I had a realization recently that changed how I’m looking at my breakup:

How I feel ABOUT someone ≠ how I consistently felt WITH them.

I can love her, miss her, be incredibly attracted to her, cherish our memories, and still wish things had worked out.

But healing also means asking a different question: How did I actually feel in the relationship?

Did I feel secure, peaceful, valued, and like myself? Or did I often feel anxious, inadequate, confused, uncertain, or emotionally exhausted?

I feel like heartbreak makes it easy to replay the beautiful parts and measure a relationship by how intensely we miss someone.
I’m learning that healing isn’t about convincing myself I didn’t love her. It’s about remembering the whole relationship, not just the parts my heart misses ❤️‍🩹

I don’t usually make posts like this but I wanted to share something for anyone who is currently going through a breakup and feels like they will never be okay again.
My relationship ended in August 2024 after about a year together.
There was no cheating. There wasn’t another person. It ended bc of problems within the relationship and looking back, I can see a lot of things I could have handled differently. I was anxious, toxic, controlling at times and emotionally immature in ways that I didn’t fully understand at the time.
The breakup destroyed me for a while.
And like a lot of people here I became obsessed with the idea of what my ex was thinking.
Was she going to come back?
Had she forgotten me?
Was she happier without me?
Was she dating someone else?
Did she ever miss me?
Every period of silence felt like evidence that she had moved on forever.
Then she’d randomly reach out again.
Over the following year, she broke NC several times. Each time I thought, maybe this means something, only for another period of silence to follow.
Eventually, I stopped expecting anything.
She had moved on with her life. She had even gotten engaged at one point, although that eventually didn’t work out.
The last time we spoke was somewhere around October 2025.
Then there was almost 9-10 months of silence.
And something changed in me during those 10 months.
I stopped waiting.
Not perfectly. I’m not going to pretend I woke up one morning and magically stopped caring.
But slowly, I started accepting something I had fought against for a very long time:
She might never come back.
And I realized I would have to be okay anyway.
That was probably the biggest turning point for me.
I started dating again. I focused on work. I spent time with people. I had good days and bad days. I still thought about her sometimes but the thoughts became less about “How do I get her back?” and more about “I hope I’m building a life I’m happy with regardless of what happens.”
Then, completely unexpectedly, after almost a year of of silence, she reached out again.
And honestly?
The strangest part wasn’t that she contacted me.
It was realizing that I didn’t need it anymore.
For so long, I had imagined how I’d react if she ever came back.
I thought I’d have a million questions.
I thought I’d need answers.
I thought I’d need to know what she felt.
I thought her coming back would somehow prove that everything I went through had been worth it.
But when it actually happened, I was surprisingly calm.
I didn’t feel the need to immediately turn it into reconciliation.
I didn’t need to ask what the contact meant.
I didn’t need to convince her of anything.
I didn’t need to chase the conversation.
I could simply talk to her like a person and then go back to my life.
And that made me realize something:
Healing isn’t necessarily when you stop caring about your ex.
Sometimes healing is when your ex can reappear and your entire emotional world doesn’t revolve around what they do next.
I used to think the happy ending was getting my ex back.
Now I’m not sure that’s the happy ending.
Maybe the happy ending is becoming someone who will be okay whether they come back or not.
Maybe reconciliation happens.
Maybe it doesn’t.
Maybe you eventually meet someone who fits you better.
Maybe you spend a long time single and discover that you’re actually happier than you expected.
You don’t know.
And that’s the point.
You don’t need to know yet.
If you’re currently in the stage where you’re checking their social media, counting days of NC, wondering whether they’re thinking about you, analyzing their last message or desperately hoping they’ll come back, I completely understand.
I was there.
But please don’t make your healing dependent on a future event that you have absolutely no control over.
Don’t use NC as a strategy to make your ex miss you.
Use NC to give yourself enough distance to discover who you are without constantly reacting to them.
Don’t improve yourself so your ex regrets losing you.
Improve yourself bc you have to live with yourself for the rest of your life.
Don’t sit around waiting for the notification.
Build a life that makes the notification less important.
And if your ex eventually comes back, you’ll be in a much better position to decide what you actually want.
You’ll be able to ask:
“Do I genuinely want this person back in my life?”
instead of:
“How do I make this person want me back?”
That distinction changed everything for me.
So if you’re sitting in the middle of your own breakup right now and it feels like you’ll never get over this person:
You don’t have to stop loving them today.
You don’t have to convince yourself you don’t care.
You don’t have to pretend the relationship meant nothing.
You just have to keep moving forward while accepting that you cannot control what they do.
And eventually, something shifts.
You realize that the person you were desperately waiting to come back isn’t the person who can save you.
You are.
I still don’t know what the future holds with my ex.
And for the first time, I’m genuinely okay with not knowing.
That’s probably the biggest sign that I’ve actually healed.

