I spent some time in this community when my breakup happened last year, looking for answers as to how to move on, how to make the pain stop. So i thought I would share my story, what helped and what didn’t.

1. DONT get back together just because it is to painful to be without them/alone.

We were together for almost 3years. Around the 7 month mark I had a gut feeling to break things off. Didn’t think it was going to work long term.
Immediately after breaking things off, the pain hit me like a train. It was hard breathing, couldn’t stop crying, a big pit on my chest. I was completely alone and my friends and family overseas.

A couple days post break up, we were together again, which I realize now, it was only because I couldn’t handle the pain even though I knew it was the right decision.

1. Alcohol/drugs/partying/hookups are useless

You can temporarily distract yourself with these, but it won’t heal you. Try not to waste your time in this phase.

1. Dont jump into another relationship or go on dates to fill the void.

I think this is pretty self explanatory. We all know its not good, yet we do it regardless. Unfortunately, nothing good can come out of a relationship you entered from a place of lack and desperation.

ok now lets get into the Do’s and the second part of the story

Getting to the 3 year mark he said he had lost feelings (later found out he just wanted to date his co worker). I was blindsided by it, but knew deep down we weren’t meant to be together and I had to move on and learn how to be alone and work on myself.
So how do you actually go about this?

1. Let yourself cry, scream and let it all out. If you have someone who can hear your pain great, if not talk to yourself.
   2.Write EVERYTHING you are feeling in a journal. Every day. It will help you in more ways than you think.
   3.You might not want to hear this, but you have to go outside. You can’t rot in bed forever. I started going to bed really early and waking up at 6am to walk and watch the sunrise. Which did wonders for my mental health.
   
2. Exercise. Doesn’t matter what you like, running, skating, lifting weights, spinning classes, yoga. I have done it all. Does wonders. Skating is my favorite one so far. Learned from 0 and can now skate by the beach and through the city. I have also met incredible people doing these activities. So its also great for building a community.
   
3. Eat healthy, no further explanation needed.
   
4. MEDITATE. In all caps because it is the biggest game changer. Or pray, you need to tap into your spirituality or religion. Whatever works for you.

I am not going to give you a timeline and tell you when you will stop feeling that horrible pain, because everyone’s journey is different. But for me, after 2 months I was feeling like an entirely different person. There was a point around May 2026 I felt the happiest I have ever been in my life. I realized you need to be your one true love, and accept you dont need another person to be whole. You are whole as you are, and if someone wants to tag alone then great, but it is not a requirement.

Go find yourself again, i love you all and feel your pain. You got this.

I feel like breaking up on good terms was worse than breaking up in bad terms because then you’d have a solid reason for yourself not to look back anymore. I feel like breaking up on good terms makes you feel like maybe there’s still hope that one day things would be better again and that your person will come back to you.

Right now it happened to me, my 2 year relationship has ended on good term, we didn’t blocked each other, and we still casually talk. Honestly, its like so shit that when I think of i want to move on, but i kept thinking of how good our relationship was and i still secretly hope that maybe all of these happened because of overwhelming stress.

Breaking up on good terms feels like the person you love could still be there and honestly, breaking up on bad terms makes me feel like I could move on faster by like fuck off no more pain. But this one makes me sit down and cry and i just kept thinking about how our relationship went down.

Maybe love really was not enough to keep relationship, it’s really the commitment to each other.

Long story short - She broke up with me, she has my stuff still, I still love her and want this to work, 5 days after the break up she sent me this message. I'm not sure how to take it, or what she's trying to accomplish other than ease her guilt. Looking for others opinions. Name and location has been removed.

She broke up with me Tuesday, and sends me this message on Sunday. She has my things still at her house. I'm not sure how to take this message, she broke up with me over the phone, basically just saying the relationship wasn't working for her. It's not really about what happened during the relationship we both really care for each other, there's just things we couldn't work through. I'm just looking for others opinions on what this message is even trying to get across.

To me it sounds like she is just trying to alleviate some of her own stresses and guilt from the break up, everything she's is saying is in past tense, there's no questions asked, no requests for us to talk and work things out, and no remorse and regret.

She was never one to make herself vulnerable in the relationship, she would breadcrumb me and want me to figure out her vulnerabilities. I was an over functioning partner, trying to compensate for my partners lack of effort.

