Finally found the man I thought I would marry, but the breakup came out of nowhere and I’m struggling to cope. What are the ways you’ve dealt with heartbreak in the past?
Time
This is the only real answer here.
Every other answer is in some way just making your perception of time accelerate.
But the only way to process emotional loss, of a close loved one; is with time. That’s just the way our brains are wired. We couldn’t survive as a species if we didn’t get numb to pain and trauma in the past.
Yes, time. But what do you do while the memories fade and replaced with? Friends, family, work, hobbies. I picked up a guitar after a devastating break-up that ate a lot of that time needed.
Not gonna sugarcoat it – this will suck for a long time. For me it was friends, hookups and time that helped.
Friends let me forget for the time we hung out but also listened and just hugged me when I cried.
Hookups (and I realise this sounds vapid as shit) made me feel like I am still wanted and attractive.
Time made the thought of them sting less.
This will smost likely stick with you, but it’s going to be okay. It’s not going to hurt this badly forever. You will think of it less and less frequently. But you will have that scar. And that’s okay, I think.
Having sex with a new partner allows your brain to decouple from someone else. The new neural connections you form with the new partner are literally therapeutic.
I have found it to be the single best way to start moving on from an ended relationship.
There’s a set of questions an author named Byron Katie wrote about for managing limiting beliefs. First you have to isolate the belief that’s causing you pain. Then you ask the following:
1 - Is this belief true?
2 - Can I absolutely know this belief is true?
If you are still saying yes to these you’re not ready for 3 and 4.
3 - How do you feel when you believe this? Be sure to go into this really well. I find the more you put into this step the better the results at the last question. So where in your body does the feeling live? What temperature is it? How intense is it out of 10? Is it sharp or dull? Is it dry or wet? Does it change is it constant? Maybe even what color is it? You want to really witness and give credence to this feeling here.
And finally
4 - Who would you be or what would you be doing if you didn’t have this belief?
I can guess what answers you’d give here but you know so I don’t want to muddy that for you.
Edit: formatting
Dive into a hobby or passion, or find one. Fitness is a great alternative because it helps rebuild your own self-confidence while giving you an outlet to vent some of your feelings. Try to do something more socially that may transition into making new connections slowly.
Edit: Music is also fantastic for this. Dive into playing an instrument.
I rode my bike in the woods. I would find a nice quiet spot and post up for 10 minutes and smoke a joint and then finish up my ride. If you’re gonna be sad you might as well be sad in nature. It’s therapeutic
Go gym
Time is unfortunately the best medicine. Just take it one day at a time. Don’t stay in contact with them. Reach out to your friends and try to fill your time spending time with them.
Main thing is to keep yourself distracted. The ruminating will come, but right now you need to heal. I wasn’t able to clearly reflect on my ex and our relationship for easily over a year or so later.
Allow yourself to feel and process your emotions. Take care of yourself. Eat well and stay hydrated, do whatever exercise and focus on yourself and your goals. Perhaps travel. Live for you and you will find someone else without looking.
Be gentle with yourself.
Do cool shit, and be awesome. Living well is the best way to get over the life you you wanted but will never be. The one constant in your entire life is you, so the relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship you’ll ever have.
So take a solo road trip. See that movie in the theater that you heard was great. Treat yourself to a nice dinner at that fusion place you were wanting to check out. Read and learn about the world. Take a class in that language you wanted to learn. Bake yourself fancy treats. Take on a new hobby. Make art.
To be the kind of person others will find awesome, you have to first become that person; in so doing, the pain of losing that ideal life you are mourning will slowly fade. It will never vanish completely, but over time the pain will become minimal, like rediscovering a tiny paper cut on your finger that you’d forgotten about.
It sucks big time for a while, there’s no set time for how long. What I can tell you is once some of that fog has cleared and you can focus on yourself, you can learn to fall in love with yourself again. At least for me, I realized I had my positive emotions tied so much into my old relationship that I didn’t know how to cope without that relationship there. We definitely had some co-depency issues that were extremely unhealthy, and without all that to distract me, I could finally start working on myself and figuring out who I am. What I want and don’t want. It’s a long road but if you can focus on self care and improvement, it will make things much easier and more fulfilling in the long run.
OK this is gonna be a long one. And it’s not even mine. The original point of what I’m about to post was about losing loved ones to death, but in my lowest parts of dealing with my divorce I found these words very helpful. One of the few good things to come out of reddit. Credit to reddit user GSnow. Here goes.
Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.
I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.
As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.
In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.
Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.
Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.
- /u/GSnow
I use the Cave Johnson defense.
Everybody deals differently with heartbreaks. But I think what’s most important is to take care of yourself and don’t let your mind rot in thoughts and sadness. Of course first few days are gonna be though, express your feelings by writing them down, or by songs, art etc but as I said don’t hold on to it for too long
I don’t even really remember I think, I don’t even really feel like I’ve “dealt” with it. I’ll tell some of my experience but I won’t go into too much detail.
For us, we were even talking about marriage, but I did something wrong and I felt helpless after the break up, I couldn’t do anything, other problems arouse and I even started planning suicide.
I tried talking to other people, some related to the situation and some not, to get perspective on stuff, I even got a new job, but depression hit me hard once I started, so I quit soon after to get that under control which was fine, my financial situation was good enough to do this at the time.
Eventually I just started thinking about what I wanted in a relationship and somehow I stopped blaming myself, but now I have a anger I don’t know how to deal with towards her and her family, we see each other once a week during our martial arts class, and it keeps it kinda fresh on my mind but I love the class so I decided it’s worth it.
I’m talking to someone else, not really as a potential romantic partner but someone who I can be good friends with and if it goes that way then it’s a plus. I didn’t have the biggest friend group before and it got even smaller after the break up, so I’m trying to branch out.
I guess that’s how I dealt with it, focused on a hobby, and making new friends, making sure I got to talk it out with various people to make sure I didn’t get into an echo chamber (which my brain and family would be a major one)