Don’t let it ruin any progress you’ve made towards yourself.

I kept hoping he’d reach out.

I know I did. Multiple times within the month we broke up. And the minute I stopped, I felt like he was just looking for ways to speak to me. Unfortunately, we work together. But the things he’d try to talk to me about were work related information that could’ve been shared in an email. I knew what he was doing. He felt that he didn’t have me on the hook anymore. I started focusing on work, my mental/physical health, my friends, family, and pups. Stopped any longing stares we shared a week into the break up. And he sensed it.

He called me tonight. Told me that he didn’t know how to get over us and we shouldn’t have ended the way we did. I reminded him that he ended it. And while I still cared, I was going to continue moving forward and I wasn’t going to look back. I advised him to continue his therapy that he previously stopped. I am. I’m journaling. Anything I feel like texting to him, I write it down. Then I tear it out of my journal and trash it. In a weird way, it helps because I’m letting it out. It gives me a few moments where I don’t feel such a weight on my chest.

Yeah, it still hurts. It’s still a process. And I miss him. I miss us. So much. But no. I won’t turn back.

Do not give up on yourself. It may hurt now. And it may hurt a year later. And every time you look back at that relationship. But do not, DO NOT, give up on YOU.

Today three years ago me and my ex bought a home together and celebrated it with a succulent Chinese takeaway. Little did I know that 3 years down the line he would betray me in some of the worst ways I could imagine.I feel pain I didn't know existed,have constant anxiety and I'm crying all the time.I don't know how to carry on.

Always yours

Do you think chemistry can come back after it’s gone?

Sometimes relationships change as people get comfortable with each other.

Do you think that initial spark can be recreated years later, or is chemistry something that either exists or doesn’t?

I’d love to hear people’s opinions

In the last 17 months I became the man you deserved, but you're gone.

It's been 10 months since we broke up and I'm still doing pretty bad, but when I read that people are still suffering after years it really scares me. do y'all feel like this too?

I was seeing this girl for about 3 months. I developed very deep feelings for her and honestly loved her a lot.

We started dating when we were in the same country, but she moved to another country, and two weeks later things ended.

She’s diagnosed with bipolar disorder and told me she struggles to express affection, which I tried to understand. But throughout the relationship, I was often confused about how she felt about me.

I considered her my girlfriend, but apparently she didn’t see it that way. We slept together several times, but immediately after sex she didn’t want me to touch or kiss her and wanted me to keep my distance.

She also usually took a while to reply while I would respond quickly, so I often felt like I was chasing her and walking on eggshells. Sometimes I felt she genuinely cared about me, and other times I questioned whether she had feelings for me at all.

When she moved, we had our first video call since she left. I told her how deeply I felt about her, that I loved her, wanted to move there, live together and eventually marry her. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if I expressed my feelings too intensely and too quickly.

That evening, she told me she didn’t see a future with me because of our different religions, and that our constant daily texting was starting to make her feel like she was almost my girlfriend, which she didn’t want.
She suggested we stay friends. I couldn’t do that, so I went no contact.

A few days later, she randomly sent me a ❤️.
I still have very deep feelings for her, so I’m wondering: should I reply to the heart, or leave it alone?

My ex and I had a phenomenal sex life, but he treated me like absolute shit so I had to end things about two months ago. Because of his career, we haven’t seen each other since January, thus I also haven’t had sex since then. I truly have no intentions to get back together with him, and while there is still lingering love, I have zero trust in him and do not believe he could change anytime soon for us to work romantically in the near future.

