BREAKING UP AT 30, WHAT DO YOU HAVE LEFT?

After a breakup or the end of a marriage, the first thing people often think about when it comes to love is loss:

Losing someone who once walked alongside you, sharing your journey
Losing someone you once loved deeply
Losing the chance to care for each other
Losing the most beautiful memories
Or even
Losing a whole, unscarred soul, a heart that was once brimming with love and filled with the vitality of something new…

However, you know what?
When a relationship ends, it is not just about loss; there are also a lot of things to be “gained”—if only we allow ourselves to see the story from a different perspective.

Like the love story of a young couple I know that I will tell you right now:

They spent six radiant springs together, six scorching summers, six gentle autumns, and six warm winters. By the seventh year, on a blindingly hot summer afternoon, they… officially parted ways—after a spring that no longer held enough beauty for them… And, in reality, those “no longer beautiful” things had likely begun forming back in winter, or maybe even the autumn of the year before…

Breaking up, or ending any kind of relationship in life, is always a difficult time for both sides—when two hearts at that time have yet to fully grasp the vast, boundless emptiness left behind by the other’s departure…

It is just that the way each person expresses it outwardly is not quite the same, and perhaps one of them has yet to fully realise that: the day of their breakup—that fateful day—might also be the last time they ever see each other in this lifetime. Amidst the vast, bustling sea of people, a single turn of the head could send each person’s footsteps drifting into oblivion…

One month
Three months
Six months after the breakup…

Perhaps it is only from this moment onward that one truly begins to understand, with absolute clarity, what their feelings really are.

About the young couple I mentioned above, they are now in their 30s. Calling them young may not be entirely accurate, as they are far past the carefree years of eighteen or twenty when people are just stepping into life; yet, to say they have fully matured and become steadfast in the face of life’s challenges would not be quite right either…

Because of this, both of them will experience significant turbulence after stepping away from a relationship where they had once decided to build a future together in marriage.

At this point, the man and the woman react in very different ways, both emotionally and in their actions, when:

One feels an overwhelming sense of loss, as if separation has completely consumed them.
The other, while still heartbroken and sorrowful, does not necessarily feel regret or a profound sense of emptiness.

At first glance, you might assume that the first person is more emotional, more deeply attached, while the second must have endured many wounds during the relationship—so much so that by the time it ended, they no longer felt the weight of loss, right? Or perhaps, they had long since fallen out of love, making it easier for them to cope emotionally and to not feel so griefful?

Neither is true.
The one who feels engulfed by separation and regret so much that they have to weep over is not necessarily the one who loved more. What haunts them the most is the mistakes they made to the other person. The mistakes, the moments they dismissed as trivial, mere jokes… Yet in the end, the price they had to pay for those thoughtless words and actions was the complete dissolution of a six-year relationship. That realisation leaves them shaken, unable to believe it, struggling to accept it!

And what about the other?
Why do they still feel sorrow and heartbreak, sometimes crying even months after the breakup, yet not experience a deep sense of loss?

Sadness and pain are natural emotions when one is parting from a love that, deep down, they had come to see as “home”—a part of their family… However, somewhere within, they have also come to understand that when a relationship reaches its end, when two people go their separate ways, it simply means that: The journey of their two souls together could only last this far!

They recognise that separation, a “brief pause,” does not mark the end of everything. The road ahead may bring new people into their lives. And just as it will for the other person.

We are only momentarily lost in a whirlwind of emotions we cannot reorganise after suddenly realising that love has fallen apart, or that a marriage did not work out.

However, once those drifting, lonely emotions are cleared away—replaced by the busyness of life, the call of the world, the push of a career, the gentle voice of parents back home, etc. You will stand up on your own and keep moving forward.

In the end, after a breakup at 30, what do you have left?
You will have so much—if you choose to see what “REMAINS”.
You will lose so much—if all you see is what is “LOST”.
It all depends on how each of us “defines” what is lost and what remains after all of those!

Everything comes and goes as part of life
We must learn when to hold on to something and when to let it go.

Everything has its limits, so once you have reached that limit, find a way to replenish it and make it full again. Love, affection, or anything else in life follows the same rule… Everything must be renewed or upgraded at the right time!

So, do not dwell too much on what you have left or what you have lost after a relationship; instead, focus on healing the emotions within you. Heal your thoughts, heal the wounds that have lingered inside you for too long! Understand what you truly want so that you can elevate yourself and your relationships to a newer, better version—or heal those old wounds so you can boldly start anew!

Be courageous in loving someone new, with a heart that is whole—one that carries lessons from the past for the new relationships but not its burdens. Do not bring the scars of old wounds, filled with doubt, only to repeat the same mistakes again, my dear friend!

Much love,
Truly Inspired®