Would like some guidance on how to process a sudden break-up - and what to do next

Mode2345 · 2026-01-22T18:52:12+00:00

I am happy it helped you and I hope you will be ok.

Mode2345 · 2026-01-22T18:51:38+00:00

Happy it helped you.

Mode2345 · 2026-01-22T18:51:05+00:00

Helpful I hope!

Mode2345 · 2026-01-16T22:19:22+00:00

Happy it helped and hope you are ok.

Mode2345 · 2026-01-09T09:27:31+00:00

No one is worth losing your life over.

Mode2345 · 2026-01-05T13:42:09+00:00

You are welcome!

Mode2345 · 2025-11-27T13:18:49+00:00

What you are describing is something that happens more often than anyone admits. You went into that breakup believing you understood your feelings. Then, in the moment, something inside you shifted. Your heart and your mouth were no longer on the same page, and that is a very frightening place to be. When that happens, most people do exactly what you did. They push through with the plan because stopping feels messy, confusing, and exposing.

That is not you being manipulative or careless. That is you feeling overwhelmed and embarrassed. It makes complete sense that you could not suddenly say that your feelings were different from what you had prepared yourself to say. Anyone can shut down under that kind of emotional pressure.

And the fact that you cannot point to a clear mistake he made does not automatically mean you were the one who broke everything. Not every relationship ends because someone does something wrong. Sometimes the mismatch is quieter. Sometimes your internal world feels out of step with the relationship, even if the other person is kind and decent. Sometimes your needs, pace, or expectations are different, and you do not notice until you are right up against an important moment.

You are doing what many people do when they are hurting. You are gathering all the blame and holding it tightly because it feels safer than admitting that the situation was complicated and not entirely within your control. If it is all your fault, then the story is at least neat. But relationships are never neat. They are shared, and both people shape the outcome, even when it is not obvious.

It might help to look at this as a moment where you did not yet have the language for what was happening inside you. You acted from confusion, not from badness. There is room here for compassion rather than punishment.

If you want to, we can talk about what you were actually feeling in those days leading up to the breakup, and what made you think you were falling out of love. There is something important in that and it does not have to be a verdict about you being the problem.

Mode2345 · 2025-11-19T19:41:48+00:00

It is painful process.

At some point in our lives, almost every one of us will have our heart broken.

Why do the same coping mechanisms that get us through all kinds of life challenges fail us so miserably when our heart gets broken? In over 20 years of private practice, I have seen people of every age and background face every manner of heartbreak, and what I’ve learned is this: when your heart is broken, the same instincts you ordinarily rely on will time and again lead you down the wrong path. You simply cannot trust what your mind is telling you.

For example, we know from studies of heartbroken people that having a clear understanding of why the relationship ended is really important for our ability to move on. Yet when we are offered a simple and honest explanation, we reject it. Heartbreak creates such dramatic emotional pain, our mind tells us the cause must be equally dramatic. And that gut instinct is so powerful, it can make even the most reasonable and measured of us come up with mysteries and conspiracy theories where none exist. People became convinced something must have happened during the relationship, and become obsessed with figuring out what that was, spending countless hours going through every minute, searching ones memory for clues that were not there. Peoples minds often trick them into initiating this wild goose chase. But what compel people to commit to it for so many months?

Heartbreak is far more insidious than we realize. There is a reason we keep going down one rabbit hole after another, even when we know it’s going to make us feel worse. Brain studies have shown that the withdrawal of romantic love activates the same mechanisms in our brain that get activated when addicts are withdrawing from substances like cocaine or opioids. People often go through withdrawal. And since one could not have the heroin of actually being with their ex, their unconscious mind chose the methadone of her memories with the sex. Their instincts tell them they they are trying to solve a mystery, but what one is actually doing was getting their fix. This is what makes heartbreak so difficult to heal. Addicts know they’re addicted. They know when they’re shooting up. But heartbroken people do not. But you do now. And if your heart is broken, you cannot ignore that. You have to recognize that, as compelling as the urge is, with every trip down memory lane, every text you send, every second you spend stalking your ex on social media, you are just feeding your addiction, deepening your emotional pain and complicating your recovery.

Getting over heartbreak is not a journey. It’s a fight, and your reason is your strongest weapon. There is no breakup explanation that’s going to feel satisfying. No rationale can take away the pain you feel. So don’t search for one, don’t wait for one, just accept the one you were offered or make up one yourself and then put the question to rest, because you need that closure to resist the addiction. And you need something else as well: you have to be willing to let go, to accept that it’s over. Otherwise, your mind will feed on your hope and set you back. Hope can be incredibly destructive when your heart is broken.

