Your first heartbreak can make you a better partner

Jul 22, 2011

My first love was a nice looking luscious Mutoro lady. This though wasn’t the source of the great love I had for her. It was the innocence that glowed in her eyes, the sweetness of her voice and the tenderness in the care she showed me.

By Didas Kisembo
My first love was a nice looking luscious Mutoro lady. This though wasn’t the source of the great love I had for her. It was the innocence that glowed in her eyes, the sweetness of her voice and the tenderness in the care she showed me. Or so I thought, until heartbreak crashed in a year later and rocked all that I believed in, including love. The young lady had cheated on me.

I was so chocked on the day of her confession that something inside of me died. Since then, things for me were never the same when it came to love.

I became a zombie; heartless, emotionless, careless and all other sorts of attributes that detached deep emotional feelings from my palate. In the process, I broke so many hearts and became a total waste. Though I did go through rehabilitation, some of these attributes remain to date. Today, I am less patient with ladies and intolerant to deceit. If a girl is late for an appointment, or lies to me, I lose my temper and sever all contact immediately.

But deep inside, I still yearn for those qualities that made me fall in love the first time and I always look for them in the ladies I court.

Sadly I haven’t found a lady like her yet.

Experiences
My situation prompted me to conduct a peer survey on my colleagues on how their first heartbreak affected them.

“Every heartbreak is a valuable lesson,” says Hilary Bainemigisha, a relationship counsellor and New Vision columnist. “The way our very first disappointment affects us, the way we pick lessons from it and the way we use what we learnt from the experience determines whether it makes us better lovers or not.”

How many people have learnt the lesson in their first heartbreak? Allan Ssempebwa, an employee with URA, learnt that it was wrong to hurt another person, like that. “I now value ladies. I leant never to make a woman cry.”

Rachael Kivuna, a student at Makerere, also says it made her a better partner. “That experience made me stronger and better than I was. It helped me evaluate my mistakes in the defunct love and learn from them.”

For Susanne, another university student, the results are not good. “Very bad!” She says. “I’m afraid of relationships, afraid of giving my best and every man who approaches me brings out my distrust and defensive traits instead.”

The same goes for Innocent, a student leader at Makerere. His first heartbreak changed his outlook of life. “It was so bad. I had planned to be married by 30 but now I’ve pushed it to 40. I don’t want to meet a lady like her again.”

Simon, a journalist, says he now only gets into relationships for sex. “I don’t love anymore.”

Counsellors speak
According to Henry Nsubuga, a senior counsellor at Makerere University and President of the Uganda Counselling Association (UCA), there is a tendency to hurry into another relationship in order to recover and forget the breakup.

“When you’re hurting, you need to go through a healing process,” he says. “Otherwise, even the next relationships may not be safe because you will appear easy to get and desperate and can be taken advantage of.”

Such unfortunate recurrent heartbreaks can erase any opportunity of drawing valuable lessons from the pain. Henry says it is understandable that some victims develop negative emotions which, if they remain unchecked, usually become issues in future relationships.

Rose Nalwanga, also a counsellor at Makerere university hospital, advises the broken hearted to seek counselling and open up in order to form lasting subsequent relationships.

From her experience with university students, she notes that the sexes handle the breakups differently. “Boys resort to drugs, alcohol and bad character traits like playing the girls, while girls easily open up seeking, solace and advice. It then depends on who they open up to. If they get negative advice, they end up as bad lovers. If it is positive, they recover and become better lovers.”

Bainemigisha warns against vengence or going on a rampage: “If you have been hurt by a person you trusted, and you feel that person is heartless and shameless, why become the same bad person? After knowing how it hurts, why be the source of such pain to an innocent person who entrusted you with his or her heart?”

He thinks heartbreak should make us better lovers and those who resist the lessons and want to be vengeful miss out.

That said, how you handle yourself after your first heartbreak could be the reason you relate with the people the way you do. So is it in a positive way? Do you want to re-think your life strategies?

That’s your food for thought.

When may you need to break up with your first love?
Breaking up is not something to celebrate and it hurts both the victim and the person who ends the relationship. But there are situations in which the alternative to breaking up is worse. You would rather end it and save yourself the consequences. It is assumed that your first love comes during school time and there are reasons why you should end it:

Wants sex
If he or she puts a condition of sex or you break up, and yet you want to abstain until you get married, don’t be coerced. You have your dignity to protect and love should never be based on sex.

Bad company
If the girl/boyfriend is or has bad company and they are not willing to change. Being in love with a person who indulges in drunkenness, fighting, drugs, smoking, stealing or is involved in money scandals, etc may influence you into similar self-destructive habits. You would rather let them go.

Conflict in tastes and desires
You need a person of similar tastes and interests to support each other. Lack of common ground will tempt you into pursuing illicit ways of fulfilment elsewhere.

Abuse disrespect, domineering behaviour
A person who doesn’t respect you, always tries to put you down, humiliates you in public and kills your self-esteem is not a good option, especially if they beat you. You are better off on your own.

No longer fulfilling
It is the emotional and the physical needs of a man and a woman that bring them into a relationship and when the urge is met, you feel fulfilled. If that need is no longer felt, the relationship becomes irrelevant and there is no need to drag on a love that is not fulfilling
Incest

The moment you discover you are relatives who should not marry or have sex, end it.
Cheating and infidelity

When a partner begins to get attracted to another person to the extent that they get involved in sex, you should break it off lest you find yourself compelled to compete for a promiscuous person, who may infect you with deadly diseases

Lack of time together
If your partner seems to have no time for you, or you are both simply too busy to spend time together, it may damage your relationship. If your partner chooses to spend all their time with other people to the point of neglecting you, it's a sign you might have to break up.

Has a serious medical condition
When you are in love, illness is an opportunity to prove your commitment. But conditions like impotence may affect your future and you may need to discuss the implications.

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