why you should be having more sex

the tales of connecting to yourself and let go of pain

The tales of time, the tales of healing, and the tales of heartbreak. According to Adlerian psychology, all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. The depth of these problems is correlated to the depth of the relationship and how much you attach your worth to the area of life it falls into, or phrasing it differently, how deep the wound is for you. And let’s all agree that we can get very anxious when we receive negative feedback from a manager, but nothing will ever be as close to the emotional damage you get from romantic heartbreak, where you grieve a person, a potential future and even your ego.

Let’s start with this framework and deconstruct the cycle of healing.

From my recent psychedelic trip:

You sometimes require other people to release you from your misery, but you need to be able to soothe your pain. No one can do that for you. You need to be your shelter, and only then you can let go of the pain.

Your capacity to feel pain is as expansive as your capacity to feel love. It is scary to love as much when you know that love will be associated with pain. How can we detach from expectations so that we can purify love? Love is not attachment. Love is not pain. Love is simply love, and love should be good.

The tales of time, the tales of healing, and the tales of heartbreak.

Surrender vs letting go

There is a difference between surrendering and letting go. You can say you are letting go of someone when you’re actually surrendering. The whole process is a big fat mess, but surrendering is the most efficient way to get out of pain. When you actively choose to let go, it can feel abrupt, and throughout the whole process, you will feel intense pain, like mini heartbreaks through and through. Surrendering means following your intuition, communicating your needs to yourself and organically detaching from the pain. When we want to create a new memory or learn a new skill, our neurons support us in creating and strengthening connections. Well, same thing with falling in love, and the same thing with falling out of love. Feed your brain with less information, and organically, everything falls into place.

Define your boundaries

“Define your boundaries and the world will shift accordingly. If some pieces drop, they were never meant to be there in the first place.” - a wise friend

Communication is hard. Maybe the hardest part of it all. It’s hard to tell someone you love them, it’s hard to tell someone you no longer do, it’s hard to set boundaries, and it’s hard to let go. It’s hard because you lose control over the outcome. After you tell someone you have feelings for them, you can get rejected, you can lose a friendship, and you’re left at the mercy of your own judgment. But communication is also the key to a healthy relationship. When there are things left unsaid, you are only hurting yourself and preventing full connection to the other person.

When you don’t communicate how you feel, you might feel misinterpreted, disrespected, unheard. Let me tell you, all of that is happening in your mind only. If you communicate your needs, you let the other person respond to them, and you can then adjust your expectations. In the case of setting boundaries, because you are choosing to let someone that you love go, despite you being on the receiving or delivering end, it might not always be possible or necessary to do so in person (who has never been ghosted raise your hand). If you’re anything like me, journaling your thoughts and debriefing with your best friend or therapist might just be enough at times.

Stop asking for advice

On the topic of asking for advice, I strongly believe that you shouldn’t diversify too much. This applies to love advice, career advice, emotional advice, or any type of advice. It’s counterproductive, and keeping your life in close circles might only benefit you in the long term. Who you share it with might also impact how you see and deal with a situation. My advice is: take some time to figure it out for yourself, then ask for help/vent to someone you trust, who cares about you and who is in a position where they can provide valuable advice in that area. Take what serves you, and don’t blindly accept what you’re given, because if you go inwards, the answer might just be there.

Self-awareness is the enemy

I consider myself to be a very self-aware person. I (almost) always know where I stand emotionally, and I can probably intellectualize the emotion and connect it with a framework or a deeper root cause. As beautiful as it can sound when I explain it, it doesn’t always serve me. In the day-to-day, it’s great if associated with pragmatic living, because it allows me to take quick action, but in terms of allowing myself to connect to the emotion and letting it do its thing, it’s a blockage. And for us to feel and heal, we need to feel what we feel. Self-awareness, yes. Too much self-awareness, maybe not.

Be as pragmatic as possible

After we let ourselves feel the emotions and understand the best course of action is to surrender, it’s important to take action. It’s very easy to get stuck in a victimization state and stagnate. Heartbreak happens due to hormonal imbalance, which among other things creates a dopamine gap. It took me a couple of weeks of “let me be sad, pursue my hobbies and heal my heart to be able to connect with other people” to understand that it was no longer driving me forward because those activities were no longer elevating my dopamine levels. I then decided to start going on dates and pursue new hobbies (oxytocin elevation). It took a hot second of willpower to go out with a new person, but it also allowed me to unconsciously understand that there are so many beautiful people in the world to connect to, and once you decide to do it, your heart follows and heals by itself. I will take a step further and talk about intimacy and physical connection, which is one of the few ways I am aware of to fully connect with yourself, your body, and other humans with undivided attention. There are different ways to explore it, but it’s the ultimate healer if done in a healthy way. So my advice, again, after a few weeks of mourning, is to go out and have sex.

Flow with life, and everything will unfold

Is it now time for generic, mainstream advice? Because that’s literally it. For us chronic overthinkers, hypersensitive individuals, it might be harder to emotionally come to this conclusion, but in the end of the day, whether you’re happy, frustrated, sad, or heartbroken, the solution is the same: enjoy the journey, find comfort in discomfort, listen to yourself and keep going, because on the other side of pain is love.