How to Heal a Broken Heart

in pace. Our personal counselor and renowned relationship expert MICHAELA. Bone, and she has worked with will and I for many, many, many years, is here to help us cope with betrayal. I caught him entertaining several other men on social media rejection. He told me that he no longer has romantic feelings for me. Payne the passing of my mother in law. It was very painful tragedy. Called home and I got a live report of the house burning down, which was devastating.

In shadowed dreams, I get a call he was seeing another woman for nine months. I don't know how to go on from here. The number one topic you asked us to bring to the Red Table was how to deal with a broken heart. We have a very wise woman who is joining us to share wisdom and advice. She is an author, teacher, counselor, and a wonderful friend of the Smith family. Her name is MICHAELA. Bone and she has worked with Will and I for many, many many years. Welcome, We love having your year. I get

to actually touch the red table. Yes, I mean this has been a year. We have so many people that are dealing with so many different kinds of heartbreak. People are losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing their relationships. It's just it can be really overwhelming. It is heartbreaking. It's intense. MICHAELA. I know you had a really your heartbreak. I mean I remember that devastation. I lost my house, well my entire property in the Thomas fire. I wasn't home.

I saw something on Facebook and I called home and I got a live report of the house burning down, which was devastating. But the real heartbreak is that I lost some of my dogs and a lot of my livestock, a lot of my ducks and chickens and tortoises and turtles and cats. But the dogs were you know that my children. Yeah, And so there was devastation after devastation after devastation. It's certainly taught me about kind of the the heartbreak and the suffering that I was not aware of.

It's something when your entire existence is boiled down to this much dust. Because you are brilliant at what you do. You know, just as far as helping other people give you very difficult times, what do you think was some of the new wisdom that you acquired going through this experience in regards to dealing with heartbreak and loss. I think the most important thing is I really understood viscerally in my body. But there is kind of stages to

the grieving that you can't can't bypass. You have to accept that it sucks and not try to immediately whitewash and go what am I learning? So that's a bypass, it's a bypass. What I realized is that when people were dealing with me, they couldn't deal with the intensity of the pain, so they skipped over the pain. Somebody said to me four days after the fire, well, I guess now you've got a good lesson in non attachment.

That must be amazing, right. So stuff like that I know, and so I really learned for my work as well. The acknowledgement of the horror and mind you, one person's horror might not be another person's horror, right, but that doesn't matter. It's really really subjective and the pain is the pain is the pain, and so I think what was my biggest learning is that you have to acknowledge it. You can't skip over it. And when you do that, it gives you permission to grieve, and then the grieving

allows you to stay functional. What I did every morning before I even got up, I'd cry, and you know, crying is really really really healthy, and grow to move through it and then the tears wash out things. I have a question for you game, what has been your biggest heartbreak? I think this year it has really been the passing of my mother in law right right, you know, because yeah, to COVID it was very painful. It was

very very painful. And then not being able to gather to celebrate her life the way we ordinarily would that's very very tough. Have you had some romantic heartbreak in your life. I have had a lot of romantic heartbreak, and this one particular failure in one of my marriages that I really built up in my head that this was my one true love and I'll never I'll never love like this again. Yeah, it wasn't a divorce that

I wanted. But at the end of the day, when you really really look at the relationship, honestly, you go like this one going nowhere but tore right, We really feel like you have to kind of take some time and be honest with yourself. Yeah, Willow, what was your most recent heartbreak? You know, I've had some personal decisions that I needed to make this year that were really hard.

I had to just learn how to set some boundaries in my romantic relationship slash hips, and I'm so grateful that my partner was just open to what I had to say. And when you truly love someone, no matter what, you're gonna want what's best for them. I felt like I was almost making the situation bigger than it needed to be. And you guys really did a good job working it out together. MICHAELA helped lot. Wasn't really as

tough as you said. I was building it up to me and had such courage about it, and you were so clear that you wanted the best for both of you, and that's really quite extraordinary. Commendable baby steps. Yeah, I was actually saying to Jada, I had daughter envy for the first time in my life. I was the first time in my adult life. I was like, I had a daughter. I had a daughter, Like you can consider me your daughter. You You've helped me a lot, She's

helped us all a lot. Thank god you. Michaela. What about your mom? And let say, everybody's telling the story, what about yours? You know? I mean, I've had plenty of heartbreak in my life, devastating heartbreak. But what I'm still trying to learn is allowing for that, that tenderness versus going versus going into fight mode. I go and I go with MICHAELA knows I go straight into fight. And I think that has a lot to do with