If I'm being honest, I still love her for sure no one really did anything wrong, I want things to work out between us I really do I was planning on spending the rest of my life with her.

So please, if you could, break down this message for me, I'd like to hear from someone else what they think is going on. Females perspective especially.

It’s probably just hope, but I’m convinced that he is going to come back to me. It’s this deep gut feeling that we’re not over yet.

I’m trying to process, and focus on myself, but I can’t escape this feeling. It has been three months and I still feel it. He’s already dating again and we have been NC the entire time, so nothing points to him coming back, and yet I’m so sure he will.

Why is my brain set on making the pain last longer??

That's the part no one talks about.

Everyone asks if you miss your ex. And I always say no. And I mean it. I don't miss his habits, his avoidant texts, the way he made me feel small without even realizing it.

But what I do miss? That version of myself that believed in things so fully. The girl who got excited to send a good morning text. Who planned surprise dinners. Who thought love was enough.

I look at myself now and I don't recognize her. I'm guarded. I overthink every message before I send it. I wait for the other shoe to drop. I can't let myself fully feel anything anymore because I'm terrified of being that naive again.

Losing him hurt. But losing the person I used to be? That somehow hurts worse.

I don't know how to get her back. Or if I even can. But maybe that's the real breakup I'm grieving.

I won’t take him back.
I will not take him back.
I
Won’t
Take
You
Back

Please don’t come back

Listen to the Mel Robbins podcast on ‘to anyone going through a breakup’

This finally settled my nervous system a little.

Thank me later.

I am disgusted by you. Livid. I greatly downplayed my pain that last night we spoke, told you I was “sad,” how ridiculous. Hear now what your decision did to me: that night, I drove home and sobbed uncontrollably, for hours and hours, I did not sleep that night until maybe 7 or 8 am, and when I awoke, back into the nightmare I found myself in, the sobbing quickly began again, and because I was unable to control it, I called out of work.

I see the next day that you post a story and caption a video of yourself, ‘melancholic day,’ to which I could hardly believe, I hardly knew you anymore. Except maybe I did, this was you all along, you who cannot bear to let yourself live out of the spotlight, without validation from everyone, anyone else, that you so crave, to publicize your ‘melancholy’ while I on the other hand, suffered from having been slapped in the face, kicked to the curb and kicked hard, right in the lungs, I could barely breathe.

Barely breathe, indeed. The next few days I lived in a state of pure shock. Adrenaline kept me going. I smoked 8 or 9 cigarettes a day as if it were helping anything, and felt nothing, no sickness, nothing as a result. Anxiety as I had never felt before in my life, lived deep in my gut, as if all day I was about to vomit; I was shaking, panicking, could hardly function at work, forgetting orders, dropping food, moving and speaking so quickly I was interrupting customers, voice shaking, body buzzing. I couldn’t eat for three whole days, not a single bite of food, and so I forced myself to drink smoothies and protein shakes. By day four, I could eat again, but only bites, and all the while I was starving, the hunger pains became my constant companion, always there, and in a sick way, I liked it. It was a comfort to my shattered nerves.

All this, and when you asked how I had been, I held back, told you simply that I was, ‘pretty terrible,’ and you heard that and nodded. No further questions. And you? Went shopping. Cool.

…

Timeline clarity: We were together for a year and a half. Got dumped just over two months ago. The last time I spoke to him was a week after the breakup. Told him goodbye over text a month ago. Haven’t spoken since. This is a draft of a part of a larger project that I will be sending to him.

I just went through a break up, and I’ve been sleeping at my own place for the first time in a few months. I’m getting horrific anxiety about sleeping by myself, convinced I’m going to get murdered in my sleep. It’s gotten to the point where I’m not sleeping, I have a bunch of heavy stuff against my door, and I’m sleeping with mosquito spray and a dagger by my bed. I’ve had nightmares every night.

I had absolutely no problem sleeping with my ex because he made me feel safe and protected.

Has anyone else experienced this? How do I make it go away?

Did you stay in contact and successfully transition into a genuine friendship, or did you choose no contact? If you went no contact initially, did you ever reconnect as friends later?
Were you still romantically attached when they offered? And looking back, are you glad you made the choice you did?

My 4ys relationship just ended couple days ago. I thought id cry, talk and whine abt it to my close friends for support, but no. Just like when my grandma died i just went mute abt it and got quiet and didn’t cry. I just sat there and now it feels like im living on autopilot in the third person view if that make sense im living like a spectator rather a participant idk if this makes any sense but it’s worth taking a shot here.

