Why 'never loving at all' is better than 'loving and losing' | Rebecca Jane column

One of life's biggest regrets according to surveys is a romantic one. Almost 20% of people claim they regret a love they once had.

Loving and losing is a painful journey, and quite honestly, I prefer to have never loved at all than loved and lost!

For me, it isn’t about regret. It’s the pain of remembering all the good things, feelings that can often take years to get over. Finally finding that space in your mind to store them in your internal filing cabinet that doesn’t cause pain is nothing short of impossible when you’re in the ‘eye of the storm’. The point in a relationship breakdown where you just arrive at a place of acceptance.

Last summer, I experienced a pretty significant heartbreak. Whenever I saw anything about that person, or was reminded of them, it felt like a literal stab in the heart. My friend said: ‘but how big is the knife?’.

The ‘knife’ range was a pin prick, to a pen knife, vegetable knife… all the way to a meat cleaver, sword and even a chainsaw. Silly really, but every week we identified how big these ‘stabs to the heart’ were that I was experiencing.

When we first addressed it, I was around the level of a kitchen knife. I kept focusing on the day I would get down to a pin prick. I’m pretty happy to say, today we’re less than a pin prick.

I invite anyone going through heartbreak to identify, how big is the stab wound?! Ask yourself every week where you’re at on the scale, and look how far you have come!

We’re fed a narrative that we must not feel regret, or that we’re somehow weak if we admit we’re struggling with a breakup. It’s ok to say ‘I’m hurting, and this is painful’. Because no matter how hard life feels at the time, no matter how much we wish we could forget, one day, we will be ok.

It’s also ‘ok’ if you don’t subscribe to the utopian view that ‘it is better to have loved and lost than not loved at all’. Personally, I don’t even understand where the guy was coming from when he said that.

It’s not about regret. I actually don’t feel regret for the relationships that didn’t work out. I’m glad I gave them a go, I took true leaps and bounds to experience the highs that we did. They were epic, but do I wish I could erase all memories of those people who came into my life? Absolutely I do!

Does it make me sceptical about loving anyone else again? Not really. I can’t help it. We have to trust that one day it may all work out and we won’t experience the pain of the past. If it does all end in pain and disaster, we have to keep faith in ourselves that we have the resilience and ability to come back from it once again.

Love is a risk, embrace it, learn from it, and ultimately if it doesn’t work out, don’t beat yourself up over what anyone else thinks.