The Pain of an Unbroken Heart
We often hear about the pain that comes from a broken heart. But what about people who have never had the opportunity for their hearts to be broken? What about those who have never even been on a date?
Last winter Lindsee Eddy of the LPM blog wrote about this sort of pain in “Fifteen.” Check out this excerpt:
Our present day culture speaks a lot to the girls that have that heartache and breakup, but I think we forget the girls that never experience that. What about them? What about the girl that spends all four years of her high school career waiting for that special moment and doesn’t get it? Or better yet, all four years of her college career and doesn’t get it? Emotionally, this could be just as detrimental.
As time goes on, if you’re not grounded in Christ’s love, your belief system will become that of, “I’m not lovable.”
Since I happen to know that hearing I love you in high school from a boy isn’t the end all be all, and I certainly don’t advocate it, I’m not naive to the fact that, whether we choose to believe it or not, those words are being tossed around on a daily basis by students everywhere. In fact, they’re being tossed around carelessly by a lot of people. Those words hold a lot of weight and attachment with them.
I happen to be in the latter category. I was not the girl that experienced breakup after breakup. I lived vicariously through a lot of my friends that did experience that, which taught me a lot, but that wasn’t me.
To be very honest, it is so easy for me to write my own words to that song, and even at 26, believe that I am unlovable. If I am 26 and have yet to be chosen and hear those sweet words, am I unlovable? I know that is far from the truth, but Satan himself likes to feed that lie most consistently to me.
What I know now is that no human man can ever out-love Jesus. No human man can tell me I love you more than Jesus whispers and satisfies me with His love. But I have to believe that and claim that. That is the tricky part, transferring that knowledge from my head to my heart. No man will ever know me greater than Jesus does and yet love me just the same.
Visit the LPM blog to read the rest — its very worth your time.
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Here’s a question: would you still feel unloved (especially at 15) when an opposite-sex person told you “I love you” (and meant it) if you were not attracted to them? What if he/she followed you around and showered you with constantly attention? Here’s what I’m getting at: I appreciate this article, but it seems like we still believe that true love only comes from romantic or sexual relationships whether illicit (fornication and porn) or licit (marriage).
Real love doesn’t require some kind of romantic or sexual attachment. Our culture (at least in the U.S.) is so emotionally disconnected, everyone seems to believe that a romantic relationship is the only place one can stop being pugnacious, pretentious, and emotionally invulnerable. This is why premarital sex and pornography is the norm.
In the Christian world, since we don’t allow those sinful behaviors, emotionally disconnected people desperately seek a spouse because it’s the only valid way they believe they can be truly known by someone else. The motivations are largely the same as the non-believer, but we baptize our desires with Christian language about Christ and the church and about our obedience to God.
I don’t have any blood sisters, and (most of the time) I really desire to love, be honest with, and open up to my spiritual sisters. When I do this, they usually (1) fall IN LOVE with me, or (2) stand aloof. We then baptize this emotionally immature behavior with Christian language, saying that we’re guarding our hearts. And at the same time, we complain about the lack of real fellowship in our churches.
I’m not bitter about this, but I’m very worried about the state of Christians in general. So many Christians are intense bags of pent up anxiety desperately running around to open themselves up to someone, but no one is safe enough to do so because we’re all so worried about guarding our heart. If we were all to open up and be real with each other, especially to opposite-sex folks, there would be a lot less people feeling unloved for lack of romantic attachment.
shovelbomb: The thing is that women are wired to bond through conversation and the engaging of their emotions. That’s why we gals need to reserve the deepest inner recesses of our emotional beings for those who are supposed to be “let in”: ideally, beyond God, that should be a very small group of people: mother, father, best (female) friend, and husband {not in that order, of course}.
While you may be able to keep yourself from bonding inappropriately to people, not everyone is wired as you are. So… perhaps some extending some grace to us gals is warranted.
Thanks in advance for considering these points.
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Andrea, thanks for your thoughts! But I think all human beings–not just women–are wired to bond through engaging our emotions. The problem is that men largely aren’t socialized to be emotionally intelligent or self-aware as women usually are.
