Dan Swygart revealed his worst heartbreak happened two years ago

Dan Swygart won’t let heartbreak get him down.

The I Am Shauna Rae love interest told his Instagram followers a bit about his biggest heartbreak, which happened two years ago. He turned his own experience into advice when one follower asked for tips to navigate a broken heart.

“I think the most important thing is when you’re going through a breakup is to focus solely on yourself,” Swygart said while walking on a beach. “Understand what you want in life and build yourself up.”

“Make yourself a better person, whether that’s through fitness, through success, through education, through spirituality, through your close inner circle, a friend, just build yourself up to be the best your possibly can,” he continued.

Though Swygart didn’t share personal details about his breakup, he expanded on what helped him reinvent himself — and find confidence in future relationships.

“Focus on yourself and eventually the pain of that relationship will be forgotten,” he said. “I think it’s also very important to forgive, learn and grow. Don’t hold anything against them, even if they’ve done the worst thing possible. Try to forgive, but never forget. Learn from it, grow from it, and it’s going to make you into that better person.”

Swygart also suggested that his followers “don’t just replace romantic connections,” in fear of time spent alone.

“You’re going to bring past traumas from previous relationships into new relationships and you’re not really going to understand and learn more about who you are and what you want in life,” he said.

In 2022, Swygart began getting to know Shauna Rae, the TLC star living with pituitary dwarfism after undergoing treatment for brain cancer as an infant.

Though the pair remain close friends, they’re still just exploring what a relationship would look like between the two of them. Last season on the show, Shauna Rae admitted she’d kissed Swygart at one point in their connection.

Last month, Swygart received criticism for being interested in Shauna Rae — as she’s a 23-year-old who appears to have the body of an eight-year-old. He defended their connection by reminding critics that Shauna Rae deserves to find romance and respect, despite her physical appearance.

“How dare you take away her right, her human right, to have a connection, a friendship, a relationship with someone else? Who are you to say that she can’t have that?” he said in an Instagram video.

Seasons 1 and 2 I Am Shauna Rae are now streaming in full on Discovery+.