the fear of being hurt. Yeah, you don't want to feel rejected, You don't want to feel unloved, right, being programmed and believe in girl, don't let those tears come. Don't let those tears come, because you will fall apart and you might not be able to put yourself back together again. But it takes a lot of just trusting yourself, you know, And a lot of times we don't have enough um self worth. Yes, we have some guests that are coming to our t t to speak to MICHAELA

first is Sarah from Denver, Colorado. Hey, Sarah, welcome, Thank you, thank you. Just over a year ago, I met a guy who I connected with so quickly and so deeply that I actually really felt like he was the guy for me, he was the one. And then he actually recently told me that he no longer has romantic feelings for me. And I'm really struggling with it, and I'm very much at the point in my life where I no longer want to pursue dating or pussy love. And

I apologize if I start to get emotional. I thought I did everything correctly. I'm becoming very fatigued on trying to brush it off and try again. You are absolutely right to feel like you don't want to do it anymore, because that's what happens first. You're so beaten down and it's so devastating you can't imagine doing it ever again. And of course you will do it again, and you will have learned something from it and you will be stronger for it. I guess I'm just in a space

where I'm almost thirty five. I've been trying this for a while, but I am kind of repeatedly broken up with so I kind of keep coming back to, like, what am I doing wrong that has kept me in the space for a decade. Now, you know, what would your guests be if I would say to you, what do you think you are doing? That makes it? So? I know that I do pick people who may not be as emotionally mature as I need them to be. My other concern has been that I am just too accessible.

If my ex would have called me at anytime he was ready to get back with me, I would have say yes. So in the pattern of the guys leaving right or what do they say? They say, You're incredible, but pretty much just always I'm not ready for a commitment. And when you meet a guy, are you very clear on the fact that you want a deep commitment right from the get go. I think that in the past I have tried to um camouflage a little bit or like adapt like a cha million to kind of figure

out what they wanted. I think what you're describing is so built into many of us. We tend to really feel what other people need and then more for ourselves in ways, so we get love right. But it's the very thing that will make a relationship not work because who you say you are and who you really are is not the same, and that eventually bites you in the relationship. So are you saying she's not being true to who she really is. She's more to the other person,

to herself. You didn't want to push him. You start putting yourself further and further back, and then who you are doesn't really come to play, and it becomes more and more about him, And then of course he goes, well, I'm not feeling it right because what he isn't feeling is who he thought you were in the first place, who you no longer are because you've accommodated, you've warphed

for the sake of the relationship. This is important, McKay's very important because we as women, my god, do we do this so often where we think, Okay, if I just let him flow how he needs to flow, and if I just make myself available in a way that he needs, he'll love me. He'll appreciate ate the fact. But what, yes, I'm being supportive. She's not. The quick and dirty answer to what you're saying is who you are at some point, how has to be good enough.

Now you just got to hold steady. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've been married, you know, four times, and I just never gave up. I just took what I learned from that relationship and tried to carry it into the next one in a positive way. Nothing's wasted, nothing's wasted. I appreciate everything that you're saying. Thank you, Sarah so much for a share. You are precious and I just want you to know keep going. Every relationship gives us a gem that we can use in our next step,

for that next door that's inevitably gonna open. You are a beautiful woman girl. Thank you first, Yes, thank you so much, Sarah. That was beautiful. Every time I always sit here and I go, how's she gonna handle this one? So Trina is next? Hey? Ja in your family so much? Well, thank you. I'm from North Carolina. I was married for thirty nine years to a man that I was with and will get emotional, that's okay. I've been with him

since I was fourteen, so he was my only love. Yeah, and we just a year ago had plans of our retirement traveling the world, and he just all of a sudden wanted to separate. About three months ago, and then I get a call from an anonymous person he was seeing another woman for nine months. I'm fifty seven years old. How do you get past this kind of hurt and actually move on from because in down, truly I still

love it and my heart is in peace. Yeah, I'm sorry, don't I don't know how to go on from here. Thank God I have a wonderful daughter, but it's still hard. This is one of those moments where I wish I had a magic wand right where you could just waive the magic wand and the pain is lifted. So you grew up with this man, right, you became a woman and the mother and and who you are today. The entire life is connected with this man. Then it's suddenly

pulled out. That's about as devastating as it gets. It feels like a death. What you're experiencing right now is is multiple layers of grief and loss. In the first stage is absolute devastation, and no one will blame you if you want to just lay down. Then the next thing that usually happens is you get angry. And when you start getting angry, you have to listen to me carefully. You must get angry now you don't want to directed