When I talk about being open and honest with others, I don’t mean sharing deep, intimate secrets in a room along with someone of the opposite sex you’re attracted to. I just mean the normal thing that happens between siblings. There’s affection, real love, trust, and playfulness that characterizes a safe relationship.
If Christians are born into a spiritual family, I think we are expected to emotionally attach to members of that family, regardless of their sex, age, color, etc. We only become “one flesh” with our spouse, but we attach to many people. When they hurt, we hurt. Their struggles become our struggles–not in an enmeshed, co-dependent way, but in an INTERdependent way.
Thanks again for your thoughts, because I think this is a really important issue.
I see!
Thanks for clarifying, shovelbomb. That makes more sense now.
I don’t have biological brothers (only the one [younger] sister), so I’m not sure exactly how that relationship really should “look.” But I do have male cousins!
And over the years, some of them have become like brothers to me — I feel genuine affection toward them and desire God’s best for them and do sense that they return that type of regard.
Yes, that sort of open-hearted goodwill and honest communication among one another I certainly can heartily cheer on and can try to foster in my own little corner of the world.
Thank you for that encouragement.
Learn from others.
There’s another category that could be added here – someone who has had a few relationships that didn’t work out, and is now enduing the long dry spell of nothing work out, and no prospects even on the horizon. That feeling is pretty much the same those feelings of being unlovable more than just creep in – they can dominate your thinking. Loneliness can be an absolutely crushing, devastating feeling. I have much sympathy for all the young single men and women out there (being single myself) who have felt unloveable at times, because I have felt that way myself.
Hi All!
Not only did I enjoy the blog entry, but I also enjoyed the ensuing conversation; thanks guys. So how to write this without going on and on & all over the place, though, technically, since this is about the emotional plane, it would be appropriate.
To the entry specifically, I am glad that this highlighted the pain of being unwanted. I think it is something that is greatly overlooked in our society, and the emotional toll it takes on a person can be, well, fatal. So I thought Lindsee did a great job of balancing the truth of Christ’s love, without minimizing or belittling the very real pain an unloved person can feel:
However, as we mature and become more like Christ, my prayer is that we would let the Lord tend to that sting and replace it with joy. That is the beauty of getting older; you know how to tend to that sting when it rises up in you.
Sometimes time only causes it to metastasize into something far uglier, and more entrenched. But I really liked the idea, and I can see the truth in it; both intellectually and personally, so I wanted to highlight it.
I couldn’t really relate to Taylor’s song, and I listened to it just to be sure. But that’s also why I liked the entry: it gave me a glimpse into an experience I didn’t have, because of the specifics of growing up as me, where I am. Lindsee says this:
Taylor is right, is she not? If a fifteen-year-old girl heard the words I love you from a hunk of a boy, she’s going to believe him, no doubt.
Um, no. Even as a teen, my first thought would be “Um, ok, but I am so not sleeping with you!” So in some ways the song surprises me, because I thought the trend is for children to become savvier as each generation passes.
And lastly, to broaden my gaze a bit, I was a bit troubled by the implications. If Lindsee places herself in the unwanted category, then has this woman really gone through HS, uni, and to the age of 26 w/o someone being attracted to her, asking her out, or trying to engage her romantically? Or have they, but they just weren’t the right fit? It could go either way, especially as she talks about not settling for the first person who shows interest, so maybe she has had one or two. But coming off reading the most recent CDC report on marriage stats, seeing the numbers dwindle, and the age of first-time nuptials increasing at an amazing pace, just makes me wonder why. Why would this woman have to wait so long? What is happening in the believing community, since we, at least, give lip service to esteeming the institution. And no, I am not talking about in the micro. One person’s life can show a variety of factors. But when those anecdotes start to add up, then we need to start looking at the possible universal strains.
Yeah, too long, I’m jumping to part 2!
Thanks again for the thread!
p.s. – one more thing, since I think it better fits here. The one who’s experienced sparse relations is, to me, akin to the person who’s had sex a couple times and then goes through a drought for years. It would be better to be either camp than there: having just enough of a taste to know what it feels like, but having to deal with the absence.