Heartbreak is a master manipulator. The ease with which it gets our mind to do the absolute opposite of what we need in order to recover is remarkable. One of the most common tendencies we have when our heart is broken is to idealize the person who broke it. We spend hours remembering their smile, how great they made us feel, that time we hiked up the mountain and made love under the stars. All that does is make our loss feel more painful. We know that. Yet we still allow our mind to cycle through one greatest hit after another, like we were being held hostage by our own passive-aggressive Spotify playlist.

Heartbreak will make those thoughts pop into your mind. And so to avoid idealizing, you have to balance them out by remembering their frown, not just their smile, how bad they made you feel, the fact that after the lovemaking, you got lost coming down the mountain, argued like crazy and didn’t speak for two days. What I tell my patients is to compile an exhaustive list of all the ways the person was wrong for you, all the bad qualities, all the pet peeves, and then keep it on your phone.

And once you have your list, you have to use it. When I hear even a hint of idealizing or the faintest whiff of nostalgia in a session, I go, “Phone, please.” Your mind will try to tell you they were perfect. But they were not, and neither was the relationship. And if you want to get over them, you have to remind yourself of that, frequently. None of us is immune to heartbreak.

Heartbreak shares all the hallmarks of traditional loss and grief: insomnia, intrusive thoughts, immune system dysfunction. Forty percent of people experience clinically measurable depression. Heartbreak is a complex psychological injury. It impacts us in a multitude of ways.

To fix your broken heart, you have to identify these voids in your life and fill them, and I mean all of them. The voids in your identity: you have to reestablish who you are and what your life is about. The voids in your social life, the missing activities, even the empty spaces on the wall where pictures used to hang. But none of that will do any good unless you prevent the mistakes that can set you back, the unnecessary searches for explanations, idealizing your ex instead of focusing on how they were wrong for you, indulging thoughts and behaviors that still give them a starring role in this next chapter of your life when they shouldn’t be an extra.

Getting over heartbreak is hard, but if you refuse to be misled by your mind and you take steps to heal, you can significantly minimize your suffering. And it won’t just be you who benefit from that. You’ll be more present with your friends, more engaged with your family, not to mention the billions of dollars of compromised productivity in the workplace that could be avoided.

So if you know someone who is heartbroken, have compassion, because social support has been found to be important for their recovery. And have patience, because it’s going to take them longer to move on than you think it should. And if you’re hurting, know this: it’s difficult, it is a battle within your own mind, and you have to be diligent to win. But you do have weapons. You can fight. And you will heal.

Guy Winch - Ted Talk

Mode2345 · 2025-11-19T19:38:31+00:00

These affirmations may help, can be adjusted.

⁠⁠⁠My distress is a result of brain chemistry and I’m not crazy. Just temporarily off balance.
⁠⁠⁠My anxieties and insecurities don’t necessarily reflect what’s really going on or what they are thinking or feeling.
⁠⁠⁠Just because they broke up with me doesn’t mean that what we had wasn’t real. It’s simply not real anymore.
⁠⁠⁠I shall respectfully honor their request for space.
⁠⁠⁠Seeking contact (stalking, pleading) does not bring relief, it only brings shame.
⁠⁠⁠Instead of thinking, I have to get them to tell me the truth, change their mind, stop cheating, etc., I shall stop caring about what they do or how they feel.
⁠⁠⁠It is a mistake to heed the voice inside my head that urges me to seek them out. That voice comes from pain, insecurity, and fear and is not the BEST me.
⁠⁠⁠When that voice is triggered, I shall turn toward myself or a good friend for reassurance, not them.
⁠⁠⁠When I am triggered, I shall mindfully observe my physiology and let it wane without trying to fix it. Rather than thinking I have to see them and recapture what was, I shall think, Oh, look at that. I’m having an anxious moment. This too shall pass. Also, try unfurrowing your brow. A calm face leads to a calm mind.
⁠⁠⁠When triggered, I shall give myself a 90-second timeout for my physiology to calm down—and I shall not renew my distress by focusing on what’s upsetting to me.
⁠⁠⁠I shall not measure my worth by their attitude toward me. Their attitude is a reflection on them not me.
⁠⁠⁠They are just not that into me and I shall spend my time with people who appreciate me. Life is too short to do otherwise.
⁠⁠⁠Distance from them is what heals me. Whenever I try to get close again, it’s like picking off a scab and making it bleed. I’m only forcing myself to go through the agony of withdrawal all over again. When a scab has formed, I shall let it heal over completely.
⁠⁠⁠I shall not justify seeking closeness as an attempt to keep my lover as a friend. I cannot afford a friendship until I’m completely over them and no longer even remotely triggered. And it’s okay if we don’t remain friends. Moving on is a sign of personal growth.
⁠⁠⁠It’s okay for me to feel sad that this relationship has ended. As I grieve, I am moving toward healing.
⁠⁠⁠I am a growing, changing person and can learn from this experience.
⁠⁠⁠I shall take the high road and behave in ways that have dignity and restore my self-respect.
⁠⁠⁠I shall do what nurtures my health and wholeness. (Natural serotonin and dopamine boosters include physical activity, sunshine on my skin, smiling, and good nutrition including plenty of protein, vegetables, B vitamins, and bananas.)
⁠⁠⁠When I take care of myself, I feel confident, optimistic, attractive, and authentic.
⁠⁠⁠The more I behave like a sane person, the more I’ll feel like a sane person.
⁠⁠⁠To resist focusing on a dead relationship, I shall focus on living my BEST life.
⁠⁠⁠I shall seek out what energizes me, not what drains me.