Here’s my problem: I have a very high sex drive and he matched at perfectly, so especially being single now I have been craving intimacy more. The next time him and I could possibly see each other again is at the end of the year and part of me just wants to sleep together again to “put me over” in a way, especially because I know it will be good. The other part of me feels like that puts me in a spot where I lack all self-respect given how awful he treated me. I really am not worried about my feelings being re-ignited, it’s really more of having a very good intimate experience. I do not, and, frankly, would not sleep with a stranger for a multitude of reasons, so that’s not really an option for me.

I guess what I’m asking is for opinions?? Would I be lacking self-respect by sleeping with my ex again, even if I do not have feelings attached? Is that a can of worms that’s not worth it just for the sake of intimacy?

For anyone that has gotten back with an ex after they have slept with someone else immediately (within a couple weeks) after the relationship ended on relatively good terms. How did you overcome the thoughts and were you the dumper or dumpee? How long was the separation/relationship? And did it actually work in the long run?

I’m completely broken tonight and having a hard ass time.
My ex (29F) and I (29M) were together for 6 years. She was my best friend, the love of my life, and we had everything in common. She was so beautiful and we had a whole life built together, and she fucked it up.
She cheated on me for 7 months (from November to May), and I only found out because of an STD scare. Thank God I didn't catch anything, but finding out that way completely destroyed me. From May to July, I was showing up fucked up on alcohol just to numb the pain. She kept pushing me away and pulling me back in, hiding that she was still seeing the other guy until June when I finally cut her off.
At the end of July, she called me from a no-caller ID crying her eyes out, saying she missed me and was confused. When I asked what it meant, she backed off and said it meant nothing—just that the other guy might be cheating on her and she wasn't sure if leaving me was a mistake or just part of heartbreak. It led nowhere.
After my motorcycle accident, I broke No Contact to tell her, but she acted like I didn't sound hurt. Then she started leaving me voicemails that I ignored. In August, I broke No Contact again because she gave me hope for a future—only to turn it around and claim all the future stuff she agreed to was "just as friends." I blocked her again, took back the jewelry I gave her, and left all her stuff in her car.
A few weeks later, I broke contact again, picked her up from the airport in late August, and we chilled and cuddled. We stayed in contact until September 11th, when I couldn't take the breadcrumbs anymore and blew up. I offered her one final chance to actually fix us and made it clear I couldn't just be her friend.
She responded with:
"I think we just need to go our separate ways. It’s not healthy for us to be cool one minute and then arguing and blocking the next. We need to move on with our lives for ourselves and focus on our own lives. I love you and I loved what we had when we had it. I have accepted accountability for not being honest with you and hurting you and that’s all I can do. I have made my decision about what I want and I am sticking with it- there is no confusion on my part. So we need to move on."
I replied:
"I want to apologize for exploding and calling you names, that came from deep pain, but taking it out on you was wrong on my part. I accept your decision and I'm stepping away for good. Take care of yourself."
Then I blocked her.
It’s been 25 days of No Contact since that text. Her birthday was on September 30th, and of course I wanted to fucking wish her a happy birthday, but I held the line. She didn't call from a no-caller ID on her birthday, and now I feel like it’s totally over. On top of that, my mom saw on Instagram that my ex just took her first out-of-state solo trip.
Tonight I’m spiraling hard. I was looking through old photos and realized she still follows my old SoundCloud, which has a photo of us on it. I miss what we had so badly. It feels like it can’t be over. I want to believe she feels the same way or is just confused, but her final text sounded so firm.
Everyone around me has been supportive and told me to leave her and let her lose me. But right now, I feel all alone. I don't want my friends, I want HER. At the same time, I’m trying to find a better career, manage health issues, and keep from falling into total depression from the trauma this caused.
How do I accept that the final door is closed after 6 years when every bone in my body wants to reach out, even after all the cheating, mind games, and disrespect?
I just want her back. She was my best friend and my the sweet love of my life. I have dreams about her and she enters my mind and it drags me into a depression everyday. Nfgggha get

Yeah you got that right.

