💔 Careful What You Say, You May Break Hearts - English Listening Practice: British English Podcast

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Hello there, English learner.

It's nice to be with you again, or for the first time.

If this is your first time, my name is Anna and I'm your host for today.

This episode is going to be extra special.

I'm putting my heart and soul into it.

So today I am going to open up, speak from the heart, and tell you about a

time when a young man broke my heart.

Now, if this is your first time here, you are not in the wrong place.

I promise you.

Let me explain how this is going to work.

I'm going to share with you a very personal story, and this is

just an easy listening exercise.

But in this story, I've woven in a number of phrases that use the word heart, and

these are very commonly used phrases that you should have in your vocabulary bank.

So I'm using them in real context.

And then at the end, after my heartbreaking story, I will go

back and tell you about the phrases that I sneaked into the story, and

I'll explain what they all mean.

Does that work for you?

Good.

Then sit back, relax, and get the tissues at the ready.

My heartbreak started with an email.

Yes.

He sent me an email, which let's be honest is probably the most cold-hearted and

cowardly way to break up with someone.

This young man, let's call him Eddie.

Eddie and I met while working on board the cruise ships, and anyone who has

ever upended their lives to take up an opportunity in another country or at sea

will know how vulnerable you can feel.

So I was pretty vulnerable at this time and I was looking

to build a support network.

So long story short, despite not looking for love, Eddie stole my heart.

He knew exactly what to say and how to treat me in order to win my heart.

We soon became a couple.

I was quite smitten actually, and I made no secret of how happy I

was to be in this new relationship.

To be honest, I've always worn my heart on my sleeve, and after

all this time, I still don't know if that's a blessing or a curse.

Now I really thought that this was true love.

He was like a Hallmark movie leading man.

My heart would skip a beat whenever I laid my eyes on him.

He knew exactly how to treat me.

After a few months of seeing each other every single day, because we were living

and working on the cruise ships together, he asked if I would move in with him

when our cruise ship contracts ended.

It all seemed to be moving so fast, but stupidly, I thought this just

shows how devoted he was to me.

In my head, I was screaming,

"No, this is too soon.

It's so silly.

Don't do it."

But my heart had a different idea, so I followed my heart and agreed that I would

move in with him once our contracts ended.

Then disaster struck.

At least that's how it seemed at the time.

He was ordered to move onto a different ship on the other side of the world for

the final four months of our contract.

He was devastated.

I was devastated, and we had our hearts set on moving in together and

starting our lives together on dry land.

"You aren't going to have a change of heart once you're

separated from me, are you?"

I asked him.

"I won't."

"I cross my heart and hope to die", he replied.

He reassured me that everything would be okay, and reminded me that

absence makes the heart grow fonder.

So I had nothing to worry about.

At that point, I had no reason to doubt him.

He was a lovely, warm and sensible man.

I trusted him.

Everyone who knew him agreed that he had a heart of gold.

So what could go wrong?

A dancer named Lulu.

That's what.

You can probably guess where this is going, right?

So three of the four agonising months passed, and we are emailing each other

every other day, professing our love and fantasising about our new lives together.

Then one ordinary day, I log into my email account to discover nothing.

No email.

That's odd, I thought to myself, he promised to email me today.

I reasoned with myself that perhaps he overslept and was unable to

get to the computer room on time.

Surely he would email me tomorrow.

This guy loves me dearly and he wants to be in contact

with me so I won't lose heart.

Next day, nothing.

I tried hard not to take it to heart.

Maybe they're having internet issues on their ship, I thought.

The next day, the bombshell dropped.

I opened my inbox and there it was, finally.

But this email was not the apologetic love letter I was expecting,

but a dagger designed to destroy our relationship with one blow.

Anna,

Something happened and I've come to realise that I cannot love

you as I once believed I did.

Last night, I spent the night with another woman.

I know I said I would never do this, but I'm sure you'll get over it.

I hope you have a good life,

Eddie.

My world imploded.

I sat there staring at the computer screen with my bleeding heart in my hands.

That was it.

That is how a seemingly beautiful relationship ended with betrayal

and a blunt, unapologetic email.

From that point, I had to piece myself back together.

So I put my heart and soul into my work and spent my free time

indulging in activities that are close to my heart, like playing

piano and exploring new places.

Two years later, out of the blue, Eddie contacted me asking to meet me for coffee.

