Breakups can flip your whole world upside down, and in this week’s video, Matthew and Jay Shetty get real about what those moments actually feel like. They discuss why healing doesn’t follow a timeline, and why some seasons of pain simply have to be lived through at their own pace.

 

They also talk about how heartbreak can shape you in unexpected ways and why “right person, wrong time” doesn’t exist. Don’t miss this honest conversation between two friends about finding strength in the very moments you wish you could fast-forward.

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Matthew Hussey: 

Let’s talk a bit about breakups, because it seems to be a path that you have to walk and have to take, and there’s no real acceleration or there’s not. As you said, there’s not like I’m going to get over this breakup in three months, right? There’s no timeline or deadline that you can set on it, but it’s just uncomfortable and it’s almost like sitting in discomfort.

 

What do we do when we’re sitting in that discomfort? Well, when you’re in the depths of it because there’s different phases, right? Like there’s a certainly a phase of any heartbreak when it’s genuine, deep heartbreak where you are just questioning your existence, where you are like, I this, you know, I remember having my own heart broken and sitting on this door, the doorstep of my house, with a friend of mine, and just with tears in my eyes saying to him, I just feel like I’m not good enough.

 

Like that was my deep sense was that I am not good enough, and if I was good enough, I would have been able to make this work. And and that’s a that’s a horrible place to be. And you’re, you know, we have to have compassion for ourselves in those times because it’s brutally difficult. It’s a time where we just need love, and we need to celebrate the fact that we got through another day and that we got and managed to get out of bed today.

 

And, you know, it was an act of it was a heroic act for me to just get out of bed. We then have to you know, I always think that all of these moments give us gifts that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. And the worst pain of my life has given me access to gears that I didn’t know I had.

 

And as much as no one wants to hear it when they’re in it, those gears turn out to be really valuable. They really do. I mean, we all choose suffering in our lives like we we choose to go to the gym. That’s choosing suffering. We choose like to write a book at this, choosing a form of suffering. We choose to make a podcast, or we choose to climb a literal mountain, or like we choose pain in our lives regularly because we know that it gives us there are benefits to be had.

 

I have to argue that the benefit I have gotten from the pain that I didn’t choose has been no less valuable than the benefit I’ve gotten from the pain I did choose. In fact, actually, I think the most valuable pain I’ve ever had is the pain I didn’t choose. And when you realize that, you can kind of almost, I think look at some of the worst moments of your life as like a menu of pain.

 

And beside the item on the menu is the very specific, unique benefits that can only come from this kind of pain. And you can kind of imagine yourself choosing like retroactively choosing that pain, which is a very valuable thing to do because there’s I was told by a psychologist about an experiment on rats where, one rat was on a wheel and was just given, you know, like the free rein to just run whenever it wanted to run.

 

There was another rat. This was right. A rat. B was connected to that wheel. He was on another wheel that was connected to a wheel. And any time rat I chose to run, rat B had to run right. So both doing the same amount of exercising. But at the end of the experiment, rat race shows all the positive markers of exercise, and rat B shows all the negative markers of stress.

 

So, so same amount of exercise was the difference. Well, right. I chose to run rat Bay didn’t. And that there’s something profound about that to me. Because if we can take a situation that we didn’t choose, who would choose to be heartbroken, right. It’s the worst. It’s a terrible pain. But but what is in that pain? You did realize, like, there is something here that I’m going to gain from this experience that I couldn’t have any other way, that if I look on that menu of pain, this one has some really good benefits.

 

Like this one has some really amazing stuff who I’m going to have to become to get through this, what I’m going to have to learn the way I’m going to have to get comfortable even just to get through a weekend right now on my own, is is going to be this unbelievable feat. And to get comfortable in my own company and to sit in this pain and it there’s such profound benefits from that.

 

What if I did actually look at those benefits and say this so powerful that I’m going to choose this pain so that I can experience those benefits. And so you, you turn yourself from rat B to rat A, and all of a sudden you’re not a victim of that pain anymore. You’re, you’re the beneficiary of these exquisite gifts that you could only get this way.

 

And that that’s only that’s one tool I’ve used to get through some of the worst, worst pain of my life. And then on a on a psychological level with heartbreak. What I always remind people is that if anyone who doesn’t choose you cannot be for you. They if they don’t see you like what is a relationship is someone sees you, they accept you and they want that.

 

That’s that’s the most beautiful part of a relationship. So if someone doesn’t see you and accept you and want what they see, then this relationship is missing the most beautiful part of any relationship. It shouldn’t even be, you know, it shouldn’t be desirable at that stage because it’s not. It has failed. The fundamental will test of what makes a relationship worth having.

 

We’re not talking about a person who, you know, in at least the case, I feel we’re talking about the person who was taken from us by life. We’re talking about a person who’s just walking around somewhere, still existing on the planet, but choosing not to be with us. That should lose its romance to us, you know, and and to say, well, if that’s the other game we play, as if it was a different time in life, if they were a bit older, they would have been ready to commit.

 

If they had been in a different phase where they weren’t so busy with their work, they might have had the space to really give to this relationship. But they said their work isn’t allowing them to. If it is like we go through all these scenarios where it forces us into this sad love song of right person, wrong time.

 

And that’s a really, like, pernicious story. That’s a very dangerous story because it it takes what belongs in the realm of science fiction and brings it into our reality. Like when we’re thinking about an ex from like five years ago and we’re like, I miss them. I don’t know what you know. You don’t even know who they are anymore.

 

That was five years ago. There are different person now. In many ways. You’re a different person now in any. Anyway, if you got together now, you’d be getting together as different people. You miss a ghost person doesn’t exist anymore in the way that you think they do. You know? And when you’re saying, oh, if only we met five years from now, it would have worked.

 

In what parallel universe? It’s a but this is science fiction. Like it’s not it didn’t happen in this universe. So it’s it’s like it is wishing for a parallel universe where everything, all the dominoes unfolded in a different way. It’s not this universe. So we just we have to get out of this mindset because it gets us both into, a science fiction story that doesn’t really exist.

 

I don’t believe in the right person at the wrong time. It’s the right person is right in their personality. They’re ready and their life is compatible with yours. If you’re missing one of those three things, then it’s not the right person. The right person has to be more than someone who you have a great time with, and you like who they are and have great conversation and great intimacy that can’t.

 

That’s not the only criteria for someone who’s right. So we have to stop telling ourself the story that someone who, you know, broke up with us or it was bad timing or whatever is the right person for us. That is a that is just a story. It is not reality. The right person is the person. It happens with.

 

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