Jessie Stephens — Heartbreak

Yumi
Do you remember the first time you had your heart broken? The breakup that left you reeling, doubled over crying, or staring up at the ceiling blubbing, why me? Why didn't they love me? There is something so inherently painful about that kind of heartbreak to the point where it actually does feel physically painful. And even though it's something that nearly all of us can relate to, heartbreak still isn't taken very seriously. It's thought of as teenage girl stuff, as write about it in your diary stuff, build a bridge and get over it, sweetheart. One person who understands the true severity of this particular kind of pain is author Jessie Stephens. She wrote a whole book about it called Heart Sick. I chatted to Jessie about why heartbreak can be absolute agony. For the Ladies We Need To Talk episode, Heartbreak, Why Does It Hurt So Bloody Much? So I started by asking Jessie about her own gut-wrenching heartbreak.

Jessie
My worst was the one that caught me the most by surprise. And that was the end of more of a situation-ship than an official relationship. It was short term. It had only been, I can't even remember, maybe six weeks. And I'd allowed the thought to enter my head, which was, I think he might be the one. And in fact, I thought he liked me more than I liked him. And there was sort of ghosting involved. It was really awful. And then I think he got back with his ex-girlfriend. But the reason why I say it is my worst was my friends hadn't even met him yet. I felt so ridiculous that I would be this hurt and that I'd have a cry over it. And it just really, it was an assault on the ego. And I thought, all the advice I get is to pull up my socks and get back on the apps. But I feel awful about myself. I feel really destroyed by this. And I don't even know what to call it because heartbreak doesn't seem like the right word. But I think it was, it was sort of a heartbreak.

Yumi
That's so interesting because you felt like you didn't have permission because it was so short-lived.

Jessie
Yeah. And I think what I had done, which we often do in the early stages of a relationship, is we start inventing a future. Yeah, that's what you do. Yeah. And so I had started playing all of that out and I felt so stupid for letting myself get ahead of myself, which is what the brain does. And I'd really liked him. And I think as well, I hadn't seen the flaws yet. When you're in a long-term relationship, when I've been heartbroken, I've written a list of all the things I always hated about them. And that helps. When you haven't known them for long enough, they're still this ideal person that you've really, that isn't actually resembling who they are. They're imagined. And so because of that, I couldn't see the flaws and therefore I couldn't justify why it would end.

Yumi
Oh, and so when you try to write this list, there's nothing to write.

Jessie
Yeah. Apart from the fact that he dumped you. Exactly. Exactly. And he seemed so perfect otherwise and it felt like it had ended before it had really begun, which felt so cruel. That is cruel.

Yumi
But do you know what an interesting thing about what you're describing is when you talk to really long-term couples who've been together for 70 years, they do often know in that first month, oh, I knew it was going to, we were going to be together forever. So of course you're allowed to forecast a happily ever after.

Jessie
Yes. And when you've been dating for a while and you know how brutal and awful it is, when you come across that, it's so exciting and you're allowed to place value on it. I think especially maybe as women, we sort of, we love our independence and we don't want to be a cliche of someone who needs a man. But I think you then beat yourself up a bit because you're going, you shouldn't be so sad about this. There's no word around it. There's no ritual. There's no cultural understanding of it. You can't call in sick and say someone I was seeing for six weeks just dumped me. You sound pathetic. But it's really hurtful.

Yumi
Tell me how heartbreak manifested physically for you.

Jessie
I think of it as an actual sickness because it's nausea. In the past, from a long-term relationship, I remember throwing up, insomnia, the anxiety. And this was also the ghosting experience of just not being able to settle. It's like you are so on edge. You're in this state of constant anxiety. I remember once in my early 20s, I was dumped by someone and it really, really hurt. And I slipped a disc in my back. And I don't know if the two things are related, but in my head, I think it was like my whole body went, I'm just falling apart. It sat in my body somehow. But I do think it is this embodied experience that you feel it in every part of you. I interviewed people for a book I wrote about heart sickness and every single person, the connection there was an embodied sickness. Wow. And really clear symptoms of nausea, insomnia, not being able to concentrate, often a real lack of appetite. It was honestly like an illness. There was one who told a story about vomiting into a rose bush. That being her first reaction. There was another who just felt as though she was drifting through this life she wasn't especially in or she couldn't touch anymore for months and months and months. And a few of them, it was a catalyst for what we would probably describe as a situational depression that was triggered by that because it felt like life had lost its meaning for a while. So there was a psychological pain, but the physical pain, I didn't realize that it was that universal. I didn't realize that that sickness, that nausea, the sweating, the like adrenaline, the obsession with your phone, the checking the profiles, the wanting to know where they are and playing games with yourself going, I won't look or I won't message and then faulting. I didn't realize that that wasn't just me. I thought I was a little bit unhinged, but it turns out we're all a bit like that.

Yumi
One thing that I haven't heard talk about yet that you've mentioned, ego, the blow that it takes. Tell me about feeling that ruin of your ego.

