One Nail Does Not Remove Another: What Takes It Out Is The Hammer That Drove It

As much as we believe this, a nail will never remove another nail. Starting a new affective relationship like someone looking for an analgesic for the pain of a recent breakup is not the best option. This nail driven into our heart can only be removed with the hammer that nailed it: to put in another one means to widen the hole even more.

Surviving a sentimental breakup is something no one is prepared for. As Dr. Vicente Garrido explains to us, we often despair trying to find a reason. It is difficult to understand that sometimes relationships founder because people have to have free will, because  love ends, or because the other person is simply not mature enough to live such a responsibility .

To say goodbye, distance and having to start a new life with a void on the other side of the bed and, even worse, in the heart, is hopeless. Our brain goes into a state of “alarm”, interprets this pain as something real, as an impact very similar to a burn. We need to relieve this burn with a good dose of dopamine, with something fast and easy that will numb the pain of the soul.

Some people manage to avoid these processes by carrying out an adequate acceptance process, a slow and delicate procedure in which the person repairs the broken pieces one by one. Others, on the other hand, refuse to accept the end and seek a desperate reconciliation with their partner, and finally there are those who start a path that does not always work: that of “substitute” relationships.

The nail that dwells in your heart

The classic expression that “a nail removes another nail” appears for the first time in  Marcus Tullius Cicero’s  book “Disputas Tusculanas” in the middle of the year 44 BC. of the loves he writes as follows: “ New love, veteram amorem, tamquam clavo clavum, eficiendum putant”  (“new love brings out the old love, as one nail removes the other”).

Of course, there is nothing like starting a stable, happy and mature relationship again to give ourselves a new opportunity, but only if we are really prepared for it. Because the truth is that nobody is irreplaceable, what we are not is interchangeable. Nobody has any reason to serve as a band-aid for anguish, as a momentary analgesic for the melancholy of unresolved lovelessness.

The breakup, a chemical wreck

Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at Einstein University of Medicine and an expert on the brain’s responses to love, explains that, on average,  overcoming an emotional breakdown can take between 6 months and two years. There are many individual differences; however, according to several studies, it is men who take the longest to recover. Women, in turn, have a stronger emotional impact, but they get over breakups sooner.

The end of a relationship is experienced as a traumatic act because  our brain is programmed to connect us with other people, and when we build this psychic tendon based on affection and love, few things can be as gratifying. Breaking this bond is a veritable chemical wreck.

If during the first phase of the relationship, passion attaches itself to the most primitive part of our brain,  loss and that state where we are lost in the bitterness of pain also emerges from this older area. For a time, emotion dominates reason. Even if it is little by little, we emerge from these mists with the taste of tears and loneliness.

time to cry time to love

Starting a new relationship shortly after ending one in a complex and painful way doesn’t mean it can’t relieve us, distract us, and make us laugh and enjoy. But  not going through the moment of pain properly can cause us to “launch” into the void with all our senses to the fullest : we hunger for love, to be comforted, we seek intensity, not the calm that would certainly make us remember of those who no longer love us.

We don’t want compromises, and something like that can have serious side effects: the other person, for example, falling in love when we’re just looking for a substitute,  an emotional anesthetic. However, it is clear that each person is a world and that perhaps even this risky act can work; but the fate of any nail is to be hammered. So, before making an even bigger hole, it’s better to think about it.

Starting a relationship just to nurture needs, needs and frustrations is to “get” what you need from the other person, like the thief who breaks into a house at night to steal. It is not lawful.

• We live in an age where people take this “ going along ” very seriously . When we ask each other “how are you?”, we always answer “ very good, I’m taking it ”. It’s as if it were our obligation to keep standing on this frantic path where those who stop end up getting lost.

• However, stopping from time to time is a vital necessity. We don’t live in the world of Alice in Wonderland, where the Red Queen forced everyone to run faster to survive. Our brains also need calm and those moments of introspection to pick up the pieces, close the wounds, and rebuild.

There is a time to cry and a time to love again, but not to love other people, but to love ourselves again. Because the mind that carries resentments and shattered dreams feeds low self-esteem in the heart, and no one, absolutely no one, can ever be happy again with that kind of baggage.