Source: Shutterstock

Read on, sad girlfriend, and we’ll take you from disaster to a whole lot better.

It sucked all the way around. | Source: Shutterstock

Most tellingly, I didn’t miss him. I had been away with my parents for two weeks at the end of August and all I felt was relief. I was ready.

It was a Sunday night. He signed off saying he loved me. I said, “If only that were true.” He said, “Let me call you back.” He did five minutes later and we had an adult conversation. We agreed to stay friends. We said we’d talk next Sunday. I went to bed.

The next day, I called a mutual high school friend and told her we’d broken up and then casually asked what I had wanted to. “So, did you guys ever hook up while we were a couple?”

They had.
At a party.
One I was at.

The call ended with, “Hey, you know who else you should try?” It was a daisy chain of turds. Each call leading to some heinous revelation of hook-ups never more than twenty feet from me. Even though I had only come home on weekends he seemed to pathologically need to do it in the closest proximity possible.

WHERE was he, again?! | Source: Shutterstock

Never. Again.

I cried for about four months straight. I cried to my new friends. I cried during naptime at my nanny job, and I cried so hard at work that one of my supervisors felt compelled to hug me. I was a wreck.

And then I started to remember. Not the intense love it seemed he had for me, but the panic attacks I would get at those parties. Always about something stupid.
I learned something. It has guided my life and it runs through our books. As a girl or a woman, you always know. Your gut knows. You can displace it onto hiring and firing nannies or in the case of Over You, just a lingering insecurity about everything and everyone. But you know.

I had a string of boyfriends after that who were flawed, but none ever cheated on me again. Because I learned to listen to myself, trust myself. And that is really the secret to everything.

 
Nicola’s new book, Over You, is out now! Get it! Read it! Love it!

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Can broken heart syndrome kill you?! | Source

Having a broken heart feels freakin’ awful emotionally, but did you know it can affect your physical health, too? And we don’t just mean the ice cream headaches, loss of appetite, or puffy eyes that often come after a split–we’re talking something that can legit kill you. Yikes “Broken heart syndrome” is a real thing, and it’s pretty scary… But don’t worry, because you’re probably not at risk for it, even if you did just go through a really tough breakup.

“Broken heart syndrome” is a sadder, if less scientific, term for stress cardiomyopathy. What happens in stress cardiomyopathy is, the stress someone is under causes their adrenaline to go nuts, a result of which is a lot hormones sent to your heart. At that point, your heart can stop–but it’s different from a regular heart attack, because it’s not caused by a blockage or any other typical heart issue.

That said, a lot of the symptoms of broken heart syndrome mimic regular heart attacks: People feel shortness of breath and chest pain–but there’s usually no permanent damage. Phew!

Here’s what sucks though: Women get broken heart syndrome a lot more than men do. This isn’t necessarily because we’re more brokenhearted than men are, but because docs suspect that changes in our estrogen levels when we get older may be what helps trigger it. It happens often after the loss of a loved one, because it affects our emotional, mental, and physical stress levels so greatly.

On the bright side, you won’t have to worry about broken heart syndrome until after menopause–and by then, docs will probably be able to narrow down its biggest causes (other than a lost love, that is) and prevent it! In the meantime, remembering that a broken heart isn’t the end of the world will likely keep your stress levels down–and keep a broken heart from being the end of your life!

Have you ever had a broken heart? Do you think broken heart syndrome is real? Has a broken heart ever affected you physically? Tell us in the comments!

Here’s how to get over a broken heart for good!

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It. Was. The. Worst. | Source: Shutterstock

I didn’t.

And yet I did. In September he would fly to college and, even more final, his family was relocating. “It just makes more sense for us to end things now.” I’d never experienced a boy pulling away. Despite the sickening sense of foreboding in recent days, I hadn’t determined what his uneasiness portended.

I asked if he still loved me and he choked up and said he didn’t think he did. Wanting nothing more than to weave myself intractably around his tan wrist, I told him that if he left tonight he should never call again. He was satisfyingly tortured by this ultimatum and then he was gone.

I stood on (freshly-shaved) numb legs beside the steaming graduation meal I’d cooked. My mother and stepfather were away trying to save their marriage and I was—we were to be—un-chaperoned. As his minivan backed out on the gravel I went from being the girl he whispered he loved, to being alone.

