A Lovely asks:

I was involved with someone who essentially ended up jilting me.  Clearly, he was a jerk.  My mind understands that, but my heart doesn’t seem to get it.  What’s the best way to get over a man?  Is it really just time?

It’s been two months and I’m tired of waiting for me to be OK.

- Jilted 

Mending a broken heart takes time.  But the amount of time it takes can be dramatically shortened, if you learn the art of reframing.

Reframing involves seeing things from a different perspective.  Here’s an example: 

The situation: Say a university or college student breaks his leg during summer vacation. He is crestfallen, because he can no longer play tennis and golf with his family and friends.

The reframing: A few days later, he realizes that he now has the quiet, alone time to learn how to play the guitar, something he had always wanted to do but had been too busy to attempt. He then discovers he has a great aptitude for music and becomes a decent guitar player by summer’s end.  One year later, he changes his major to music. After graduation he embarks on a successful music career.

The healing perspective: Years later, his friends recall how unfortunate his leg fracture was that summer, and he says, “Breaking my leg was the best thing that ever happened to me!” From then on, whenever he is disabled by injury or illness, he recalls the lesson and is far less despondent over his temporary disability than he otherwise would have been, as he takes the opportunity to do something novel.

Your heart is sad now because it remembers your ex as a loving and caring person, even if that wasn’t necessarily the case.  Meanwhile, your mind knows that your loving ex ended up being a jerk.  But hearts are simple things: they can’t understand that first your ex was loving and then he became a jerk.  Your heart just assumes that he was loving all along, and the breakup was for reasons beyond his control.  That sort of frame means you’ll take months or years to get over him.

To get over a broken heart, it helps to reframe your relationship.  Odds are, your ex wasn’t a loving person who became a jerk at the end.  Remember all those times he was inconsiderate and rude when you guys were together?  He was probably a jerk all along, but you were so in love that you couldn’t see it until the end.  That’s something simple that even a broken heart can understand.

Lovelies, what do you think?  Do you have any advice for Jilted? 

You can buy the print above at Shirae’s etsy shop.

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