this really sucks. she’s with someone else and says that maybe one day we can try again but not now. i’m in pieces trying to move on. i really thought things were going better than for a long time between us, but…
i am afraid that i’ll never find someone i connect with as deeply as her. she was my first and only love and i’m truly heartbroken. will it ever be ok again? does anyone know any good coping strategies or ways to deal with this?
You’ll get over it. Lean on friends, keep yourself occupied. Avoid alcohol. Be cool.
to be honest, her getting with someone who sounds like it IS a coping strategy. everyone i know who’s ever done that did that bc they were uncomfortable with the idea of being single. so don’t look at that and go “why can’t i get over it that fast”, because no one gets over relationships that fast, healthily
just take it slow. you’ll be okay eventually. it took me a year to get over my last relationship (partially bc it was abusive), and i still have moments when i’m upset thinking about it. but eventually you’ll realize you don’t think about it that much, and you can be happy on your own
I hate to rely on an old trope but time does heal all wounds. I learned that losing my first love and also my mom. You’re going through grief right now and it’s a shitty thing. I’m not a therapist so I really don’t have any advice outside of letting yourself feel your emotions. When I did grief counseling after losing my mom talking about it helped, journaling, allowing myself to feel what I had been suppressing down, all good things. If you think you need professional help for it, I’d strongly recommend talk therapy like that.
two weeks after four years is a red flag
broke up with a partner of 9 years 6 months ago. im still not doing very well.
she was my first and only love and i’m truly heartbroken
you and i can both look forward to the novelty of future heartbreak. chin up comrade, the biosphere is falling apart. we are hairless chimps destroying our ecological niche but there will always be time for romance.
It will keep hurting for quite some time, I’m sorry to say. Feel it, and be sad. There’s no use in trying to rush through it. Your mind and your body know when they’re done grieving your loss, and they’ll let you know when they’re “done”. Take deep breaths, go for walks and think about it, but also find things to do with other people, pursue hobbies etc. Finding the balance between distractions and working through it is hard, and it takes time to balance it in a way that helps you. For some people it works better when they have more time to think, for others it’s better when they distract themselves. As a general tip, try not to go for full distraction or full contemplation, it doesn’t help you.
I’m sorry this sounds so clinical, I hope it helps you still. Take care, comrade, you got this. We’re here to listen whenever you need it
i remember one time, like within a week after a break up, my ex was with someone new and posting those couples-y photos on socials. and like, what was noteworthy was that the guy looked a lot like me. like enough to where it was pointed out to me by a friend of mine, since i was purposely staying away from social media by that point.
it kinda snapped me out of my head about it and gave me the perspective that sometimes relationships fall apart because one of the parties has a very specific partner they are looking for, and in this case i was just the latest candidate who fell short of someone else’s life plan. in that way, it was not really about me.
as far as coping goes, i look for/investigate the things in life that i enjoy and put effort into pursuing them. when i was younger, i didn’t do that. i pursued absolution through relationships, preferring to only see myself through a partner’s eyes, so i always had this sensation like part of me was missing if i wasn’t with or courting someone.
it took some doing to unpack that and pay more attention / invest in myself, but it’s been worth it. i look back on some of those early relationships and now i’m grateful they didn’t pan out.
Sorry comrade, the pain is real.
Statistics: most people do recover from something like this. Here’s hoping you’re in that category.
Coping: Distraction is good. Community is good – friends, family, spend time with them doing something other than talking about your ex.
Also unless you two were poly and that “soemone else” she’s with was her other partner, humongous
on her being with someone else already. Says a lot about her.We opened the relationship briefly shortly before this happened but she lied to me about what was going on at every step with this person when the one thing that I had asked was to be open about what we’re up to. That’s what broke things up in the first place. Not quite as bad as straight up cheating, but a massive breach of trust nonetheless.
Im going through a very similar situation rn. We had a relationship of almost 4 years, we opened up after a bit of a crisis. She got together with another guy in parallel. After some toxicity thrown around both ways i broke up, we got back, now we agreed to just be friends and not promise anything to eachother to avoid frustrations as we are tired of the other not keeping promises. But somehow this lightened up the relation and we still get together, we just try to not expect anything from the other. I have no idea how you relationship was, to give advices. But cutting contact may or may not be the best choice if you both enjoy being with eachother. Sometimes we just need to reconfigure the agreements based on an honest perception of wht both want/need. Its not easy to get that perception. Its hard to understand what we want/what is good for us.
thank you. that’s very useful advice. sounds like a v similar situation to what I’m going through. I’ve definitely felt what you mean about just being friends and this lightening the relation up a bit; I’ve genuinely enjoyed hanging out with her lately with no strings attached.
After reading more comments, more things match. I too am living with her with a rent contract that should end in april. Im sure it is best to not live together, but moving out is a bit too complicated to do quickly. My income isnt stable, neither is hers, so we lean on eachother.
I guess I wish us both good luck.