I liked the larger, societal issues regarding emotion that you all brought up, so that’s what I wanted to explore a bit here. But I’ll frame a good portion of it around shovelbomb’s stuff.
would you still feel unloved (especially at 15) when an opposite-sex person told you “I love you” (and meant it) if you were not attracted to them? What if he/she followed you around and showered you with constantly attention?
Hey there!
You mean would you still feel loved if someone loved you that deeply, but you weren’t attracted to them? I was going to say absolutely, but truthfully it depends. It was the one thing I didn’t wholly love about the article. I still got the feeling that the unloved person, especially if she is able to ground herself spiritually, is still being loved by a whole host of people: friends, family, even perhaps church.
But there is another group who is not loved. At all. They do not hear it from their dysfunctional parent(s); they do not hear it from their superficial friends, if they even have friends; they don’t receive affection or even congeniality from teachers, or other adults in their lives. And for them, a man who is positively wretched, but shows that much interest in you will definitely tempt you. There have been times where I’ve seen, first hand, women with men who were incredibly toxic. And when you looked in their eyes, you knew they knew it as well. But they were so absolutely starved for any kind of affection, they tolerated him, even though, like a vampire of sorts, he was draining, and not feeding any emotional need…not in a real way.
Our culture…is so emotionally disconnected, everyone seems to believe that a romantic relationship is the only place one can stop being…emotionally invulnerable. This is why premarital sex and pornography is the norm.
You know, we’re the least affectionate nation either out of the industrialized world, or period (I’d have to check). So I agree that many people are waiting to be truly loved and emotionally open until marriage. But in order to change this, you’d have to radically alter some of the factors that cause this, and that can be a tough undertaking; it’s necessary, but not that easy.
The U.S has an interesting combination of factors that don’t encourage bonding outside of marriage. The basic nucleus is the immediate family. Nothing wrong with that, but couple it with an economic system that requires long hours to not even get ahead, but stay afloat. You simply don’t have time for the types of bonding that form genuine relationships. When I have lamented about friendship issues in the past, I was often told what I needed was a partner; as if what I was asking of a friend was unreasonable. It’s why however many friends you had during your schooling years, deeply drops once you graduate and enter the work world. And while work friends can be great, you’re certainly going to think twice about truly being open with them, when it could be your livelihood on the line. So you have connection, but not a truly fulfilling one (save the few work friends who do become just plain friends).
It’s as if our lives are apportioned, and the only acceptable person you can ask for quality time is either people of your former immediate family (parent, siblings), or your future immediate family (spouse). And family isn’t always a help either…
When I talk about being open and honest with others… I just mean the normal thing that happens between siblings. There’s affection, real love, trust, and playfulness that characterizes a safe relationship.
Who says that’s normal, lol? There are quite a few siblings who can’t stand each other; you can at least choose your friends. Even if things aren’t so terrible, your siblings still may not be people who you trust with your emotional self, or even trust at all, even if you do love them, and want their best.
Add to that, being a Christian does seem to complicate things. I agree that part of it is this idea of “guarding your heart” to the point where we’ve forgotten how to relate. But I also think part of this has to do with guarding our walk. Connection forms in vulnerability, and we are at our most vulnerable when we are at our most flawed – be it real or perceived. And God forbid truly, if we were to do that! “It’s better to not even say you’re a Christian, if you’re going to behave like that.” I’ve heard that said, and I am not sure how I feel about it. It’s great to want to represent Jesus in the best possible light. But sometimes revealing that stuff is the better way to do it. And you would think that only applies to non-believers. But when constantly faced with the prospect of being judged by your fruits, I can see Christians keeping all of that to themselves. If the pre-pentecost Peter were alive today, do we really think he would share how he denied Christ not once, but thrice? Me thinks no.
So, again, I agree that the church should be the place where the hurting, and/or disconnected go to find grace, peace, encouragement, and love. But the current culture, and the larger culture it’s embedded in, have produced some serious road blocks. So I don’t actually blame a person for then wanting to be married, since there’s nothing wrong with it, and there, hopefully, they can find the outlet they desire. Of course, that worries me, because it can put a strain on that very union. The question is what to do. Specific ministries? Prayer? Advocate for more time off, similar to other countries? All of the above? And there are probably a host of other things I am missing as well.
All of this is food for thought, so thanks again all!