Why you need your heart broken by someone who isn’t good for you

There’s one type of man in particular that should raise 50 red flags when you start to date – yet you can’t keep away from him.

Have you ever been so madly in love with someone you just know isn’t good for you? So much so, that despite being an educated woman in charge of your own finances and career prospects, you just can’t help but respond to that late night text saying, “You up?” despite your better judgment.

Hi, my name is Jana Hocking and I’m a hopeless love junky.

Once in a blue moon a bloke will tickle my fancy and capture my heart beyond measures I thought possible, and all sensibility will go out the window.

I’ve had it three times in my lifetime.

Once with a naughty boy I dated in my twenties who I would fight with constantly, yet always get back together with because, well, we were equally addicted to each other. We were clearly mismatched but that didn’t stop my heart beating for him. It was all very dramatic. All very ‘dating in your 20s’ ridiculousness.

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Jana Hocking has a bad habit of falling in love with men who aren’t good for her.

The next time was with a bloke I met at a bar in my late 20s. I still remember the exact moment I clocked eyes on him.

I walked through the front door and took one look at the guy working behind the bar with crystal blue eyes, artfully tattooed arms, and a five o’clock shadow that I desperately wanted to touch and exclaimed to my best friend: “That’s the bloke I’m going to marry!”

Jump forward a month and I discover he’s my friend’s new housemate. Now, I’m sorry, but if that isn’t a sign from the gods saying, “Hey Jana, let us present you with someone fun to play with (and cry over) for the next year-or-so,” then I don’t know what is!

And finally, we come to a bloke that’s captured this ol’ heart of mine in the current day. He’s a terrible idea. In fact, if you lined up a group of men and my friends had to pick which one would be the worst match for me, they would all point at him.

And yet, here we are.

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Cheers to dating unsuitable men!

So recently I’ve been pondering how to get myself out of this situation. I know this sounds horribly weak and ridiculous, but I can’t seem to muster the courage to tell him to “choof off” when he very occasionally throws a few breadcrumbs of attention my way.

It’s like I’m outside my body looking at myself saying, “You are better than this!” and yet … it turns out I’m sure as heck not.

So when my recent Kinda Sorta Dating podcast guest, Thomas Alexander, sat down for a great chat, we took a call from a listener and I was shamefully happy to hear that she was experiencing the very same problem as I am.

The caller explained that she has a man in her life who is not at all “relationship material” and was quite the player, etc … etc … but she can’t seem to get him out of her life.

Yep, just like me she drops everything to run to him when he texts. So how does she finally boot him to the kerb?

How do you get rid of the person who’s no good for you, says Jana?

What Thomas said next was like a lightning bolt to my soul! He explained that he was once in the same boat with a girl, and the only thing that worked for him was putting the girl on the spot and listening to her say the words he really didn’t want to hear, which was, “I just don’t feel the same. I’m never going to be that into you, and I’m never going to want more than a physical thing.”

He explained that he really had to push her to say it, despite not wanting to hear it, and that when he finally heard what deep down knew was true, it was the one thing that finally turned him off her for good. Honestly, it worked.

Basically, what he was saying is you’ve kinda got to get your heart smashed into pieces before you can really move on. And as brutal as it sounds, it makes sense. You really need to hear those words to shake you out of this fake, make-believe world you are living in and bring you back to reality.

My past would agree! It took one-too-many cheating incidences to snap me out of it with the first bloke, and there’s nothing quite like a brutal screaming match at a London airport to really give me a hard reality check in the second instance. So the third … well … I think it’s time for a sit down chat. Gaaaaah.

A week’s worth of crying, in exchange for a fresh beginning with someone else who actually adores you, could very well be worth it!

Jana Hocking is a podcaster and collector of kind-of-boyfriends | @jana_hocking