Im enjoying being as real as possible with her, and i see her doing an effort to be real too. We sometimes get mad at the situation and and are a bit hurtful to eachother, but im finding that its possible to see the human behind those behaviours and not make it the end of the world like society seems to expect of us.
good luck to you too. It’s a really shitty situation. I’m trying to start dating to take my mind off things, at least casually, to help with the self-esteem blow that it’s been. idk if that’s a good idea but it’s helping in the short term to remind myself that whatever happens, I will find happiness somehow.
Im sorry, i take back part of what i said. If the person is lying too much, its probably better to distance yourself from them. Im being too passive and its just getting worse…
I think youre on the right path, see some friends and get your mind on something else.
That sucks. Was it her idea to open the relationship?
mutual really, stuff wasn’t working for a long time.
I see. Well, sometimes people just don’t fit right together. Sad that it took so long to figure out, but better 4 years then 16
I’m six weeks out from ending a two-year relationship. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is that I’m not just hurting from the breakup, but also from what the relationship was like.
shit might suck for a long time tbh but one day you’re gonna just basically be over it
one thing i’ll say is not to hold out for that “maybe one day we can try again”. that’s going to keep you stuck in a situation where you can’t move on therefore can’t heal
yeah, I’m going through cycles of accepting it and then slipping back into “what if one day…” type thinking. it sucks. trying to be strong and accept that it’s over but it’s difficult
It takes way way longer than it feels like it should, but you’ll get there eventually I promise.
I’ve definitely felt “wow I’ll never find someone that perfect again” like 2 or 3 different times but it always ends when I realize how imperfect the relationship was. Usually while telling someone about it and getting a surprise concern face.
It took me around 2 years I think to get over my last, and first, relationship. The first year was pain, the second was “trying to forget”. It’s good to have healed now, it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick, but now I no longer miss her. I just miss the feeling of love itself. My tip is to cut contact, don’t reopen the wound, just let it heal.
Absolutely cut contact. I don’t really have any other advice because it depends on a lot of things about you, but it really sounds like you shouldn’t be talking with her and you shouldn’t be “keeping up with her” in any other manner (e.g. if you’re friends on some social media thing, do whatever setting to hide her posts so you don’t need to see them going forward).
It really sucks but you’ll need to find a way to conceptualize your life without her in it, and clinging to the memory of a terminated relationship where she just hopped to someone else is not the way to accomplish that, it’s just a way to hurt yourself.
good advice but hard to follow. We did have several days of NC after this first happened but we also live together and still feel strongly for one another.
I’d really look into moving (or maybe encouraging her to) because that arrangement will kill you.
moving is gonna be tricky bc we have a contract that goes until next july. I don’t think either of us are really confronting what it means to actually separate either. It’s in a weird place but I’m doing my best to just move on.
Well, if you can’t move you can’t move, but then it becomes really critical to set firm boundaries so a) you minimize the extent to which you cling to the idea of things reverting and b) you don’t get used by your ex as a one-way emotional support dog. You can’t make her confront it to herself, but then it becomes all the more important that you confront it so you don’t end up in a degraded state of being, for example, a momentary, fake romantic partner that acts as a crash pad for her when her real relationship has turbulence. You deserve better and it’s better for her too.
Wanting things to go back the way they were is all the more reason for you to treat the old arrangement as completely and irrevocably dead and to reject even the slightest gesture of it returning. Based on what you said in another comment, she clearly made her choices and decided on what’s important to her, and it wasn’t you, however much she might like having you around for the attention or validation or whatever it is she’s interested in. You cannot allow yourself to be taken for granted.
This is validating for me to read. I was talking with my ex about being friends, but the question that got her to cut contact is whether I would be more to her than someone who worries about her.
Yeah, I probably make it obvious from how I write about it that I’ve been stuck in that situation before, where my partner takes me completely for granted to the point that, at least for a while, what dumping me meant was not that they lose anything but that they have me on hand whenever they feel like it (such as when someone they’re actually into treats them poorly and they have no one else who is willing to listen to them, or maybe they just want to fuck around with me) and I don’t exist otherwise. In a perverse way, dumping me was like a lifestyle upgrade because they didn’t need to give me any thought but I was still just as willing to do anything for them, and they actively counted on that being true. While it was cruel of them, fundamentally it still only happened because I didn’t have a spine and didn’t set firm boundaries for my own sake because I was so desperate.
I’m glad that you had the lucidity to ask what you did. That took me way too long to develop.
Unfortunately, it took me about a year after I stopped feeling like she really loved me to break up with her.
will it ever be ok again?
You really can’t answer this question without going through a year of this at least. 2 weeks is nothing within the lifespan of a person’s life. This is true for broken up relationships, divorces, death of a family member, death of a family pet, death of a close friend, and so on.
You have to be patient and wait a year. You have to at least past through the break-up anniversary. Do not make major life decisions (marrying, moving to a different part of the country, moving out of the country, switching careers, and so on) in this year of waiting. Just wait and (try to) enjoy life for what it is. When that year is up, you’ll be more level-headed and less emotionally volatile. This is different from saying you’ll be over the relationship (you definitely won’t), but your internal state is at a stable enough point that you can resume actively living life instead of passively taking whatever life throws at you.