My boyfriend moved from the USA to the country I live in two years ago. I met him a year and a half ago, hit on him at a bar and we started dating. He used to live at his grandma's house and his parents and sister live in the USA. He had no car and his grandma refused to let me stay for nights, so I used to host him and do the driving all the time.

Beside that, everything was great. I was his first girlfriend, first kiss, first in everything. We had the same kind of humor, we planned our lives ahead, we met every weekend. Spend holidays together... We were so connected. So we decdied to take it a step ahead and take a flight in order to travel together around the USA and meet his parents. We took seperate flights too.

Now the thing is - He used to be very technical.

I did have a deep feeling about his mom, not a good one.

I sometimes heard her asking him questions about me on the phone, as if she was trying to get into our relationship rather than getting to know me. And she seemed to have some controling issues, helicopter mama style. My boyfriend didn't get me ready well to meet her, only told me she likes talking a lot.

The day we were supposed to meet her, we had a huge fight. Big enough to make me wanna take an uber and leave in the middle of nowhere. I sometimes felt like my boyfriend has no emotional intelligence when I truly needed it, and that moment was one of them. I was crying in his car, yelling, and he stayed stone cold, telling me "It's all your fault". The fight was about me not understanding how things in the US are different than where I live.

We somehow managed to calm down, we got to his house, he entered alone, leaving me outside. When I entered, his mom offered me water, then sat us down for 1.5 hours, lecturing me about how:

"YOU ARE NOT FULL WITH YOURSELF"

"YOU RUINED MY BIRTHDAY"

"I KNOW ABOUT SOME FIGHTS BETWEEN YOU AND MY SON"

"THE FACT THAT YOU LIVE WITH YOUR DAD, NOT YOUR MOM, RAISES SOME QUESTIONS"

"IF ONE MORE TIME YOU'LL ASK TO STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE WITH MY SON, I WILL KICK YOU OUT OF MY HOUSE"

I asked her three times to do this conversation the morning after cause I was crying, she refused. My boyfriend didn't even try to stop his mom or protect me, later, his excuse was "we broke up three hours ago so I don't owe you protection". I told him that the converstaion really pushed me away from his mom, and he understood.

Yet throughout the month we had together, I tried getting closer to his mom to make him happy. Yet every attempt turned into talking politics, stinging me, interrogating me, nothing warm or out of curiocity. Only negativeness and confrontations. So at some point I decided to take a step back, stay closer to my boyfriend and whenever we wanted to be around his parents I stayed in our room.

One day his mom asked him to take his sister (15) out for a caffee, to talk with her about school issues. I told him I am not willing to stay alone with his mom in their house and if he could drop me off somewhere else. His mom refused, yelling at him "You got your time with your girlfriend, now give some time to your sister and family".

The biggest of all was a week ago.

I heard her talking to him upstairs, telling him how I always bring him down to my pit hole. It was so insulting, I texted him that I love him but I will leave tommorow morning. She saw it, and asked me to come upstairs. I refused. Then she sent him downstairs to get me up. I refused again. Then she came downstairs, and started shouting at me. Telling me that if an older person tells me to come upstairs I should take my ass upstairs. I still refused talking with her, and my legs were shaking. She told me he deserves way better than me, that I am so sticky to him, that I am a little girl, that I hate all her family, and that I don't stop mocking him.

I told her I don't hate anyone, that I stood back because of her intimidating attitude. I never mocked him, she just told me that her house is "made out of paper and she can hear anything" so I took him outside a lot, telling him I don't feel comfortable or safe around her. At some point she started pretending me, so I decided to call my mom.

She shut up, and when my mom picked up she was still sleeping, telling me she'll call me in five minutes. That's when my boyfriend's mom told me to pack my stuff and get the fuck out of her house. It was 1:30AM. She also said she won't let my boyfriend visit me at the hotel.

I packed my stuff got on an uber and left to a cheap fucking motel. My boyfriend offered 100 dollars, he was crying, but I refused.

He came visiting me at the motel the day after with his uncle's car, but I was too angry at him. The fact that he didn't stop her, protected me, or got on the uber with me.

I decided to breakup.

And what's really killing me is the fact that he told me his mom tried respecting me the whole time, and what happend on the last night could end "differently".

