After my divorce, I took some time off from having a romantic

“After my divorce, I took some time off from having a romantic life to begin the tough work of figuring out where I’d gone wrong and what on Earth I could do to understand how to be a whole person in a relationship.” Thus spoke Emily V. Gordon, and in her words there is both lament and wisdom. For she reminds us that love, though sweet and radiant, is not enough if the soul within is fractured. To walk with another, one must first learn to walk alone, and to love another rightly, one must first learn the art of loving oneself.

The pain of divorce is a breaking of two paths that once were joined. It is a moment when the heart is stripped of its illusions, and the silence of separation compels one to gaze inward. Gordon did not rush to mend the wound with new affection, but instead chose the harder road: to pause, to wrestle with the self, to seek out not temporary comfort but lasting transformation. This is the path of the courageous, for many flee into distraction, yet few dare to dwell in the desert of self-examination.

The ancients too knew this truth. Socrates declared that the unexamined life is not worth living. Yet how many dare to examine not only their ambitions and choices, but their deepest failures in love? Emily Gordon’s pause echoes this ancient wisdom: she chose not to flee her pain, but to look it in the eye, asking, What within me must be healed, so that love may one day be whole? Such labor is more demanding than conquest, more wearying than war, for it requires honesty before the mirror of one’s own heart.

History offers us many who, like Gordon, faced ruin in love and sought renewal through self-reflection. Consider Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, whose private writings, later known as the Meditations, reveal a man striving to master himself so he might bear the weight of empire and the demands of family. Though not a tale of divorce, it is the same struggle: the recognition that the outer world cannot be governed unless the inner world has first found its order. To be a whole person in relationship is to be sovereign over oneself.

The beauty of Gordon’s words lies in their humility. She does not blame only the other, nor does she wallow endlessly in self-condemnation. Instead, she accepts that wisdom requires self-discovery, and that healing is a journey walked step by step. This humility is the soil in which true love may later grow. For only the heart that has embraced its own weaknesses can show patience with the weaknesses of another. Only the soul that has made peace with itself can offer peace to a beloved.

The lesson for us is radiant: do not rush to fill the silence of heartbreak with noise, nor to escape the solitude of failure with new distraction. Instead, use such times as sacred ground for reflection. Ask not only, “What did they do to me?” but also, “What can I learn about myself? What must I mend within, so that love may one day flourish again?” For love that grows from a healed heart will not be fragile, but enduring.

Practical action flows from this: embrace solitude when it comes, and let it teach you. Journal your thoughts, seek counsel from wise voices, and be unafraid of the hard work of inner repair. Do not measure your worth solely by your place in another’s life; become first a whole person in your own right. Then, when love returns, it will not come as a crutch for your wounds, but as a crown for your strength.

So, children of tomorrow, remember Emily V. Gordon’s teaching. Love is not only the joining of two, but the meeting of two who have each done the labor of becoming whole. Do not fear the pause after heartbreak. It is not emptiness—it is preparation. And from that preparation, when the time is right, will come a love not broken by weakness, but strengthened by truth.