I agreed, purely because I was curious and because I never felt

I had true closure on everything.

By this time I had my life together and I was in a great place.

He, however, was deeply unhappy.

We talked things through and I expressed how much he had hurt me.

He was very apologetic this time.

The whole time that we were together, I felt like saying, this

is what you could have had, but you messed up, so eat your heart out.

But I didn't.

I actually felt sorry for him in the end.

Now I am pleased to tell you that I did find true love in the end,

someone who loves and respects me, who makes me feel young at heart,

and that is something that I wish for everyone who's listening to me today.

Now, while listening to that very sorry, heartbreak story, did you notice

the many heart phrases that I used?

There were, in fact, 20.

So sit back and relax as I unpack them for you, you might want to grab

a piece of paper and a pen and make some notes, but if you're driving,

please don't be writing notes.

That's dangerous.

You can always listen back later on.

So I use the phrase to break my heart.

If you break someone's heart, it's when you destroy them

emotionally, you upset them deeply.

So it's often when someone breaks up a relationship.

If the other person is committed to that relationship and happy, then by betraying

them or by breaking off the relationship, then you're going to upset them.

And in this case, we would say you broke their heart.

Okay.

Sometimes you get to the end of a relationship and both of you just

know that you don't want to be together anymore, and there's not

really much heartbreak involved.

Nobody's breaking anyone's heart.

It's a mutual agreement that you want to end the relationship.

Sometimes you might hear 'you broke my heart' used in different contexts.

So, for example, if my child does something that's just so terrible or says

something that's just so painful to me.

For example, if one of my sons turned out to be a violent criminal

and does terrible things to people, that would break my heart.

My heart would feel broken.

I would have pain in my heart because the people I love and care

about are doing terrible things.

Has anyone ever broken your heart?

Given that most people will go through some form of breakup or

have some disappointing news from a loved one, then I think all of us

will have experienced some form of heartbreak at some point in our lives.

And if you are experiencing that right now, I'm sending you a big hug.

Okay, so the next phrase is a change of heart.

If you have a change of heart, it's the same as changing your mind.

It means you suddenly feel differently about something.

So I might have a long standing feud between my siblings,

with my brother and sister.

I might decide that I'm never speaking to my brother and sister again because

of an argument we had 10 years ago.

And I'm adamant that that's it.

Never again.

But then a few months later, I'm suddenly speaking to them again.

You could say that I've had a change of heart.

I now feel differently about the situation.

I've changed my mind.

So to have a change of heart.

If you follow your heart, then you are pursuing your passion.

You are going for the thing that feels right.

I remember when I was trying to decide which courses to take

at college and university, I was asking everyone's advice,

"What should I do?

I don't know what to do."

And then my mum just said to me,

"Look, Anna, it's your life.

You have to follow your heart.

Ignore what everyone tells you.

Don't do courses just because that's what someone else thinks you should do.

Follow your heart.

What makes you happy?

What do you think you want to do in life?"

And I said,

"I want to be an actress.

I want to be a singer and a dancer."

And so I followed my heart.

Next is to wear your heart on your sleeve.

If you're the kind of person who wears your heart on your sleeve, then

you are very open with how you feel.

Many of us tend to hide our emotions, don't we?

Especially if we like someone or if we're feeling sad about something.

It's almost like there's a level of shame associated with expressing our emotions,

so we hide them away from the world.

But if you wear your heart on your sleeve, then you don't, you show

everyone how you're feeling and how you feel about different people.

You wear your heart on your sleeve.

Then I used a very unusual phrase, I said, cross my heart and hope to die.

Now, this is commonly something that a youngster would say, but as

we get older, you will hear this particular phrase occasionally

used by adults, but shortened.

So people often say, cross my heart, cross my heart.

This doesn't mean that you literally want to die.

It means that you promise that you sincerely promise.

So this would normally be the response to someone asking if you are

definitely going to do something or asking if you promise to do something

they're asking you to commit to a thing that you said that you'd do.

So if you say,

"Look, don't worry about clearing up the garden.

I'll do it later."

And you don't believe me because I say this all the time and you

really need the garden cleaning up.

So you'd say,

"You promise?

You promise, you'll do it later today?"

I'd look you back in the eye and say,

"I cross my heart."

With the extension of that being cross my heart and hope to die.

As children, when you say this, you often even do a little draw, a little

cross with your finger across your chest, so you cross across your chest, as you

say, cross my heart and hope to die.

