While heartbreak weakens us the fact is it also strengthens us in many ways. The first thing it makes us realise is that each relationship has many dimensions; love is just a part of it. We realise who is dependable and who is not. It is no great deal to allow some relations to linger on without directions.
It makes us aware of our inner weaknesses. People are not able to accept their faults, many become sullen if their weaknesses are pointed out by others. But heartbreak surely makes us aware of our weak points; in a way, it gives us an opportunity for self-improvement. People feel lost after a breakup. It’s the body’s way of communicating its pain. Everyone should experience heartbreak at least once in their lifetime. Most of us experience it more than once.
To commemorate broken relationships a museum is built in Croatia, it’s called the Museum of Broken Relationships. It lies between Saint Mark’s Church and Saint Catherine’s in Zagreb’s Upper Town. On Saturdays in the Croatian capital, brides and grooms rotate for portraits against the spiritual backdrops of items present in the museum. While wedding guests replenish during the happy day with coffee on the terrace of the museum’s well-positioned cafe. The museum exhibition space puts heartache on display.
The aim of the museum is to allow lovesick people to heal after a visit to the museum; whatever the circumstances might be, people draw comfort from the museum. It is the brainchild of two star-crossed Croatian lovers, Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić. After their own love affair ended, the separated couple began collecting the relics of other failed relationships. Everyday objects like watches, high-heeled shoes, and cigarette lighters were anonymously donated by local Zagreb residents, and in 2010 the first Museum of Broken Relationships opened for business.
The idea is to portray personal leftovers from the breakup. Olinka Vištica is a film producer, and Dražen Grubišić is a sculptor. When they both ended their four years union, they created this museum as a symbolic space to put things that were very important to them when they were in a relationship. They didn’t throw away things that they cared for. The founders’ contribution soon attracted a global supply of woes, promises in form of gifts of all sorts. For example, a toy rabbit standing in front of his vacation snapshot in a desert near Tehran. It now poses under the placard: “The bunny was supposed to travel the world but never got further than Iran.”
Mannequin hands which are weird leftovers of a 5-year “love-hate relationship” in Berlin include a pair of wooden hands. The donor explains: “One night I left my room and did not come back until next morning to find it was completely destroyed, sprayed all over with polyurethane foam, total chaos. My favourite mannequin had no choice but to believe it.”
A tingle with a placard saying what do you do when a departed girlfriend leaves behind her erotic head massager? Donate it: “One of the things one doesn’t give back to ex-girlfriends.”
The letter T: A Slovenia couple who met online didn’t survive the first real-life encounter. The placard reads “When we actually met in person the mutual interest was lost and he gave me the letter T from his keyboard, as he did not need it any longer.”
Intimate shampoo: These are things you don’t remember to pack when you leave for good. “After the relationship ended, my mother used it for glass polishing. She claims it’s absolutely great.”
The museum had humble beginnings; the first exhibition was given in a shipping container in a museum garden in Zagreb. Both Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić had clarity of the basic foundation: The objects should be presented very simply, with a card underneath outlining the person’s story, it could be a few words or a few lines, or it could be something longer and more intricate. The written expression of how the object mattered to the donor was important. Over 4,000 objects ranging from a doll, a wedding gown to a hammer have since been submitted from anonymous donors across the globe. These include an axe used to chop up an ex-boyfriend’s furniture; a letter was written by a 13-year-old boy fleeing Sarajevo; and a jar of “love incense,” labelled simply: “doesn’t work.”
There is a special kind of magic to these items. They are ordinary in nature, we see them every day. But the stories they tell are like windows of souls of strangers. Gifts tell a lot about the donor’s emotions, it can be in any form. And after a relationship breaks, those gifts trouble two people involved in the relation.
Museum of Broken Relationships gives space to innumerable people to vent out pain and frustration. It is a physical and virtual public space created with the sole purpose of treasuring and sharing their heartbreak stories and symbolic possessions. It is a museum about you, about us, about the ways we love and lose. At its core, the museum is an ever-growing collection of items, each a memento of the past of a relationship, accompanied by a personal, yet anonymous story of its contributor. Unlike ‘destructive’ self-help instructions for recovery from grief and loss, the Museum offers the chance to overcome an emotional crumple through creativity – by contributing to its universal collection.
Heartbreak can provide a lot of positive psychological benefits. It can ultimately pave the way for having something bigger, better, and more beautiful. The unique museum is an illustration of this fact.