It was like time didn’t matter anymore. | Source: Shutterstock

As we drove under the moon, my Dad said gently, “This is going to sound laughably impossible, but tomorrow there’ll be a tiny window where you won’t just feel better, you’ll feel euphoric because you’ll glimpse the fact that you’re going to live through this.”

Laughable was an understatement. I sat catatonic between my younger brothers watching The Little Mermaid. Staring at the VCR clock, my brain ticked through moments that’d never come again. When Stu would call. When we’d meet. When he’d kiss me.

I knew I’d laugh again. One day. | Source: Shutterstock

That miserable summer as my mother and I both nursed broken hearts, the window did get bigger, day by day, breath by breath. I would go onto write this reminder—this compassionate design of the brain—into my latest book, Over You. In fact, all my books would culminate in the heroine’s first moment of realizing she’d survive what we’d put her through and be happier for it.
 
 
Emma’s new book, Over You, is out now! Get it! Read it! Love it!

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Source: Shutterstock

I’ve always been a little, shall we say, boy crazy—and that’s putting it very mildly. So the fact that my first major broken heart didn’t hit until I was 15 is kind of a miracle, considering that I’d been falling in love with boys since I was five. But when my heart fractured into a million little pieces, it did not go quietly into that good night.

I was deeply, hopelessly in love with Jared. Unfortunately, so was his girlfriend, Leah. Oh she was a horrible creature: dumpy, hairy, mean, abrasive and domineering—your basic nightmare. My agony was made so much worse because of how she treated him. And I knew he liked me—everyone knew it, it was so obvious! He just needed to untangle himself from Grendel (Yes, that’s what I called her. In public. This kind of bad behavior on my part will be a recurring theme, just you wait!) and he’d be mine all mine!

Source: Shutterstock

I was too young and shy to be pushy or demand that he either stop flirting with me or break up with her. Instead, I preferred to seethe in the shadows, badmouthing Leah to anyone who’d listen. Charming, right?

But then one day, Leah and Jared broke up after she cheated on him. And suddenly, he was mine. We went on dates, held hands at school, and talked on the phone nightly. I couldn’t actually believe it was happening, it just seemed too good to be true.

That’s because it was.

I still don’t understand how he pulled this off in the fishbowl that was our high school, but Jared managed to date both of us at the same time. I found this out through one crushing text:

I’m back with Leah. I’m sorry.

Just like that. You know, you assume it’s gonna be huge, complex, catastrophic things that will change your life, but sometimes it boils down to one awful, dagger-through-the-heart text.

I basically acted like this for a year | Source: Shutterstock

I’d never felt pain like that before, it was all-encompassing like a solar eclipse, blocking out everything else in my life. Suddenly, my entire existence revolved around missing and hating him. I wept openly at school (cute!) and since I was class president, I used my weekly PA announcements as an opportunity to play terrible emo music and hurl thinly veiled insults at the two of them—over the school loudspeaker. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

But it didn’t stop there, oh no. My BFF, bless her loyalty, formed the UAJ Club, which we claimed stood for Unity, Amnesty, Justice but very clearly meant United Against Jared. I MADE A SCHOOL CLUB ABOUT HATING HIM.

The worst part was how bitter I became. Jared not only took his love away, he stole my cushy, fluffy ignorance about just how much pain one person could feel.

Poised and placid I was not! | Source: WENN

Looking back, what I remember most isn’t my love for him or even the pain, but the horrendous way I behaved. My whole life revolved around showing the entire world how hurt I was. Um, this wasn’t the first broken heart in history, and probably not the worst, either. One day my mom said “You know some people have real problems. Cowboy up and get over it.” She was right. I was wallowing, and making things way worse, truthfully.

Now, I (try to) maintain a little bit more composure or at least direct all my crazy at something healthier than revenge. I said I try. A life of sanity and dignity. It takes time, girls.

Have you ever had a broken heart? Do you think I went too far in the way I treated Jared? Tell me in the comments!

This Girl’s Had More Broken Hearts Than, Like, Anybody!

 
Most of us have dealt with a broken heart. And if you haven’t yet, the sad truth is that you’ll probably be a card carrying member of the Heart Break Club soon enough. But before you curl into a corner or watch that sappy rom com again, check out Meg’s 5 tips on how to deal with a broken heart. They’ll make you feel a lot better than the plot of any Katherine Heigl movie. Guaranteed.

Have you had a broken heart? how do you help a friend when her heart is broken? Tell us everything in the comments!

Can’t Get Over Him? Here’s Solid Help That Works!