It's quite morbid really thinking about it.

I think that the sense of that second part is if I break my

promise, the Lord can strike me down.

I will die.

If I break my promise.

I will definitely commit to this, I won't let you down.

Next is to take something to heart.

If you take something to heart, it's very similar to take something

personally, it means that you really believe and are affected by something

that someone has done or said.

So if I were to say to you,

"Oh, have you had a haircut?

Your hair looks a bit different."

I'm just making a general comment there, but you might be feeling

very sensitive about your hair.

Maybe you did have to have a haircut because your hair is thinning

and you're trying to disguise it.

And so me making a comment about your hair tells you that it no longer looks

good or that it's really obvious, even though that's not necessarily what

I said, you really took it to heart.

Or an example from my childhood when I used to sing as a child in the house, I

say a child, like a young teenage girl.

Sometimes my mum would say,

"Oh, what's going on up there?

It sounds like someone's murdering a cat."

And I really took that comment to heart.

You know, my mum was just being a bit playful, but I really felt quite

sensitive about that, and it made me feel really insecure about singing.

And it took me a long time to get past that comment.

I still hold it with me today.

So I really took that to heart, even though it wasn't

intended to be anything serious.

Next is to steal someone's heart.

If you steal someone's heart, then you make them fall in love with you.

Now, this could be romantic, as it was in my story.

You make someone fall in love with you and you run off together to have a happy life.

Or it could be just, you know, like a really cute little teeny weeny kitten

has been left in a box on your doorstep.

And although you said you'd never have a pet and you're not a big fan of cats,

this tiny kitten just stole your heart.

You fell in love with it.

You couldn't give it away.

You couldn't leave it there.

So you took it in and you became a cat owner.

It stole my heart.

Next, we have to speak from the heart.

If you speak from the heart, it just means that you are very honest.

You open up and you say what you are truly feeling.

You might hear this being stated by someone who you wouldn't

expect to speak from the heart.

So someone who would always have an arranged speech, so like a politician

or someone in authority who would be giving a press conference or just

speaking to a larger group of people.

Often they are well prepared.

They know exactly what they're doing.

But on the odd occasion, they will become quite personal and

they will speak from the heart.

They will just tell you what they're genuinely feeling and thinking, and reveal

themselves rather than putting on a show.

They speak from the heart.

Next we have close to my heart.

If something is close to your heart, it means that you care about it.

Now, this is often used to describe causes that you care about.

So if you are a particular follower and supporter of animal rights causes,

if you are a vegan, if you are a women's rights supporter and activist.

If you are closely following the news on climate change and the work of the

climate activists, then these are all causes that are close to your heart.

You could also use this phrase to describe activities and hobbies

that you particularly like.

So I could say squash.

Squash is very close to my heart.

The piano is very close to my heart.

These are the things that I really do care about.

I don't just like them.

I really, really love them.

Moving on to the phrase, eat your heart out.

Now, this isn't actually a very nice phrase.

You're telling someone to go and eat their own heart.

Now, to eat your heart out is a phrase that you would use,

you would aim it at someone.

Sometimes we follow it by a name.

Eat your heart out Mariah Carey.

In this case, you are suggesting that you or someone you are watching or someone

you are with is better than Mariah Carey.

So if I'm with my best friend and my best friend has just entered a singing

competition and she absolutely smashes it, she wins first place and she's amazing.

She can do all the warbling that Mariah Carey does.

And I say to her,

"You were so amazing.

I mean, eat your heart out, Mariah Carey."

I'm saying you are better than Mariah Carey.

But eat your heart out can also have the sense of excessive suffering

that someone might go through because they can't have or obtain something.

So in my story, I said that while sitting across from Eddie, I was thinking,

"Oh, eat your heart out, eat your heart out."

Because he potentially was suffering from regret.

The fact that he let me go and he couldn't be with me anymore, he had no chance

of winning me back after what happened.

And so in my head I was thinking,

"Haha, you are suffering, excessively suffering because

you can no longer have me."

And so this phrase, yeah, it's just like throwing tomatoes at

someone and and just saying, suffer.

"You suffer.

You can't have what you want."

Or like I said, if you say the phrase and follow it by someone's name,

then you're suggesting that the thing is better than that person.

So you might say,

"Look at my new Volvo.

Isn't it amazing?

