A nail does not remove another nail: the hammer that nailed it removes it

No matter how much we believe it, one nail will never remove another nail. Starting a new emotional relationship like someone looking for a pain reliever after a recent breakup is not the best thing to do. That cloven nail in our heart can only be removed with the hammer that nailed it. Putting another one would mean making the hole bigger.

Surviving a breakup is something no one has prepared us for.. As Dr. Vicente Garrido explains to us, we often get desperate trying to find a reason.

It is difficult for us to understand that sometimes relationships fail because people have free will.because love ends or because, simply, the other person is not mature enough to shoulder such responsibility.

Assume the final goodbye, the distance and the having to start a new life with an emptiness on the other side of the bed and another in the heart, despairs. Our brain goes into a state of “alarm”, it interprets that pain as something real, as an impact very similar to that of a burn.

We need to relieve that burning with a good dose of dopamine, with something easy and quick that anesthetizes the pain of the soul. There are those who manage to avoid these processes by carrying out an adequate acceptance process.a slow and delicate process, where the broken pieces are repaired one by one.

Instead, others refuse to accept the end and they desperately seek a reconciliation with the couple. And finally, there are those who begin a path that does not always work: that of passing relationships.

The nail that lives in your heart

The expression that “a nail removes another nail” appears for the first time in the book of Marcus Tullius Cicero Tusculan Disputations, “Novo amore, veteram amorem, tamquam clove clavum, eficiendum putant”

It is clear, without a doubt, that There is nothing like starting a stable, happy and mature relationship again. to give ourselves a new opportunity, as long as, yes, we are truly prepared for it. Because while it is true that no one is irreplaceable, what we are not is interchangeable.

No one has to serve as a band-aid for anguish, a momentary analgesic for the melancholy of unresolved heartbreak. Because plasters have a function, to heal a wound. When the wound heals, the plaster stops working. And exactly the same thing happens with step relationships. It’s just about taking refuge in someone to camouflage the pain of the breakup. That’s why, When we recover we realize that the new relationship was not “for so much“.

The breakup, a chemical shipwreck

Lucy Brown is a neuroscientist at Einstein College of Medicine and an expert on the brain’s responses to love. She explains that on average, Overcoming an emotional breakup can take us between 6 months and two years.

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

If in the first phase of the relationship, passion is linked to the most primitive part of our brain, loss and that state where we sink into the bitterness of grief also emerge from that most ancient area. For a time, emotion dominates reason. Although little by little, we emerge from these mists with a taste of tears and loneliness.

Time to cry, time to love

Not grieving appropriately can cause us to “jump” into the void.

We are hungry for love, to be consoledwe look for intensity and not that calm that would surely make us remember those who no longer love us.

We don’t want middle ground, and something like this can cause serious side effects: that the other person, for example, falls in love when we are only looking for a warm substitute, an emotional anesthetic.

It is clear, however, that each person is different and that perhaps even that risky act can turn out well. However, The destiny of every nail is to receive hammer blows. So, before making a larger hole, it is advisable to reflect in this sense.

Time to cry and time to love

Starting a relationship only to nourish deficiencies, needs and frustrations means “taking” from the other what is needed., like the thief who enters at night to rob a home. It is not something legal.

We people live in a time where there is a lot of this “pull forward“. When we ask each other “how are you doing?” we always answer “very good, pulling”. It is as if our obligation were to always remain standing in this frenetic race where whoever stops loses. However, stopping from time to time is a vital necessity. We don’t live in the book of Alice in Wonderland, where the Red Queen urged her people to run faster to survive. Our brain also needs calm and those moments of introspection where it can pick up pieces, close wounds and rebuild itself.

There is a time to cry and a time to love again, but not to love others, but to love ourselves again. Because The mind that carries resentments and broken dreams feeds low self-esteem in the heart. No one, absolutely no one, can be happy with this type of baggage again.

Attachment and acceptance of impermanence

No one prepares us for a breakup, but knowing that it can occur, we do have a certain responsibility. Accepting that everything in life has an end will help us cope better with a separation. There are couples that can last a lifetime, but others may not last a year. Each person is a world and each couple is a set of worlds. The time of a couple is indeterminateso clinging to the idea of ​​being together for life could be somewhat damaging.

Accepting that something can end will reduce our level of suffering while at the same time we will enjoy our relationship more. Here a concept as important as attachment comes into play. Do we love our partner with love or with attachment? If we love her with attachment, then we will be in a dependency relationship. If we love it with love, it will be a relationship of freedom. The concept of freedom refers to the fact of not clinging to anyone to be happy, that is, not needing a partner to enjoy a good level of happiness.

Therefore, the idea of ​​removing a nail with another nail is unfortunate to say the least, since will show that we are dependent of other people to be happy.

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