My ex and I were in a long-distance relationship. He had been trying to come here to meet me for a while, but the trip kept getting delayed/cancelled. At one point he told me he was finally coming to see me in 10 days, and then 3 days before he was supposed to come, while I was sleeping, he blocked me everywhere. When I woke up, I found a huge paragraph from him saying he was sorry, that I deserved better, and that he didn’t want to hurt me or keep me waiting anymore, so I should move on and live happily. The whole thing really disturbed me because while I was completely blindsided by the breakup, he seemed to just continue living his life normally. This happened in July. In August, I reached out to him using a friend’s account because I wanted closure, which I know was immature and I honestly regret doing it. Things got ugly very quickly, we had a huge fight, and after that we went completely no contact. I genuinely thought I had moved on and had accepted that it was over. Then on September 5th, completely out of nowhere, he messaged me. He reached out on both WhatsApp and Botim and sent the exact same message on both. I never expected to hear from him again after how badly things ended. I haven’t responded for two days, but his message has completely thrown me back into overthinking everything. Part of me wants to know why he reached out and talk to him, but another part of me feels like nothing has actually changed and I could just be reopening the same wound.

I don’t know I feel so lost. I dont want to burden my friends, or tell them how I’m really feeling. Not a lot understand as well, so it makes it so hard to talk about.

so basically if you read my story about my break up it gets worse. my ex and his now gf who was an affair joked via text that she‘s pregnant from her ex husband to try to give me hope… he rubbed it under my nose before I went NC…. things like this still linger on my mind… it‘s crazy…

and still.. my ex brags about me being a good woman with his friends and family, asks constantly about me etc…. he even texted my friend so she can wish me happy birthday because I blocked him 2 months ago… or reacts to stories on instagram where he has seen me cooking something and texting my friend ‚wow that looks delicious… buon appetite…‘

umm… I don‘t get how people like this even exist. how can anyone be this evil?

I know it’s a long post.. but I’m heart broken and devastated.