It does 0 to 60 in five seconds.

It's so fantastic.

I've done all these upgrades on it.

Eat your heart out Tesla."

Or

"Eat your heart out Elon Musk."

Okay, I'm gonna move on from eating out hearts.

Where are we up to?

What's next?

Ah, yes, bleeding heart.

If you describe a bleeding heart, what you mean is that you are just in pain.

So if I say to someone,

"Oh, just take my bleeding heart out of my chest."

It's not really something I would say it's very dramatic, but I'm just

saying that my heart is bleeding.

I'm in so much pain, there's just, yeah, distress pouring out of my heart.

My heart is bleeding.

Sometimes we say this in a sarcastic way.

You really have to read the tone and the context.

So if you tell me a sob story, but I don't think it's really that bad, or if I'm

feeling quite annoyed with you because actually you've done something to hurt me.

Like, let's take Eddie for example.

If he sat there across the table from me all those years later and said,

"I'm sorry that I cheated on you and dumped you in such a terrible

way, but you have to understand I was having a really hard time.

I was so lonely that I had to cheat on you because I just

needed someone to be with me."

Then I might look at him and say,

"Oh, my heart is bleeding for you."

It's a sarcastic way of saying, "that's just pathetic.

I don't feel sorry for you in the slightest.

Don't try and tell me your terrible sob story because that's not nearly

as bad as what you did to me or what I've been going through."

Okay.

So you have to really read the context and the tone to understand

if that one is genuine or not.

Next I used the nice phrase, heart and soul.

I said, to put my heart and soul into, I think work, I said.

If you put your heart and soul into something, then

you are giving it your all.

You are putting every effort and all your focus into that one thing.

So if you have entered a singing competition, and you really want to

win, then you're going to practise, practise, practise as much as possible.

You're going to read the entry requirements several times to make

sure you haven't missed something.

You might stay up very late one night making your costume.

You might try and find all the previous competition entries and

watch everyone and listen to all the judges' comments to try and figure out

how you can improve your performance.

If this was the case, then you are putting your heart and soul into this competition.

So to put in every effort.

Next, is to have a heart of gold.

If someone describes you as having a heart of gold, they mean that you

are trustworthy and kind and lovely.

Someone with a heart of gold is just very genuine, honest and nice.

So if someone describes you that way, that's something to smile about.

Now, to win someone's heart is similar to steal someone's heart, it means

that you've made a real effort to make someone like you, and in some

cases, love you, and it worked.

They end up liking you or loving you.

You've won their heart.

People might say, I'm trying to win her heart, but it's not working.

What can I do?

Should I buy her flowers?

I don't know.

Next, I used the phrase to be young at heart.

This would normally describe someone who's much older, and it means that this person,

although they are old, they still have the energy and the spirit of a young person.

They still enjoy things that a young person enjoys.

They're young in their heart.

They're young at heart.

So if you see a granddad, an ageing man on a paddle board, having lots of

fun with his grandchildren, or even on a surfboard doing some amazing tricks,

or down at the skate park on a pair of rollerblades doing some incredible tricks.

You'd say,

"Wow, he might be a granddad.

He might be in his seventies, but he is young at heart."

Next, we have to lose heart.

If you lose heart, it means that you lose interest or you

lose a passion for something.

So if the little kitten that I took on, this is not a true story, but if the

kitten that I took on and it grew up to be my cat and I love it dearly, if it

then went missing, I would initially do everything I could to try and find it.

I'd go looking around the neighbourhood, I'd knock on everyone's door.

I'd send messages out to the local neighbourhood.

I'd put posters up.

Has anyone seen my cat?

Please tell me.

I might even offer a reward if you can give me any information about my cat.

But eventually, if nothing happens and my cat doesn't come back and

no one gets in touch with me, then over time I'm going to lose heart.

I'm going to stop believing that anything positive is going to

happen, that we're going to find him.

So I'll lose heart.

Or if I'm working hard for this singing competition that I keep mentioning,

if I'm working hard to prepare my song, working on my voice, trying to

make my voice better and stronger.

And then I go into the first round of the competition and I actually

have a negative experience and one of the judges, he puts me through,

but he laughs at me and says that he thinks I'm a little bit ridiculous.

Then I might lose confidence, and that loss of confidence might affect

my passion for wanting to take part.

So you might see this in me and say, Anna, just ignore it.

