Heartbreak hurts. There’s just no amount of sugarcoating that anyone could do to make the experience easier to deal with. It sucks whenever you have your heart broken. It’s always going to be a tough ordeal that you would have to go through. However, it comes with the risk of falling in love. Whenever you want to open yourself up to the love of another person, you are also opening yourself up to the chance that you might get hurt.
However, there is a way for you to minimize the risk. Yes, you want to be opening yourself up to love. But that doesn’t mean that you should just completely let your guard down and allow yourself to recklessly get into a relationship with someone. You still want to be protecting yourself to the best of your abilities. You still want to be making sure that you aren’t opening yourself up to an immense amount of emotional pain.
Here are 10 things that you need to do in order to protect yourself better against heartbreak.
1. Learn to manage your expectations better.
You don’t want to be expecting the world from a relationship right away. You need to stay realistic with your expectations. The more overblown your expectations are, the likelier it is that you’re going to end up getting hurt.
2. Be honest and open about your expectations.
Now that you have set your own expectations for one another, it’s important that you be honest and open about them with each other. Your partner is not a mind-reader. And they’re not going to be able to fulfill your expectations unless you communicate it to them in a very clear and honest manner.
3. Be realistic about your chances.
You always want to be hopeful with whatever relationship you get yourself into. However, it can’t be blind optimism. You are only setting yourself up for failure if you blow your chances out of proportion.
4. Show a willingness to compromise.
You really need to be able to show a willingness to compromise whenever you’re dating someone. You have to understand that relationships are always going to require two people coming together and meeting each other halfway. And if you want to give your relationship a shot, you need to be willing to adjust a little bit.
5. Don’t have sex right away.
Okay. There are plenty of couples out there who have sex early in the relationship and are still able to make their relationships last. It’s perfectly possible to have sex early on and still have a long-term relationship with one another. However, when you have sex with someone early on, it can cloud your inhibitions. Sex can lead you to behave and assess things in a very biased manner that may not be good for you.
6. Be very vigilant of how they act in times of stress.
It’s so easy to be at your best whenever things are going well and as expected. However, a person’s true colors tend to really show whenever you put them in positions of stress or turmoil. So, pay attention to how your partner might be conducting themselves whenever they are put in stressful situations or scenarios.
7. Listen to what your friends and family have to say.
Always pay attention to what your family and friends have to say about your relationship. Naturally, you would always be the one who makes the final decision with regards to your love life. But you always want to be opening yourself up to an outsider’s perspective. They might be seeing a few things that you’re missing.
8. Don’t lose yourself in the honeymoon period.
Every relationship is always going to go through some kind of honeymoon period. And it’s always important that you recognize that. It’s okay for you to want to really enjoy your honeymoon period. However, you don’t want to be getting lost in it to the point that you actually believe that your relationship is perfect and is without its fair share of hitches or setbacks.
9. Check-in on one another regularly.
Learn to check in on one another on a regular basis with regards to your feelings and thoughts about the relationship. There are plenty of people out there who just keep their ill feelings and negative emotions to themselves. And what ends up happening is that it deteriorates the relationship even further. It can drive two people further apart.
10. Don’t be afraid to walk away.
If you know that things just aren’t right for you, then make sure that you find the strength and willpower to walk away. Be honest with yourself. If things just aren’t meant to be, then there’s no point in forcing the issue. Don’t invest yourself further and further into something that you know isn’t going to last anyway.