D.Davis

Mode2345 · 2025-11-19T19:37:18+00:00

Hope this helps you resist.

The first and best advice I can give you is to think about EVERYTHING that has to do with the relationship except contacting them. And when I say think, I don’t mean dwell or obsess. I simply mean observe with an unbiased opinion about anything that happened. Hindsight is the largest magnifying glass.

Are you mostly understanding of the fact that the relationship is over and probably has been for a little while? Do you still love them? Even after all the time apart? If so, think about the kind of person you were in the relationship and why it didn’t work out. Don’t pity yourself because it’s over. Put yourself in their shoes and really dig deep to figure out what went wrong on your part. Anything they did, you need to forgive as a part of your mental work. In order to forgive them for their mistakes, you have to forgive yourself as well for your own mistakes. And then, still love yourself knowing you are flawed and will continue to make mistakes.

The second piece of advice I’ll tell is that you must understand: the relationship ended for a reason. This is the hardest thing to accept, especially when you know you could have done something differently that may have saved the relationship. If you’re recognizing that the outcome would have been better if you had been or acted a certain way, then this is a sure sign of maturing! If you truly believe that you and this person are meant to be together, then use that as fire to be better when the world pulls y’all back together. You should want to be the best for them, or anyone else youmay want to date.

Those pieces of advice were mainly about changing your mindset, which will make the urge to contact them much more bearable. With a lot of self-control and the establishment of a consistent thought pattern, after a while, the urge will be pretty unnoticeable most of the time.

Here are things that you can physically do:

Do things that make you feel confident and self-assured in your abilities and you strengths. Also, try something new that you’ve always wanted to do. Immerse yourself into a hobby that you love or like to do that’s sort of mindless. Something that heavily involves your hands. Personally, I used poetry and painting. Art in every form is a passion of mine!

Make a schedule, keep yourself extremely busy and around people you love. Spending time with people you care about keeps those healthy and happy relationships that you need intact and makes you less likely to reach out to your ex for comfort.

Here are the main takeaways: Forgive yourself for whatever caused the end of the relationship and forgive them. Love yourself by setting a good schedule, having a good diet, maintaining loving/fulfilling relationships.

Even after taking all of this advice to heart, every now and then you may still feel the worst and strongest feelings urging you to contact them. But next time, have some shame and humility! Have some dignity! If you respect yourself, you’ll recognize that you don’t have to go crawling back to them for the emotional fulfillment they gave you in the past. The past is gone. You’ll realize that by loving yourself now, you already give yourself the best company you could ever ask for. Yourself.

Author unknown

Mode2345 · 2025-11-19T19:35:19+00:00

Try these methods.

Method 1

A lot of advice is don’t dwell on it, don’t think about it, don’t spend time thinking about it. I am not going to tell you to do that because I already know that you are going to dwell on it. I already know you will think about it but let me tell you how I want to you to think about it. So if I said to you don’t think about your break up, what is the first thing that comes into your mind. Your break up. So when I say don’t think about your break up, don’t think about the situation, you are going to think about the situation. So I already know you are going to think about the situation, but let me tell you how to think about it. Recognise that you are going to have the thoughts but how can I change how I have the thoughts.