Jessie
The ego we don't talk about enough because it leads to a personal crisis that goes so far beyond what the other person represents. It's not about them. It's about you. And when you're in the early stages of a relationship, the person that you're with can serve as a bit of a hall of mirrors and you look really good. And it is addictive because you think they're seeing things in me. I've never seen it myself. I'm so funny. I'm beautiful. I'm successful. I love this person. Then what can happen is the hall of mirrors shifts and you can become very ugly because if you let someone else's perspective of you shape how you feel about yourself, it's a very dangerous trap. And that's where I think we see the destruction of the ego. And that manifests in weird ways because you'll notice, especially women who I think are often a little bit more emotionally mature and have a bit of a sense of ritual. They'll cut their hair. They'll buy a new wardrobe. They might quit their job. They blow up their lives because it's this reinvention of self. And who am I if I am not with them? What sits beneath all of this?

Yumi
Can you talk us through that dialogue that does go through your head when someone's dumped you?

Jessie
You start to try and see yourself through their eyes. And so the I am disgusting. I am not worthy. I am not enough. And because intimacy is often involved, it becomes deeply connected to things like your body and a rejection of your whole self. And when someone knows you better than anyone's ever known you and they got to the very bottom and they've decided I don't like it, that's as pretty bad as rejection gets because it is a really holistic sense of there's something about you that isn't right. Which of course isn't logical. Everyone gets rejected. It's not an actual objective assessment on your worth as a human being. But it definitely feels like it.

Yumi
It really feels like it. And just to point this back at you, Jessie, in your situationship, you were on your A game still. You hadn't gotten sloppy.

Jessie
Exactly.

Yumi
So how darethey reject that?

Jessie
I was still washing my hair. I told my funny jokes. I had my anecdotes that I had prepared. Yep. And still it wasn't enough.

Yumi
I know. But why don't we blame ourselves instead of looking at it like that? Yeah. So much easier to go, you're shit. Yeah. You're a lousy, awful person. You will never find love again.

Jessie
And we all feel it. And that's what I discovered through my research is that because I'm a woman, I assumed that this was more deeply felt by women. And it certainly is not. It's something that is so universal in same sex relationships with men, young and old. I tell a story in the book about a man I met who was in his 60s. He'd had this incredible marriage and children and found the love of his life. But when I asked him about his first heartbreak, he broke down in tears and said, I can't believe how much it still hurts. This was a 14 year old who broke up with him and he had to ride the bus with her every day. And his proximity to his grief still shocked him. And that made me realize that sometimes it remains an open wound. And that doesn't mean that you're not over something or that you haven't found the right person or that you'd want them back. You certainly wouldn't. But again, I think it comes down to the ego. It was the shattering of the ego that's as bad as it ever gets in your life.

Yumi
Can I just suggest something else too about why some of us don't recover from heartbreaks? When I was in year two, I must have been eight or something, eight years old. Chris Stacey was my boyfriend and he dumped me, but he never told me why. And I wondered for years about why I never got closure on that. And I still feel, and I don't want to be crying about this when I'm 80. So is this a thing where you need closure?

Jessie
This is definitely part of it. And I think that if you can make sense of it, then that helps. But I wonder if that was the situationship thing I had as well, which was I could never put a full stop there and never fully understand it. And that is why something like ghosting stings so much, because there are so many unanswered questions.

Yumi
Yeah. Do you think that feeling of your worst heartbreak ever really leaves you?

Jessie
I don't. I reckon you can do everything you like and you can think it did and you can move on with the perfect person. But it is so foundational to your story and your evolution that I don't think it does. I think it sticks with you.

Yumi
How long is an average period of grieving for heartbreak?

Jessie
It's a really interesting question because I can answer how long I reckon we are given. And I think it's honestly about two weeks. I think so too. I reckon that it is. Your mates will give you two weeks of whinging. People will go, okay, yes, very sad. Maybe if it's a divorce, maybe you get a little longer. But I can tell you that the actual process is a lot longer than that. And as anyone who has any expertise on grief will tell you, it's also not linear. It's not a matter of, oh, I'm starting to feel better. Then you'll get knocked down six, 12 months down the track. And it all comes back to this thing that happened, like that's unresolved. So interestingly, the people I spoke to in the book, I mean, there were people who their heartbreak was six or seven years ago. And they were so damaged by it that they still hadn't started dating again. And their lives had been so upended that they couldn't imagine putting their kind of toe back in the ocean. There were others after maybe six months that felt like they could. And the difference, I'm not sure. I can't even tell what the difference is necessarily. But I admired the honesty that they had about the process and going, I know this isn't a cool thing to say, but I am still destroyed by this.

Yumi
In common, did any of them have an explanation of what helped turn things around?

