A New Nail Does Not Drive Out The Old
No matter how much we believe this to be true, a new concern will not divert your attention from the old one. A new nail does not drive out the old one. Or as the more common (and mistaken) saying goes: “the best way to get over a guy is to get a new one” . Wrong! Starting a new love affair as a painkiller for the grief of a recent breakup is not the best choice. That nail, deep in your heart, will only be pulled out by the same hammer that put it in place. Pushing in another nail will only make the hole bigger.
Surviving a breakup is something no one is preparing for. Just as Dr. Vicente Garrido explains, we often tend to get desperate in our search for why. It is difficult for us to understand that relationships sometimes fail because people have free will. Because the love for them ends or just because the other person is not mature enough for this responsibility.
To accept the last goodbye, the distance and to have to start a new life with an empty space on the other side of the bed, and another in the heart… fills you with misery. Our brain ends up in an “alarmed” state. It interprets the pain as something real, like an injury that can be likened to a burn. We need to relieve the burning sensation with a good dose of dopamine. Something quick and easy that can relieve the pain in the soul.
Some people manage to avoid these processes by engaging in the right process of acceptance. A slow and delicate process where they repair every broken piece, one at a time. Others, however, refuse to accept the end and desperately try to reconcile with their partners. Finally, there are people who begin to walk along a path that does not always work: a series of short relationships.
The classic expression “one nail drives out another” first appeared in the book ” Tusculanae Disputationes” by Marco Tulio Cicero around the year 44. This text was dedicated to Marca Bruto, and at one point he writes: Novo amore, veteram amorem, tamquam clavo clavum , eficiendum putant ”. That means the new love will drive out the old, like a nail driving out another.
It is obviously clear that there is nothing that can compare to starting a new, stable, happy and mature relationship to get a new chance. As long as we are truly prepared to do so. For it may be true that no one is irreplaceable, but we are not interchangeable. No one should have to act as a patch or temporary pain reliever for someone else’s heartache.
Lucy Brown is a neuroscientist from Einstein University of Medicine and an expert on the brain’s responses to love. She explains that an emotional breakup can take between six months and two years to recover. There are many individual differences, of course, but according to various studies, it takes longer for men to recover. Women, on the other hand, suffer a stronger emotional blow, but they recover more quickly.
The end of a relationship is experienced as a traumatic event because our brain is programmed to interact and connect with other people. When we create a psychic bond based on affection and love, there are few things that are equally satisfying. Breaking this bond is an authentic chemical shipwreck.
During the first stage of the relationship, passion is linked to the most primitive part of the brain, and so is loss as well as the state when we fall into the bitterness of grief – it also comes from the primitive part. For a time, your emotions dominate your ability to be reasonable. However, we slowly but surely emerge from this shadow, with the taste of tears and loneliness on our lips.
Starting a new relationship very soon after you end it in a painful and complicated way will not necessarily relieve your pain. It will not distract you, make you laugh or have fun again. Not going through the grief properly can make you jump into the void with all the emotions at full effect. We are hungry for love, to be comforted. We seek intensity rather than the calm that will surely make us remember the person who no longer loves us.
We do not want something half-baked, and such a thing can cause serious collateral effects. For example, it can make the other person fall in love, when all we are looking for is a warm substitute, emotional pain relief. Despite this, it is clear that everyone is their own person. And maybe even this risk will end better than expected. But the fate of every nail is to be hammered in. So before you make the hole even bigger, it is a good idea to reflect a little on this.
Starting a new relationship just to maintain your shortcomings, needs and frustrations is to take what you need from the other person. Just like a thief who comes during the night to steal from a home. It is simply immoral.
We live in a society where it is very common to hear someone say that they are “moving forward”. When we ask each other “how is it?” we tend to always answer with “it’s good, I’m moving forward. It is as if it is our obligation to always stand upright in this frantic race, where everyone who stays loses.
But stopping from time to time is vital. We do not live in Wonderland with Alice. There, where the Red Queen demanded of his subjects to run faster in order to survive. Our brain also needs peace and moments of introspection, where we can pick up the pieces, close the wounds and rebuild.
There is a time to cry and a time to love again. Not to love others, but instead to love ourselves again. For a mind laden with resentment and broken dreams feeds itself with poor self-esteem in the heart. And no one, absolutely no one, can be happy again with this type of luggage.
