfect lol.

It wasn't until two months later I discovered he was still single. I felt the same things, but it was elation, not disappointment this time.

That's my only experience and I was happy it was short-lived ^^;;;
(I'm also assuming you're asking about romantic heartbreak)

[SamuelCharcot]

I understand heartbreak like any situation that damages your soul (the death of a close person, when someone I care feels bad, failing a goal, etc.) and not only talking in a romantic context. Anyways, in both ways it feels like something you can´t control, and feel bad about that. Like a blackhole of sadness

[NickRowler]

I think heartbreak can best be summed up by the poem by Khalil Gibran.

"When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."

That is what heartbreak is to me, it's having to deal with both joy and sorrow at the same time.

[MuffinMusing]

To me, heartbreak just makes the world a slightly darker place. It's a loss of innocence,and a loss of trust too. You stop believing in people and in the world a little bit. It's a really resigned form of cynicism, like, "Well this is the way the world is, and I just have to adjust to that now."

It's not all dark, because you do learn a lot, and it does make you stronger. But in the end, it still takes something you can't get back.

[Buurd]

My experience is being dumped from a 5 year relationship ^^;

Initially I remember while he was talking my body went completely numb? I was really out of it, I remember I couldn't find my keys the next day - turned out I left them in the door when I had returned home. For about 2 months I would be completely normal one minute, then I'd see something missing like his car in the driveway or his toothbrush and feel like I'd been kicked. LOTS of suddenly collapsing to the floor crying oof.
Meanwhile around people I just wanted them to act normal. Cause when people tried showing me sympathy I felt like I'd crumple. And I HATED that. I hated that even after he was gone my emotions felt controlled by him?
I remember I lost my appetite. I had to force myself to eat at least one meal a day. And my sleep schedule was a mess of just passing out on my bed whenever, waking up whenever. (My break up was on before my last day of work so I didn't really have a responsibility to toughen up for ) So the days all kinda blurred together.

Idk, i could go on but i feel like I've already rambled a lot ^^; In short, heartbreak suuuuucks. 0/10 not a fan.

[skicoak]

Personally, I find that emotional turmoil, like romantic heartbreak or loss of a loved one, tends to vary heavily from individual to individual.

There's people who compartmentalize it... make it all about an inner emotional state.
There's people who really lean into it...make their entire existence about it.

You never no how you'll handle or experience it until it happens to you.

[shazzbaa]

But in the end, it still takes something you can't get back.

This is honestly my favourite description. I agree a lot with folks that it varies from person to person -- different people get different things out of a relationship, so its loss will obviously impact them differently.

I felt like I had lost my whole future. We were building a life together, and when they left, it was intangible, but it's like they took it all with them. I had to rebuild my own dreams to accommodate their absence, but for a long time all I could see was that everything was gone. It's been years, but it's hard to describe how shattering that was. Still is.

My favourite quote on this is not about a relationship at all -- it's about a daughter. But it's the most accurate description I've ever heard:

"I did not need her when I did not have her. But she has entered my life as a nail enters a block of wood, simultaneously creating a hole and filling it.

Remove the nail, and the hole remains."

[MariMontoya]

You think for a moment or maybe days that your world has ended and that things will never be the same, and in part that is true. You'll cry (if you're that kind of person) for days and randomly, maybe just thinking about, in a classroom, at home, restaurant, wherever. Maybe rant and rage a bit, it's a whole bucket of emotions and it's suffocating and cathartic at the same time, to relive memories over and over again until they just fade away, with little traces left behind.
~ speaking more about romantic relationships.... a little dramatic but explains my experiences well

[soyasholm]

This is for romantic heartbreak but I think the worst heartbreak for me in terms of that is a feeling like you're scared, anxious and feeling guilty all at the same time. It's not like I felt "guilty" but more the same kind of pressuring, heavy, pain in your chest when you feel guilty over doing something, or you feel scared about something, and you can't make it go away other than with time. You forget it for a bit and when you remember, it all comes back like a wave of emotion and pain and the only thing you can do is just wait it out

[deltastic]

I totally agree with everyone- every person experiences this differently, I think especially the physicality of it? But the overall is that it is a loss, and all the emotional and chemical stuff that comes with that. I think a lot of the heartbreak and loss feelings are similar to a death, because although they are logistically different, they still process similarly? Your brain is rewiring and having to make new pathways versus something that was consistent and comforting priorly. Also similar to drug withdrawal.

I experience a lot of emotional trauma in the same way as anxiety- tight chest, clammy hands, shaking, short of breath, etc. The worst pain I've ever felt in my entire life was from heartbreak. I thought a lot of the stuff in movies and songs was fake, but I legitimately felt intense physical pain from heartbreak. It felt like muscle cramps throughout my body, like I had a horrible flu or was dying and hard to breathe and unable to eat, that went on for at least a week. I also could not sleep and woke up in a cold sweat over it every night. It took months to get anywhere close to normal.

Over that time I kept wondering why anyone would even try ever to have relationships or put your heart into something, if the fallout is so terrible. It definitely didn't feel worth it at that lowest point. But I guess like women in childbirth, your memory of it later isn't as bad as the experience in the moment, thus you are willing to try again... hahha! But yeah I really thought such descriptions were melodrama until it happened to me... Amazingly though, completely survivable. Life is such a wild ride xD

[indigodrawing]

Imagine what it would feel like to have your insides hollowed out and replaced with a bag of ice and cement.

Bonus points if betrayal was involved because you can then add a mixture of feeling like a complete moron for not seeing it coming and a white hot rage that burns like the stars into the mix.

[vfinnigan]

I've had my romantic ups and downs even within one marriage. Romantic heartbreak doesn't just happen with a breakup. It can also happen when a partner lets you down one way or another, but you weather the heartbreak together and stay together.

Emotionally, it can feel like crushing disappointment, guilt, and violated trust. Physically, it feels to me like a punch to the gut, chest, and throat. Maybe even to the face too, except that just-punched feeling lasts for however long it takes for the emotions to die down.

And sometimes those emotions can be brought back up again. While my romantic heartbreaks are all forgiven and forgotten, and I haven't cried about them in years or even decades, I lost a child seventeen years ago, and thinking about her brings all those feelings right back.