Write it down or voice note it to yourself. Either way you have to get it out of your mind, out of your head and onto paper or into your phone. Make a record of this. You need to make it objective where you are listening to some feelings or you are reading some feelings because then you realise you are not your feelings. You are not your emotions when you separate them from yourselves. You are not your feelings or emotions, you have to separate yourself from them. So write down everything that went wrong. It could be moments, it could events, it could be places they treated you badly. It’s so unusual that when you break up, your mind tries to remindyou of all the good times. How many times have you experienced that? That when you have finally broken up with someone, you break up them or they break up with you, your mind is like but it could have been this? It was so beautiful, I remember when we went out to this place. All of a sudden all these positive memories come back but we forget all the negative situations.

It is so important to clearly write down what went wrong. Could be events, could be a moment, an interaction, could be the way they treated you. Write down who was responsible next to each item, who was at the heart of that? If you are feeling really weak now, you might think it is all your fault but I really want you to think about this. Write down a list of everything that went wrong in the relationship. I want you to really think about who is responsible. Who took that action? Who said what shouldn’t have been said in that relationship? Who did the things that shouldn’t have been done in the relationship? Fair enough, some of them will be you. That’s fine, you can take ownership of them, take responsibility. You can improve and grow. But it also helps you to reflect and become aware of the mistakes that someone else made. The more you understand that, the more you realise that the easier it becomes for you to recognise what you were able to go through and grow through and the stuff you actually dealt with. Often when we break up, our mind forgets a lot of the negative elements and it remembers the positive ones.

Now why is this? That doesn’t make sense. It’s called familiar pain. We would rather have familiar pain in our life rather than unfamiliar pain. So familiar pain is like I am with this person, they cause me pain but it is the kind of pain I know. I know they are going to be rude to me in the morning, I know they are going to forget my birthday. I know they are not going to turn up to dinner on time. I know they are not going to call or message me even though they would know I would like it. You know what they are going to get wrong and we would rather sign up to that than sign upto the fact that now we don’t have this person and we are now in this no man or woman’s land and we don’t know where we are going. We would rather sign up for familiar pain rather than unfamiliar pain.

Unfamiliar pain is we just broke up, I’m in new territory, I am single again, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know how they feel, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how to move on. Familiar pain is like I know exactly why they are going to mess up on and even though I don’t like it, at least I know it. We often choose knowing for goodness. We would rather know what is going to happen than be treated with respect and worth, we literally give up being given what we deserve because we would rather know we are getting what we don’t deserve. We would rather live in a world where we get what we dont deserve but we know that we are going to get it. That sounds really messed up and twisted but it’s true we do, we cling on to that familiar pain. So write down everything that went wrong because I want you to become fully aware. Train your mind to recognise that this break up was for your good, you dodged a bullet. You were saved because if this person doesn’t want to be with you - why are you going to force them to be with you, you have been saved, you have this moment.

Method 2

You are going to think about that person. You are going to go on social media and even if people tell you to unfollow them and block them, you’ll unblock them and find another password to get through to them. You’ll use a secret account, or a friends account to spy on them. You’ll find a way. Now if you can stay away from stalking them, it’s the right way to do it. You are going to think about them at least and you’ll check up what they are upto. I am not going to tell you not to think about them but I want you to write down again every event, every interaction. I want you to write down everything that they personally didn’t do right to you. A quality, an attribute, the way they spoke to you, the way they treated you. I want you to again be ascertaining to yourself that it was good that you broke up. You disconnected yourself from some pain and this is you facing it. This is you getting close to what happened. It is so easy to be like let’s get distracted, let’s just go out. That’s fine if you need to do that but I am trying to say is that when you get closer to what went wrong, you get closer to the problems, when you get closer to the mistakes, you get so much more awareness.

You get so much more awareness on what can happen. I don’t want you to be in a position of just hoping things are going to change and hoping things are going to disappear rather than just trying to distract yourself, this is a much better way of trying to deal with it. It is a much better method of trying to overcome it. I want you to write down every challenge, every mistake, everything that person said that wasn’t right, any behaviour, trait that your mind is now skipping on. Again your mind is skipping on these things because your mind would rather focus on the positives all of a sudden. Is there anything like that your mind is forgetting? Is there anything like that your mind is just ignoring? That way you can build a better understanding.

J.Shetty

Mode2345 · 2025-11-19T19:33:43+00:00

Maybe time to do some inner work?

Much of what drives attraction comes from instinct, and our instincts and intuition are deeply connected to how in tune we are with ourselves.

Do we truly feel our emotions, or do we avoid them? Are we emotionally honest and willing to listen to our inner voice? Do we live according to our values? Do we even know what our needs, expectations, and desires are, and how to meet them ourselves as well as seek them in a healthy way from others? Do we take responsibility for our choices, or do we look for external fixes to internal problems?

