- published: 07 Apr 2016
- views: 5842
A broken heart (or heartbreak) is a common metaphor used to describe the intense emotional pain or suffering one feels after losing a loved one, whether through death, divorce, breakup, physical separation, or romantic rejection.
Heartbreak is usually associated with losing a family member or spouse, though losing a parent, child, pet, lover or close friend can all "break one's heart", and it is frequently experienced during grief and bereavement. The phrase refers to the physical pain one may feel in the chest as a result of the loss, although it also by extension includes the emotional trauma of loss even where it is not experienced as somatic pain. Although "heartbreak" ordinarily does not imply any physical defect in the heart, there is a condition known as "Takotsubo cardiomyopathy" (broken heart syndrome), where a traumatising incident triggers the brain to distribute chemicals that weaken heart tissue.
For many people having a broken heart is something that may not be recognized at first, as it takes time for an emotional or physical loss to be fully acknowledged. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson states:
Nothing like a memory to open up a broken heart
It's been years but I look at you now
And you're torn apart
Nothing like a face to take you back to the time
When it was you and I against the world,
Just you and I
And I wish it hadn't happened to us
You fell in love with that girl
And I wish it hadn't happened to us
You fell in love with that girl
And I wish it wasn't true but all you
Cared about was the girl
Nothing like a lover to set you up for a fall
Like you're feeling you're ready to die,
Like you've lost it all
Nothing like you and I, in that place in time
And it's so hard letting you go,
Cause you're still on my mind
And I wish it hadn't happened, man
But you fell in love with that girl
Yeah I wish it never happened to us
You fell in love with that girl
And I wish it wasn't true but all you