You got through to the next round, so don't lose heart.

Don't lose your passion.

Don't become discouraged.

Okay, next I said the lovely phrase, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

We never shorten this phrase.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder means that the longer you are

away from someone that you care about, the more you love them.

And it can be true, can't it?

Sometimes we take people for granted, so my partner and I,

we see each other every day.

We work together some days of the week.

Well, I say we work together.

We work both from home, so you know, we're sitting in the same office,

so we share a space often, and then you start to take them for granted.

But if he was to go away for a week, then I would miss him terribly, and I think,

"Oh, I love him so much.

I must send him a message to remind him how much I love him."

Because absence makes the heart grow fonder.

It reminds you that you really care about those people who are now not in your life.

Moving on, we have cold-hearted.

If you describe someone as cold-hearted, then they, well, I was gonna say

they're evil, but it's not evil.

It's not about being evil, it's just about not showing any empathy, not seeming to

care, so doing things without concern about how the other person will feel or

how this will impact the other person.

You often actually hear this adjective being used to

describe like serious criminals, murderers, and violent criminals.

And that's why I said initially they're evil, but not everyone

who's cold-hearted is evil.

It's just often used to describe evil people, a

cold-hearted killer, for example.

Someone who shows no remorse for the terrible things that they do.

Okay, so then we have to set your heart on something.

And we are nearly at the end of the list, by the way.

To set your heart on something means that you decide something that you want and

then you really focus on that and start to have a strong desire for that thing,

and you can't think about anything else.

So, for example, I might be looking to move house and I might see many houses

that aren't quite right, but then I see this one house that is perfect.

It's my dream home.

It's the house I've always wanted.

It has a pantry and it has a walk-in wardrobe and it has a nice open

landing and a beautiful doorway with a cupboard for coats and shoes.

Wow.

It's my dream home.

And the more I think about this house, the more I'm certain that this is what I want.

And with every passing moment, I can't imagine doing anything else.

So I become fixated.

I become obsessed with this one thing, and then if that doesn't

work out, I would be devastated.

Often children set their hearts on certain gifts that they

would like for their birthday.

You might ask them, what do you want?

And they say, I really want a fire engine that I can sit in

and drive and makes noises.

And you go, okay.

And you look at fire engines that you can sit on and that move.

But they are so expensive and you think there's absolutely no

way I can afford to buy this.

So instead you buy them a little toy fire engine that they can just

move around with their hand and when they open the present, they're like,

"Oh, that's not really what I wanted."

Because they had their heart set on the one thing that they told you they

wanted, which was a ride-on fire engine.

Hopefully the child will be well-balanced enough to understand

that money doesn't grow on trees.

But you know, children sometimes find it very difficult to

understand these kinds of problems.

And the final phrase is my heart skips a beat.

You'll probably hear this in numerous songs.

We often talk about our heart skipping or our heart skipping a beat.

To skip something is to miss it.

Very different from the physical act of skipping, which is what children

often do and that adults should do.

I'm not talking about skipping with a rope, because you can skip with a rope,

which is where you circle a rope around you over and over again, and you jump

over it and jump over it and jump over it.

I think in America it's called jump rope.

In the UK it's just called skipping.

And you do it with a skipping rope.

But you can skip without a rope, which is like hopping from one foot to another.

Jump, hop, jump, hop, jump, hop, skip, skip, skip, skip.

And it's a fantastic way to move.

I love having young kids because it means as an adult I can skip

and people don't think I'm weird.

At least that's how I think of it in my head anyway.

Maybe people do look at me and think she's weird, she's very young at heart,

skipping down the road with her children.

Okay, so this particular phrase, my heart skips a beat, means my heart misses a

beat because you are struck by someone.

So you see someone and it makes your heart skip.

It's because you are in love with them.

They make you go, wow, I love this person.

So if someone makes your heart skip or makes your heart skip a

beat, it means that you just are enamoured with them, you love them

or you really, really fancy them.

And that ladies and gentlemen, brings me to the end of our list.

I do hope that I managed to win your heart with today's podcast episode.

If you did find today useful and you enjoy these podcasts, then please

do show your support by leaving a rating or a review so that other

listeners can find this podcast too.

Thank you so much for letting me tickle your eardrums.

Until next time, take care and goodbye.

Are you still here?

Okay, let me give you a little joke.

Why are two hearts better than one?

Because two hearts can't be beat.