it anyone. That's very important, right, Meaning you don't go to his house and drag him out of the house, even though that's a good fantasy. To write it all down, or you record it and you curse him, and you do that so that that's out of you, because that's the thing that starts festering. You go and find help with friends, church, family, so you can speak about it, and you can allow yourself to be a bit bitter

about it and and nasty. You have to write the worst of your revenge fantasies and the worst of your ill wishes so you can move on from them. That's super are, super important. But the more you go there, the quicker it will pass. Then comes another wave of grief, the grief of your entire life having disappeared in a certain way. But then who are you when all of

this is taken away? And one thing I can tell you just bym looking at you, there's such strength in you and such power and resilience that's going to come to the surface, and then you're going to become somebody who is free off off that thing that held you in a certain kind of a situation. Because even though you love him and even though you've devoted a long time to that marriage, there's parts of you that are really waiting to come out. And I know I can

see it in your face. All that energy that was suppressed by the pain is going to come out, and Trina is going to be a force to be regulous. It's a process. I think a lot of us believe that if we go into the feeling of the pain, that will get stuck. I know that's always been something for me. You know, it's like, don't go there, because you might just get the pain might just crab you

and keep you right. And so the idea of being able to understand that it's okay to to go into it in the with the concept of moving through it and you really do have to let it out. We've all been there in some form or fashion, and we just want you to know that our hearts are with you. And thank you so much for your testimony today. Okay, thank you, thank you so much. That's a devastating when you feel like everything in your world is it's yeah,

there's something I don't want to ignore either. Too. For women, Um, when you get to that age, you know and you go through a major break up like that, and when particularly with a person that you've been through, but that you go through like um fifty seven, like who's gonna want me now? And that's a reality. However, this is just a tiny little side note. My first neighbor when I moved to l A from Austria was a woman who was in her late eighties and she was a

concentration camp survivor Leo. Her name was and Leah. Every Tuesday went to the Fairfax Jewish Community Center for square dance and she found a boyfriend. Wow. And so on her nineties birthday, Saul, her new boyfriend, moved into the house. And here's how I knew Saul moved into the house. The truck pulled up, out came the two single bits, in came a big new brass double and Saul moved in. And then they walked hand in hand every day. That's

a beautiful story for anybody. If he thinks that you know it's over, that you'll never find on her nineties fight away, the guy she moved in was at least twelve years younger than her. I mean she was in his highest seventies. So we have Eddie from l A hi Eddie Hi So seven and I'm a PhD student at usc UM. I recently got out of a fourteen month relationship with a man I thought i'd marry. Towards the end of our relationship, I caught him entertaining several

other men on social media. I felt so betrayed. I found on his Instagram that he was inviting other men to dates. And you know, there's so much, there was so much betrayal there that that at the very end warped my idea of who he was. I reached out to him RecA me and I never heard back. But it's been really difficult for me. So I've left to reconcile this person who I thought I knew for over a year, and I sort of don't know what what the reality is right now, and I don't know how

to get over this. The real tough thing about this is that when you can say it, it just sits in your head. And it's so important to have the communication that you want to have. However, you don't need to have the conversation or the communication with him, and so one of my personal UH tricks for myself, you write letters and don't write sentences and stuff just like words. This is a very specific process. I'm want to walk you through this. The first letter you write is a nasty,

vicious say everything you never would say to a real person. Letter. Got it? You write it, you put it somewhere, and you just right, and you write, and you write, and you might write the same letter for three or four five days if you can hand right hand right. There's something about writing by hand that doesn't happen here or on your phone. Right the important pieces that you don't rush it. So you write the letters till you feel

ready to be done. Make sure that you really, really really address how it felt, and tell him on the letter what a really thing. However many it takes, till you're somewhat clear, you'll write a letter that you could give him. Then what you do is you do a ritual, something that puts a full stop, make a strong end to it, take something of his and buried or burn it. Do something where you for yourself go okay, I am done.

One thing I want to ask to MICHAELA because I know in these kinds of situations, when you have that kind of betrayal, you lose such a trust in yourself totally. You know, how could I How could I have misjudged so greatly? You know what I mean? How do you regain that trust in yourself to believe that the next time you won't do that to yourself again. Well, here's

a horrible truth. We don't misjudge, right, So he Eddie Eddie knew, but we don't want to see it because we love and our heart wants wants that thing, and we want that relationship, and he wanted that marriage. We know, we always know, so, So the learning isn't to become better at distinguishing it. Necessarily, learning is to listen to ourselves and not let our need for a certain fairy tale override what we know is true. You can look at how do you read the red flags better next time? Right?