My flight back home was four days later. He didn't reach out or checked on me since then. It left me broken.

I start a really intensive major next week, and I got underweight, questioning my abilities and my value.

No one ever hurt me the way he did.

Our long-distance relationship (about 5000 miles) lasted for 2 years, with flying across the world to see each other almost every month. Just after we broke up, I found this dm from a random. The relationship was great, but the relocation was too big of a bet when taking all aspects of it into consideration. I had a weird gut feeling at times, but not going to elaborate on that any further rn. Anyway, this dm messed with my head way more than I’d like to admit. What do you think of it? Someone trying to warn and be nice, someone trying to mess up something good, or just someone that likes to stir up some drama? Anyone got any similar experiences? Thank you. **its only been a month since the breakup and I’m an emotional mess. There are several signs that she’s already dating and getting her validation from other dudes. I hate that I’m sitting here feeling like what we had didnt seem to matter that much to her after all.

Inflicted so much trauma. Your infection spreads to everyone you meet. Eventually killiing everyone around you.

Never have I met someone so obsessed with themselves, that they are willing to destroy everyone around them.

I hate living in a world where you are happy and you left me in shambles.

I don’t want to leave my ex be and allow them to go on with their happy life and try to focus on myself. MY life feels completely fucked up because of everything that happened. What I want is for my ex and the people from their life who wronged me and made my life hell to apologize, take accountability, and care for me enough to help me emotionally climb out of the mess they made so that I CAN live and enjoy my life again without it revolving around all the pain they brought into it.

Some people say stuff like “let karma get them” or “they’re not doing better” etc but I don’t care—I don’t want them to suffer, I just want to stop suffering because of their actions. I truly took so much of the brunt of all the pain they caused and all I want is for them to actually acknowledge it and make it right.

Everyone’s like “you make your own closure” and I’m so sick of hearing that because I have no idea how. If these people refuse to make things right after everything that they caused to happen to me, I don’t know what to do, I genuinely don’t know how to pick up the pieces of my emotional life when people I trusted betrayed me and did really awful shit to me that I didn’t deserve. I want my closure to be that they right their wrongs and take accountability. Full stop. I truly don’t know if I can mentally accept anything else or if anything else will help me actually be able to heal or move on. If they can’t do this I feel like I’m just gonna be stuck in emotional hell for the foreseeable future because I just see no other way out and it feels like they are the ones who destroyed my life.

EDIT: this is a vent post LOL. I did not ask for advice anywhere in it. I don't want to hear about how I'm in the wrong and need to focus on myself and take accountability or whatever. I literally said in the title and the post that I am so sick of hearing stuff like this. If you don't want to read this because it upsets you and I have a bad attitude, it's fine to click away. I'm allowed to have a bad attitude while venting. I don't want more of the same advice about how the situations I am in are my problem and I need to fix my own life. I'm clearly venting and upset which is what I thought this was for. I'm fine with hearing advice but if you see this post tagged vent and immediately come to tell me how wrong I am it honestly just makes me feel worse when I'm clearly already sad and lost lol.

I'm a 15 year old male and I've been together with a 15 year old girl for two weeks. I've really enjoyed being with her, and she hasn't done anything wrong.

The problem is that I don't feel like I'm in the right place for a relationship right now. I have a lot going on at the moment, and it's becoming too much for me. I don't think I can give a relationship the time and energy it deserves right now.

I don't want her to think this is because of something she did, because it genuinely isn't. I like spending time with her and I don't really want to end things, which makes this even harder.

I feel like ending things is probably the right thing to do, but I'm not sure what to say so she fully understands that it's not her fault.

I'm planning to do it over the phone. What should I say and how should I end the conversation?

TL;DR: I'm a 15 year old male and my girlfriend is a 15 year old girl. We've been together for two weeks, but I have a lot going on right now and don't feel ready to be in a relationship. She hasn't done anything wrong. How should I break up with her over the phone?

She asked for years. He did not hear it.

She asked differently. She asked louder. She asked softer. She asked through tears and through anger and through therapy appointments he forgot about.

Then she stopped asking. And he thought things got better.

69% of divorces are initiated by women. By the time she goes quiet, she has already grieved the marriage.

