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What You Want to Say to the One Whose Heart You Broke

You’ve exhausted your apologies, but a part of you still wants to reach out. Here’s what you want to say to the man whose heart you broke.

what you want to say to the one who's heart you broke

What else can you say to the person whose heart you broke, aside from an apology? Nothing. All you can say is “I’m sorry.” You can’t change anything with words. All you can do is help people heal. It’s been a while since I talked to that person. I bet he’s changed – actually, I’m sure he has.

A lot of men have come into my life – good guys, bad guys, cheaters, lovers, etc. I don’t know how much of an impact I made on them, but I do know that I left a mark on the person whose heart I broke. How do I know? Because I was there before, during and after I broke his heart. So, here’s what I want to say to him: I am so sorry that I broke your heart, but I am happy that you’re finally okay now.

The words I want to say

Saying sorry would not have done any good, if you were still in that dark place I left you in. If I apologized then, you would have just been angry. You wouldn’t have seen anything good in my intentions. At that moment, I was the enemy. I was the enemy you still loved. I was the enemy you couldn’t stop loving.

But things changed. They changed for the best. You see that now, right? I know you thought that my breaking your heart was the worst thing that I could ever do, but let’s admit that there are far worse things that I could have done.

I could have cheated on you. I could have physically hurt you. I could have been such a horrible person that your love might not have meant anything at all. But I didn’t do those things, and I wasn’t that type of person. Maybe that’s why your heart broke – because I couldn’t be a bad enough person to make you fall out of love with me.

I may sound like I’m bragging and maybe I am. I am proud to have been loved by someone like you. I am proud to know that I was a good enough person to earn the affection of someone as wonderful as you. You’re the only person who made my life feel valid when I saw myself as no one special.

If you weren’t there to love me, I don’t think I could have survived. The best thing about having people who love you – aside from your family – is that it proves that someone else out there isn’t genetically programmed to appreciate your existence. You just did it. You opened yourself up to me and showed me that people were capable of loving.

The decision

Breaking your heart was not a premeditated act. I didn’t go to you knowing that I was going to break your heart. I just wanted someone to talk to about punk rock music that sounds good on the stereo, but looks bad on my jeans. I wanted to laugh about Ren and Stimpy, because no one else had time to watch them at our age. I needed to vent about my friends, because girls couldn’t be trusted. I wanted a friend.

When I was younger, I saw that most of the insecure girls in my class – including me – were more interested in getting boys’ attention. When I became your friend, I honestly couldn’t feel that drive to make you appreciate the superficiality of my clothes, hair and makeup. Your validation wasn’t necessary, because I was more interested in the things that didn’t make me feel small. I was more interested in the things that made me feel present, happy and relaxed.

Unfortunately, we don’t decide what happens in our lives. We don’t decide who we are supposed to fall in love with. Ultimately, the most we could control was how we would react to things. You reacted positively. I reacted negatively. Sadly, that was probably one of the rare times when opposites refused to attract.

If feelings were tangible, I might have heard a crack when I broke your heart. Little did I know that you used some sort of denial tape to patch it up. After a while, I broke it again. A chunk probably fell out, but you decided to slap on some delusional glue and put it back in place.

Why did you do that? Why would you purposely put yourself in a position where someone could keep bashing away at your heart without any regard?

What you taught me

I couldn’t understand your motivations, and neither could I do anything to stop you. You were very resilient. Any girl would have appreciated what you did – from a different perspective. I doubt that they would have done that if they were in my place.

Why? Because we are human. I broke your heart for a reason. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but at least I finally discovered it, as I started living with the thought of what I did still floating in my mind.

Some people will coast through life without breaking someone’s heart, but the majority of us will have done it at one point or another. I don’t recommend anyone going out there to try and break a few hearts, but I will tell them that it’s okay and it happened for a reason.

The reason why I broke your heart is probably because not doing so would have broken mine. Imagine if I didn’t break your heart, yours would be whole but mine wouldn’t be. I’m sorry that I couldn’t do anything to keep that from happening. It was just the way it was meant to be.

Living your life the way someone else wants is not something borne out of love. It is done from a deluded ideal that making sacrifices for the people who care about you will make you happy. Sometimes it does, but I knew in my heart that it wasn’t the case here. I cared about you, but I knew that nothing would change the way I feel.

The aftermath

I’m not sure how my actions affected you. I only saw things from the surface. I saw you suffer. I saw you get through it. I also saw that you were finally rid of the effects of that memory. I doubt that you’d ever forget what happened, but at least I see that it no longer holds any dark images in your life right now.

We never talked about it, so I wouldn’t know how you feel about the past. That’s just as well, because dredging up those memories wouldn’t benefit either of us. I think the good things that happened because of it are shown in who we are now and what we’ve accomplished in life.

If something bad had happened to you – if my actions ended up ruining your life, I wouldn’t know what would have happened to me. I guess we’re both lucky in that sense. Some people whose hearts were broken couldn’t recover. I just wish that they had the same views as we did.

I am not here to take credit for the pain I caused you and the benefits you reaped from it. It was all you. You made it through by yourself. Your friends and family may have helped, but you were strong enough to push through it.

I wish I didn’t have to break your heart for us to reach this part of our lives. I’m sorry that it had to happen, but I have no regrets about it. Just know that even though I did break your heart, I think mine broke a little too when I did it.

[Read: Abandonment issues and how they affect relationships]

There are questions, thoughts and unsent messages you may want to say to the one whose heart you broke, but never could. Getting it out of your chest, whether or not the person in question knows about it, can help heal the oft-neglected pain of the one who broke another’s heart.

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Danielle Anne
Those who can’t do, teach. I can neither do nor teach as well as others, but I can try. Aside from being a writer, I am also a physical therapist. My dream is...
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