My boyfriend (32M) and I (26F) were in a serious relationship and living together. We talked about marriage, having children, starting a business together, and genuinely building a life together.
Yesterday his car broke down while he was at work. He was depending on me to pick him up after I got off work. I was angry with him over something unrelated that I had seen on social media, and instead of communicating how hurt I was, I intentionally drove home without picking him up.
I want to be completely transparent: **I knew he was waiting for me.** I was hurt, angry, and wanted him to feel hurt too. It was retaliatory, immature and wrong. I’m deeply ashamed of how I handled it, and I’m not posting this hoping people will justify what I did.
When he eventually got home, he was understandably furious. He told me that someone who loved him wouldn’t intentionally hurt him like that and that what I did completely changed how he sees me. He told me he doesn’t love me anymore, I’m not his girlfriend, he doesn’t want to coexist with me, and he wants me to get out.
I apologized and took responsibility. I told him I loved him, that I understood why he was hurt, and that I wanted to repair our relationship. I told him I’d give him whatever space he needed and that whenever he was ready to have a calm conversation, I was here.
When we eventually spoke again, his answer hadn’t changed. He told me that nothing I said and none of the “tactics” I tried would change his decision or how he felt.
That’s when I stopped trying.
I told him I would start figuring out my living situation and would need to come back and forth to move my belongings. I asked if I could stay another couple of nights if I couldn’t immediately find somewhere to go, and he basically said “whatever.” I apologized one final time, told him what’s done is done, and said I hoped someday he could forgive me.
**The reason I’m struggling so much isn’t simply because he broke up with me. It’s because of everything we’ve already been through together.**
During our relationship, I became pregnant. It was an incredibly difficult experience physically and emotionally, and I ultimately had an abortion. Going through something that significant together made the future I imagined with him feel even more real to me.
There were also serious things he did that damaged my trust. One of the biggest was lying to me about his son. There were other issues with dishonesty and recurring things involving social media that I had told him made me uncomfortable.
Those things hurt me deeply. But I stayed.
I chose to forgive him because I loved him. I believed that someone could seriously hurt me, take accountability, and still not have their worst decision define everything they were to me. I believed that love sometimes meant working through really difficult things rather than immediately walking away.
**I know that my forgiving him does not mean he owes me forgiveness.** Relationships aren’t a credit system. If what I did crossed a boundary he cannot come back from, he has every right to decide that.
But I also can’t ignore how incredibly cold and cruel the ending felt to me.
This was someone I slept next to every night, someone I thought I would marry and have a family with, someone I had already gone through a pregnancy and abortion with. Within essentially a day, I went from being his partner to being told he didn’t love me, didn’t consider me his girlfriend anymore, didn’t want to coexist with me and wanted me out.
I understand that **I hurt him first.** I understand that my actions caused this situation. But I don’t think doing something wrong means I’m no longer allowed to have feelings about how someone treats me afterward.
And something has changed for me too.
I realized that I want a partner whose approach to conflict includes grace, compassion and some willingness to repair—even when they’re incredibly angry with me. That doesn’t mean tolerating mistreatment or forgiving absolutely everything. Someone can hold me accountable, take space, be furious with me and ultimately even decide to leave.
But I don’t want to feel like one serious mistake means I become completely disposable to someone I was building a life with.
Maybe he simply isn’t capable of giving me the kind of forgiveness I was capable of giving him. Maybe that’s not wrong. Maybe it just means we’re fundamentally incompatible in what we believe love looks like when someone screws up.
I’ve also had to confront something uncomfortable about myself through all of this. When I feel rejected, jealous or insecure, I sometimes become passive-aggressive or retaliatory instead of communicating directly. Something in me goes, *“You hurt me, so I want you to feel what I’m feeling.”*
That’s exactly what happened here, and **I don’t want to be that person anymore.** Regardless of whether this relationship could ever have been repaired, I need to change that pattern before I ever bring it into another relationship.
At this point, I’m done trying to change his mind. He has made his decision clear, and I’m going to respect it. I’m going to figure out somewhere else to live, move my things out and try to rebuild my life.
I’m just genuinely heartbroken. Part of me is grieving the relationship, and another part of me is grieving the person I thought he was and the future I thought we were building.
I’m looking for outside perspectives, including people who are willing to criticize me:
Would what I did have immediately ended the relationship for you? Does the history of serious hurt and forgiveness on both sides change how you view his response? And how do you process suddenly losing someone you genuinely believed you were going to build your life with?

About 3 years ago now i left my ex after i found out she had been cheating on me with multiple people, didnt take me long to get over her but ive been in a few relationships since then that just cant work because of me, it also doesnt help that i was cheated on in some of them too. My girlfriend now ex broke up with me yesterday because i was too insecure and anxious all the time and that she simply couldnt stand being with me :/

Does anyone know how i can try to fix my trust issues or atleast work on them because i dont want to spend the rest of my life overthinking every little part of a relationship

I’m 34M, she’s 29F. 7 months together.
We genuinely loved each other and things were going really well. We’re from different religions but never really talked about it. Things started becoming more serious and she told her sister about us. After that she decided to end the relationship. It came all of a sudden but somewhere in the back of my mind I always felt this day might come.
She sent me a breakup message written using ChatGPT. The message did mention some things about our relationship and her feelings but honestly, seeing an AI-written breakup message doesn’t feel right. Maybe she couldn’t gather her thoughts and feelings but I expected real words from her.
I haven’t responded yet. I’m trying to decide what the right thing to do is.
Should I reply to the message? Should I ask her to meet and have one proper conversation, even though I personally don’t feel the need to see her again? Or is it better to accept her decision, say nothing and move on?

my ex boyfriend broke up with me 6 months ago, and i felt like i died that day. since then, i haven’t felt like myself and i don’t know who i am. the best way to describe this is that i feel like ive been floating around and like my life isn’t my own. my body and my mind don’t feel connected, and i don’t experience pleasure in anything because of the deep hidden sadness i feel. i feel completely numb and empty, and im constantly stuck in a loop of wishing for my old life back.

i started going to therapy 4 months ago, and ive learned i experience depersonalization. that the breakup was so traumatic that my brain learned to cope by detaching itself from my body. it feels soul crushing and overwhelmingly empty to feel this way, and i don’t know when it will stop.

I feel like something is wrong with me. I was in a long-term relationship for nearly two years with someone who I honestly thought was going to be my life partner, but last night we ended it mutually on amicable but bittersweet terms.