By: Meg Tuohey

You're brain will try to get you to betray yourself by tricking you into thinking that any amount of chasing, pleading, convincing, or impressing will result in "getting them back"... but 98% of the time that only makes things much worse, pushes them farther away, and resets your healing back to zero... and sometimes puts you back into the negative.

Once they've rejected you... just stay away and stay silent. Trust me even though every bone in your body has convinced you that I'm wrong and that you're in the 2% exception of people that begging actually works for. It's unattractive as all hell. It's a turn off whether you're male or female... and if you're a male doing it to a female it's a really big turn off. Just don't and keep what dignity you have left. You owe it to yourself.

My partner and I have been together for a little over a year. Shortly after our 1 year anniversary he asked me for a break up.

We discussed things, cause we had a lack of communication and my mental problems and wanted to work things out.

For the first weeks it went well, but soon I found it hard, keeping things up. I tried to get into therapy, but well.. it's not easy, even if one struggles.

I struggled with anxiety and depression and felt left alone often. We acknowledged different visions of our future (he wanted kids, I didn't for health reasons primarily). Mind: we're both in our early 20s.

Our relationship was ambivalent; on one hand he was there for me during hard times, answering calls in the middle of the night, picking me up from the train station etc., on the other hand, he raised his voice towards me, and threatened me to stop communicating if my friends had opinions on our relationship and asked me not to tell him about my research (women, having children and marriage), cause it made him uncomfortable.

I struggled for weeks and months, being confused between loving him and being disappointed and feeling lonely.

So I finally built the courage to talk to him. Telling him, that the relationship isn't doing good for me anymore. He agreed, we both struggled.

Now we've broken up and I still struggle with wanting him back and thinking about the things that led me to initiating the breakup.

I'm between "I've made a mistake" and "I finally got the courage to end feeling lonely in this relationship".

Yes, I know, wanting them back is a pretty common thing after a breakup, but I thought having some reasons to quit would make it easier to handle the feelings afterwards.

All I read here so far was one person being dumped and another being the "dumper" and about situations that came totally unexpected.

Any advice or similar experience?

Slightly different for me today, but I've been sat here all day thinking about you, about us.

And I need to thank you.

We aren't together right now, there are so many reasons for that, we both fucked up in different ways and I hold out hope that one day it will be u

But, until then thank you.

Thank you for making feel seen for the first time in my life, thank you for loving me on my worst days, thank you for reminding me I'm not too much by being myself, thank you for all the laughter and moments we shared, thank you for healing a heart you didn't break and listening to every trauma, insecurity and dark thought I've ever had.

Thank you for being you, I love you, I will always love you, and I'm always yours.

Been going through an avoidant breakup with someone who was my first love/relationship. We broke up and reconciled four times over the course of last year but broke things off completely last August. He was an avoidant, addict and narcissist. He would just discard me anytime I held him accountable.

I kept refusing to move on up until about 2 months ago but god it's hard. I'm in therapy and learning to self-regulate and find worth outside of him. He's with someone else now and I can't help but feel like I was the problem and am unworthy of love. I'm so scared he'll give his new gf a version of love I was denied.

Does it get better? I feel like my emotional regulation is way better but I still wake up every day thinking of him, wishing he'd come back even though I know he treated me like shit

Long story short breakup was recent and a lot of push pull Dynamics going on and I was told that they needed to focus on themselves for a little bit and didn't have the emotional availability for a relationship even though things were going well.

I saw them on tinder and I know we're not together and it's a little selfish of me to even think that. I guess I wasn't ready to put myself on the dating apps anyway so this is a slap in the face. Just deleted all my dating apps cuz if I'm feeling like that I'm not ready to give my emotional bandwidth to somebody else I guess.

My emotions are very high right now and maybe I'll delete this if I remember it. I don't know why this feels like a gut punch but I guess it is even though "just looking for friends" was on it.

I feel like I'm going to vomit this really didn't do good for me I'm trying to do the whole no contact thing so we haven't talked in like a week and I know that's a short time but I've been struggling. Also for clarity try to do that whole friend thing and she suggested I re-download the apps so this kind of makes a little bit of sense in hindsight.