Jessie
Yes. And this is anecdotally from what they told me, but also from the research I did, which says that grief as a feeling must move. So if you let it sit there and you don't do anything with it, then it calcifies. So it was the people who, for example, journaled or went overseas or who talked about it. That was a big difference, actually, how much you were willing to chat to people about it and actually bare your soul a bit. Some people wrote letters to the person that they never sent, but they found that quite cathartic and therapeutic. They were the people that probably fared a little better. I write in the book about there's this country in Africa, there's this fantastic ritual where they have a grief altar and it's not a competition. So whether it's death or divorce or whatever it is, you bring something that represents the grief, you put it on the altar and everyone stamps their feet and they sing. And it translates to mean something like, we cannot go through this alone. And they scream, they cry, they don't go into details, but it is a way of almost excommunicating that disgusting feeling from your body. And I think that's really cool. Like the idea that you'd sit there together and acknowledge it and see each other's grief. Because, yeah, the absence of ritual means there's no beginning or end or process.

Yumi
Do you think society respects heartbreak?

Jessie
No, no. And when they don't respect something, they relate it to little girls because little girls are the people they respect the least. So heartbreak is for 13 year old girls who have been rejected and there's like a pink broken heart and you write in your journal and you cry because you have too many feelings and you're a bit annoying actually. So I think that's sort of where it still sits. Even the way that romantic comedy in that genre, and maybe this is why I was compelled to write about it, trivialises and patronises the experience as though it's something silly. I think that says a lot about our lack of respect of it. And we like to hurry people along. We're sort of just comfortable. It's the same with the death of someone you love. People sort of go, all right, can you tell me when you're going to be feeling better? Because this is getting a little, you know, I'm a bit over it. Yeah, a bit repetitive. A bit repetitive and you feel a bit stuck. And can we talk about something else? Because you're being a real downer right now. That is not the way the human brain works.

Yumi
I remember when I had a really bad heartbreak about 13 years ago. It went on for months, Jessie, months. And I would wake up and go, okay, you don't, this is done now. Like I get it. But also, can you stop feeling like this all the time? Yeah. So what can you do to fix it? What can we do to process it more quickly? Because it is boring and repetitive.

Jessie
Well, I actually think that that process that a lot of us engage in is probably the least helpful because you start to employ almost a self one and a self two in terms of you're getting angry at yourself for what you're feeling. And psychologists sort of talk about the inner child thing. It's like you've also just got to let that person feel it rather than have this analysis and criticism that you're being a big baby, which isn't actually true. But this is why I think writing can really help because you work out what's behind it all, which is often, I don't like how this has made me feel about me. And where can I begin with building that self-esteem back up? And I wouldn't say that the best response is to go and meet someone else. And I know some people do that. But then you bring that crap into other relationships repeatedly rather than having dealt with it before you bring someone else into that mess.

Yumi
I don't know about that. I used to have a theory that you need to interrupt your grief flow with some dick.

Jessie
Do you reckon that works?

Yumi
I don't know. But I always thought you just need a bit of interruption dick and then you'll get to the next, to the real dick. You know what it is?

Jessie
It's a fantastic distraction. Right. Because you're not kind of alone and you're like, how much of this is about loneliness and going... And horniness.

Yumi
And also, I used to think I don't want to remember their body as the last body my body was close to. Yes. On somebody else's body.

Jessie
And to get those butterflies and adrenaline happening again in a long term relationship, you've lost that. Yeah. So you go, hang on, there are some exciting things in the future. But what I've found is that I have had points where I've not been ready to do that. And then I felt myself be quite confronted by whether it is another rejection or almost feeling like someone's trespassed or something into my space.

Yumi
It's being non-consensual with yourself, I think.

Jessie
That's exactly it. ExactlyThat's exactly it. it. And you have consented, but you feel like you're not being honest with yourself about why you're there. And I would go, all right, I've slept with this person because I thought it would make me feel better. But I was actually using it as a means to an end because I wanted a cuddle. And now they haven't given me the cuddle and I feel very ripped off. But that's not what we ever promised to. No. So I admire people that are very clear about, you know what, I'm just going to tick this box because it's what I need tonight. But I think, yeah, you've got to be quite honest with yourself about that.

Yumi
And you've got to know what you're getting. You want your box ticked really well.

Jessie
Yeah, exactly.

Yumi
What is the value of heartbreak?

Jessie
There's so much value. Think of all the art in the world that would never have been created if it weren't for heartbreak. The best songs, the best paintings, the best plays. Greatness and introspection and perspective comes from deep wells of pain. And I also think it just serves as a reminder of what matters. And to then be of service to someone who is in the depth of that makes you a very useful, good, good friend. It has made me a much, much better friend. And this lends itself to my theory that people who have been heartbroken are the best kind of people because you can tell by the look in someone's eye whether they've been heartbroken or whether they're going, I don't get it. But they also have a depth of experience. They speak that language and they know what it is to feel all those revolting things and to build yourself back up. And that is a strengthening, kind of resilient, creating human experience. And I think in that way, it's a real gift.

Yumi
That was the author of Heartsick, Jessie Stephens, speaking to me for the Ladies We Need To Talk episode on heartbreak. You can listen to the full episode right here in the ABC Listen app.