I've been an absolute wreck all night and all day. i couldn't sleep, couldn't be left alone with my thoughts for a few minutes without tearing up. i went through like a quarter of a box of tissues as I cried grieving the future we had promised each other and remembering the beautiful memories we'd shared. I wrote thousands of words pouring my heart out to various friends, and I went to a park and sobbed for an hour. It was immense pain.

I've now been without him for a little over 24 hours and I think I feel... fine. I think I got out all my emotions and I don't feel like crying or anything anymore. I want to say I'm better, but it feels disturbingly early to declare that. I've been enamored with him from the moment I set eyes on him three years ago, and I loved him - still do - with an intensity that was often felt grander than anything I'd ever felt in my life. But I don't really feel anything about it anymore. Obviously I'm sad, but I feel like I'm not as sad as I should be. I wonder how sad he is?

It still stings to see all the little reminders of him I've surrounded my life with, and I haven't started getting rid of them and disentangling him from my life. It's going to hurt.

Am I actually fine or is this just me somehow suppressing my emotions? I don't think it's normal to feel as okay as I do so soon after getting my heart broken.

“Give yourself a chance to meet someone new. Don’t go back to someone who was already lucky enough to have you but failed to value you.”

I came across this today, and it stayed with me.

After a breakup, it’s easy to get trapped in the questions: Will they come back? Do they still think about me? Was there something left to save?

We can spend so much time waiting for someone who let us go that we forget life may be quietly introducing us to people who would never take us for granted.

And while we think of them, they have already moved on to another person, but will keep you as an option.

Sometimes closure isn’t found in one last conversation or another chance. It's found in choosing not to return to what repeatedly hurt you.

The right person may not be able to find you while you’re still holding the door open for the wrong one.

I miss my ex we broke up 3 months ago together for half a decade life is being cruel to her she can’t give me what I deserve I’ve got things to work on we talk sparingly I can tell there’s an emotional distance between us when we talk I jus can’t seem to shake it

There’s chance for reconciliation but just not right now she’s doing her own thing I’m doing mine but i genuinely jusy yearn for her everyday I’m so depressed I can’t shake it no matter what I do

She is genuinely the best thing to ever happen to me she’s beautiful, kind, caring and was so loving to me even when I couldn’t love myself from past trauma

She’s at point now in her life where life is really throwing her curves and horrible things and she just can’t do a relationship I know what she’s going through is life changing and horrid I just wish I could be there for her and see it through with her and be there for her

Any advice on how I can try and make this easier for myself would be appreciated however I just needed to vent.

Thank you

I broke up with my boyfriend 2 days ago. Apparently we argue too much. I kind of agree but i don’t feel like i deserved to be broken up with if i wasn’t the one doing the things that were causing us to argue to? but whatever anyways. I miss him a lot and it’s only been two days but he’s already texting me as if i’m a random and that hurts so much. people keep asking me about him and mentioning him and stuff and i don’t have the heart to tell anyone cause i’m hoping we’ll get back together.

I even had him drop me back off at college cause if i asked my parents they’d know we broke up and o just don’t want to tell them. Worst part, on that drive we didn’t talk and he didn’t try to hug me or speak to me or bridge a gap by offering food and it felt like a knife. I can’t handle this. We’re still gonna see each other on sunday’s for things we planned prior to breaking up but i want him back so fucking badly. I want to cry all the time (probably cause it’s only been two days).

(couldn’t read through the tears and can’t read again cause i don’t want to cry again) He said something about growing and stuff and needing to break up cause we argue too much and i asked if we could just go on a break or if we could set a date (even if it’s kind far) in the future where we talk about getting back together again and just straight up said no. Bro i even begged (embarrassing).

idk what to do man. I feel mad because i wanted to work it out and i wanted him to help out us back together and he wouldn’t but i’ve forgiven him so many times and i never even initiated a break. But i’m also sad because he’s the love of my life (my short not even two decades) and i already miss him and having someone just be there and present. like waking up from a nap and having someone to text. But i also am kind of happy because we did argue a lot and i’m happy to have time to focus on myself and not worry about where someone else is and stuff. but mostly just sad.

Don’t know what to do because i want him back and i don’t want to pressure it because i know him and i know that’s not going to work. So if it doesn’t happen 100% naturally it just won’t work. So someone tell me how to force the 100% and it still be natural 😶. i’m desperate y’all