Since the doomed days of Romeo and Juliet, our society has been inundated with books, movies and songs about longing, heartbreak, and lost love. But in this video from School of Life, Alain de Botton explains how romanticizing that kind of narrative may prevent us from seeking out the love we truly deserve.
“This sort of unrequited passion – so often celebrated in literature and society more generally – may sound generous and in that sense loving, but a devotion to an unrequited situation is, in truth, a clever way of ensuring we won’t end up in a relationship at all; that we won’t ever need to suffer the realities of love,” he explains.
Whether you’re pining over someone who broke it off, or can’t stop thinking about a crush who could have been the one, here are three ways to move on from heartbreak:
1. Confront your fearsLonging for someone after an unexpected break-up is natural, but if you still find yourself fixated on an ex-partner months—or even years—later, it often has less to do with missing them and more to do with protecting yourself from being hurt again.
“The fear of love…
