Love breakup and loneliness

Q: How to overcome loneliness after a love breakup? How do you cope when you have nobody to talk your heart out?

- Pramod, Hyderabad

Hi Pramod, I appreciate your discussion and agreeing to publish your issue; of course, I changed your name. Let us try to understand this love relationship among young people. Then we can learn about loneliness. Living alone and feeling lonely are both different. Why do people fall out of love? Some fall out after a few altercations, a few due to misunderstandings, a few due to parents’ pressure, a few due to their ideology, a few due to career incompatibility, etc. But falling out of love is as common as falling in love; the research says the first love always ends with a breakup. Rare of the rarest, it converts into marriage and sustains all hiccups in the life journey. As per the American psychologist Dr Stenberg who did extensive research about love among opp sex. As per his “love triangle theory.”

The couple must have intimacy, passion, and commitment; people must have the same intensity of these elements then the relationship continues and sustains for a long time (read a book on teenage love and development-amazon). Love Relationships fall out due to the incompatible attachment styles of the individuals in relationships.

What is the origin of loneliness? Loneliness often arises because we have not had our core emotional needs met as children. Loneliness isn’t being single or alone but occurs when one lacks sufficient social connections. Just like a plant needs water, sun and air, we need our core emotional needs to be met to grow. When people are in love relationships, they ignore all kinds of friendships, relatives, colleagues and friendships; they are totally engaged in nurturing the relationship, busy progressing in the relationship, ignoring all necessary life support systems. When the love relationship breaks then, they come out for help, but no one is visible, then they experience this despair and loneliness; one can overcome this loneliness first by working on a healthy mindset, learn to have helpful thoughts, learn a lesson from the relationship instead of thinking about revenge and protest for this lost relationship. Better meet a psychologist to come out of these harmful thoughts. Instead, consider how we are valuable as people, how we do achieve some of our goals, and all of us deserve to be loved by our family and friends. 1. Start connecting your friendships, and confess with them, 2. Pick up one physical game 3. If you are getting harmful and revenge thoughts about your ex-lover, think they are not helpful and visit a psychologist for therapy, 4. Breakups in love are very common. It is helpful to grow as a human being. 5. Try to socialise more, 6. Connect with the family 7. Try to help people who are deprived of things. This will engage you to have a meaningful connection with society. It allows you to come out of this loneliness. All the best.

(The writer is a counselling psychologist. www.younme.com)