And you can feel it, and you can think back on when something felt fishy and you kind of we're overwriting it for the fact that this was going to be your life partner and you were going to marry. Then the other thing that happens is every time we get a bit better at not overwriting our own feelings around that, the people we attract get better because they can pull the rule over our honey Honestly, let's just

be real. You have such a light, you have such a deep well of compassion within you, and so many people are going to see that and they're gonna want that. Well. I've been a huge fan of yours forever. So if I hear you, know, will, I'll say that I'm going to find love again, like I'm more prone to believe it. You're a beauty, Eddie. Just know that it's all about learning as we go. That's it. That's thank you so much,

Thank you, Eddie, Thank you Eddie. This pandemic that we've been dealing with, I mean globally, we've all been affected. I feel like not one person has been able to escape. A lot of expectations have been shattered. Yeah, So we have Key Jana and David from Inglewood who have questions from MICHAELA. Hey, look at you right here, welcome to the table. Thank you for having us. So what questions do you have for MICHAELA Today. I met David a few years ago and we had the pleasure of being

able to plan our wedding. We invited all the people from all across the country. People were gonna travel and on my bachelor at Party two days before, we got the call that the coronavirus shut down our entire event. It was like a kind of like a tidal wave had hit us. With only forty eight hours left, we had to cancel all the vendors. The venue canceled on us. We had to call everyone that was going to try to travel. We had paid for everything we had gotten,

you know, Flowers. We did have a little bit of hope and we thought we could reschedule and not really knowing where the coronavirus was going to be. But here we are again looking to cancel yet again. We're just a little emotionally drained and kind of don't know really where to go from here. It was a heartbreaking kind of ordeal. Yeah, that's a rough one. Yeah, here's something I can tell you that maybe it's a bit of hope.

I've done like about thirty five thousand client hours in my lifetime, so I've seen a lot of people, and I can tell you one thing. Couples who face adversity together have the best chance of long term relationship. And the way you're sitting there, the way she's leaning against you, David, you clearly have grown something in the adversity in in and in the joined loss. Often, you know, the big wedding take on a life of its own, and the real love and the real care get a little bit lost.

It's so beautiful because you kind of get to do it the other way of our You get too deepen and sink in and make the commitment now between the two of you in lockdown with each other, and you get to really celebrate your union for what it is, which is the two of you on the sofa. And then when the time is right, you're gonna have the big wedding, and I can promise you it's gonna be much deeper because you come to it as a more mature couple. And it's not just gonna be the fairy tale,

which is wonderful, but it's a fairy tale. It's going to have the underpinning of your love for each other and the fact that you made it through the adversity. You didn't throw in the towel and break up and run off and do horrible things. You're sitting there together. Yeah,

that's real, It really is. Remember the amazing race when they would have couples that would have to go through this amazing race together, And I go if you want to get married, amazing, and then if you make it across that finish line together, now, put on the wedding dress, the celebration. And that's what this reminds me of. You've seen the worst of each other, so to speak, right, because I'm sure there were tears and tantrums and everything.

So you've seen the worst. Now you can have the best. Yes, I tell you. See the two of you, you guys just emanate such joy love for each other, so you know what. That's what marriage is all about. In my eyes, you all already married, okay, and this too shall pass, Yeah, it really will. Yeah, one day this will be over and you will be able to get back to planning your wedding. I can't wait to hear what the vowels

will be like on the actual wedding. Yes, and you will be very different vowels than what you had planned off. That's true. And y'all know Gamey loves a wedding. She's been married four times. You got to dress yet, so I did, But after the pandemic, I don't know if I'm gonna fit back into it. All right, you guys, thank you so much for joining us today. We all wishing than Yes, MICHAELA. You always come with the gym every time, every single time. Just why I'm surprised because

every time, Why am I surprised? Every single time? It's like, we so love having you here, and this was this was great. I learned a lot so as always when I get to sit in front of you, thank you. Those are spacular. You've got on some hot pants today, Thank you, domil in Chic. It's it's to take away from the foot. I'm a fan of fancy shoes, and this surgery has like you'll be back to them. You'll

be back shoes, back to the fancy shoes. To join the Red Table Talk family and become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook dot com slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.