This is the paper mâché heart a dear friend made me after the biggest heartbreak of my life.
I give that heartbreak a lot of credit for the beautiful committed relationship I’m in now. Or to be more accurate, the way I responded to it.
In my late 30’s, after many years of being single – and having faced many romantic disappointments – I was about to move in with my partner of just over a year, with plans to create a family home together.
I’d invested hugely in the relationship. I thought all my years of being alone and longing had finally ended, and that I’d finally be happy.
Instead, I found myself ending the relationship after a betrayal, and attempts to rebuild trust fell apart.
I was in more pain and hopelessness than I’d ever felt in my life.
I found it unbearable to stay in the same city, so I left England and went to live with close friends in Ireland for a few months. I knew they’d love and hold me, and that I really needed them – I couldn’t face this alone.
My mind was in turmoil, my heart physically hurt and my whole body was reeling with shock.
There was no getting away from the pain – and I was faced fully with all the parts of me that felt it – a hurting child, a harsh inner critic, a woman full of rage, to name just a few.
All I could do was be with them, and be with the pain.
And over those initial three months that I stayed in my friend’s spare room in Galway, I deepened my connection with myself in ways that changed my relationship with myself – and the trajectory of my love life – forever.
The voice of a kind, loving, compassionate part of me emerged – and I leaned into it fully. It spoke loving words:
“I’m with you” “it’s all okay” “I love you” – and I let them sink into my sore heart.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d started building a critical mass of kindness and self-love in my system that would lead me to show up in dating in new, healthier ways.
It’s not that everything changed overnight – the healing and learning process was messy, and I still made mistakes. But the difference was, I was there for myself, whatever happened – I had my own back.
And as that feeling became more familiar in my system, it changed how I related romantically, who and what I was drawn to, and the standards I held for how I was treated.
A determined part of me also emerged – however painful this was, I’d lived so long with the pain of unmet longing for a life partner, I was more than willing to try again.
So I committed to learning whatever I needed to learn, and doing whatever I needed to do to – to give myself the best chance possible of starting and sustaining a healthy, loving relationship.
It took a year for the acute pain to start subsiding, and another couple of years before I felt out of the woods.
And if I had to live the heartbreak all over again to be who I am now, married to the wonderful man I’m with, I’d have no hesitation.
I don’t mean to glorify the experience. It was really fucking hard and it hurt like hell. And what came out of it is something more beautiful than I ever imagined.
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I've always wanted to make the lifelong commitment of partnership in marriage, and it's been a very long journey for me to get to my wedding day at age 47. I spent a lot of my adult life in painful patterns when it came to romantic relationship, which included being attracted to those who weren't really available, and not able, for their own reasons - and I say this without any blame - to meet and love me in all the ways I wanted to be met and loved. And I wasn't willing to settle for a relationship that wasn't truly right for me.
It has taken a lot of determination, courage and persistence to overcome and heal the obstacles within me that got in the way of experiencing the relationship I wanted, and indeed to become the kind partner that I would myself want to commit to.
I could write a whole book about the process (maybe one day I will), but for now I'll just say that the most important aspect of it has been (and always will be) my commitment to Love in my primary relationship - my relationship with myself.
Love with a capital "L" is unconditional - it can't be fallen out of. So even when I fall out of "like" with myself, it's always in the greater context of my commitment to loving myself, which means I always come back to the recognition that I am unconditionally loveable and worthy of love.
We all know that Self-Love can be a real challenge. It requires commitment to doing what it takes to have a truly healthy relationship with ourselves - an ongoing deepening of self-awareness, attunement and kind responsiveness to our needs and feelings, being open to seeing things about ourselves that are hard to look at and own, and learning to embrace parts of us that we feel the impulse to push away and disconnect from.
But it is so incredibly worth it - and the alternative certainly isn't a recipe for happiness - because self-love, or the lack of it, sets the tone - and determines the quality - of all of our relationships. Whilst I'm loving and embracing myself, I can't not be loving my husband... I can't not be loving everyone (which definitely includes setting healthy boundaries, and sometimes walking away, of course).
Even when I don't like parts of them. Even when there's conflict and it's painful. My commitment to Love guides me back home to my deepest self and invites me to do the work I need to do to meet the other with Love - whether it's learning to communicate more clearly and kindly, listening openly to feedback, or soothing and holding the vulnerable parts of myself more fully and compassionately when there's reactivity in our relating, to name a few examples.
Whether I'm coaching an individual or a couple around their relationships, I see that the most important part of my job is to keep inviting folk back to their relationship with themselves. That's always what needs kind and loving tending to first, whatever is happening in their relationships with others.
Which is why I'm so passionate about supporting people with self-love, and with making it practical - so it's more than just an idea, or yet another thing to have to achieve or "get right".
If you’re interested in finding out more about the coaching and workshops I offer, please do get in touch at info@nicola-madden.com
Ps. I am definitely not saying "you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you". This is a very unhelpful idea! And simply not true.