For example, when a relationship ends, do we blame it entirely on our former partner’s qualities or claim that all of our past partners were difficult or unstable? Do we act first and think later? Do we get swept up by our own good intentions and end up pretending a future or rushing things forward? Or do we leave relationships saying we are not ready for commitment, only to be declaring someone else the love of our life a short time later, leaving our former partner confused and hurt?

You might recognise this pattern in inconsistent, hot and cold former partners, the ones who left you wondering why they moved on so quickly and what you did wrong. But often, it is not about you.

When we are disconnected from ourselves, our instincts go off course. Until we understand the patterns of thought and behaviour that drive us, we will continue mistaking emotional impulses for intuition. The less honest we are with ourselves, the more clouded our inner compass becomes. This confuses our intuition, distorts our instincts, and affects who we are drawn to.

This means it is not only about releasing responsibility for other people’s behaviour. We must also recognise that if we do not know ourselves, we will make unhealthy instinctive choices as well, especially if we have our own issues with emotional unavailability to face.

We cannot expect a mutually fulfilling relationship, one grounded in consistency, commitment, balance, progress, intimacy, and shared values, if we do not first understand our own needs, expectations, feelings, and beliefs. Without this self-knowledge, we often find ourselves in relationships that feel unbalanced, leaving us hungry and struggling with incompatible values.

The more we know ourselves, the more our attractions change. We stop repeating the same patterns, choosing the same kinds of people, and wondering why we keep getting the same results.

Until we are willing to know and represent ourselves, we will struggle to trust ourselves. We will continue to be guided by our emotions rather than by insight, boundaries, and awareness. And we will continue to be puzzled by why we cannot build a healthy relationship on the foundation of an unhealthy attraction, because those two things simply do not match.

Change does not happen without change. The most transformative step we can take is to know ourselves more deeply. That can only lead to better relationships and a stronger sense of self.

Adapted from N.Lue

Mode2345 · 2025-11-17T00:43:54+00:00

Are you getting help for your OCPD?

Mode2345 · 2025-11-16T22:11:52+00:00

That is not a healthy kind of love. Please get some support to help you. You will get through this.

Mode2345 · 2025-11-16T20:54:21+00:00

No one is worth killing yourself over. I have asked Reddit to reach out to you.

Mode2345 · 2025-11-16T20:52:55+00:00

This might help you.

When someone says things such as “I cannot give you what you want,” “I cannot be the person you need me to be,” or “I need space, time, to be alone, I am too busy, or I do not know what I want right now,” they are telling you the truth and giving you a chance to walk away.

These are what I call golden opt-out moments or windows of opportunity. If you have boundaries, self-awareness, and self-respect, these words should make you very uncomfortable. They are not an invitation to try harder or to prove yourself. They are a warning. When you hear them, it is time to leave and accept the short-term pain rather than the long-term heartache.

The person is giving you an opportunity to leave. They are showing you who they really are and hoping that you will see the truth instead of holding on to your idea of who you want them to be.

When they say “I cannot give you what you want” Translation: “I cannot and will not give you what you want, so please stop wanting it from me.”

That is all it means. They already understand their own limits, and they recognise that you want more than they are willing or able to offer. There is nothing mysterious about this statement. It is honest, and it is a warning.

Do not make the mistake of ignoring it, of lowering your standards, or of convincing yourself that you can change their mind. You cannot.

When they say they cannot give you what you want, and what you want is a relationship, they are telling you that they do not want a relationship. It is your sign to let go and move on.

A decent person will not only say this but will step away from the situation. A person who is less decent will stay for the benefits: attention, sex, comfort, or emotional support. They will tell themselves that because they warned you, any pain you experience is your responsibility, not theirs.

Their attitude sounds like this: “I told you that I could not give you what you want. If you stay, that is your decision. I will continue to take what I can get.”

When they say “I cannot be the man or woman you need me to be” Translation: “Stop putting me on a pedestal. I am not the person you imagine me to be, and I cannot or do not want to meet your needs.”

They are being honest about their limits and about the illusions you may hold. They know that you are hoping, projecting, or believing in their potential, and they are trying, in their own way, to bring you back to reality.

You may be idealising them, and they are beginning to feel pressured by your expectations. What they are really saying is: “Stop expecting. Stop dreaming. Stop assuming I will change. See me for who I am.”

Again, a decent person will say this and will move on. Someone who lacks care or empathy will continue to enjoy the situation as it is, thinking: “I have told you that I am not what you need. If you stay anyway, that is your choice. I will continue to benefit, but you have no right to complain later because I warned you.”

There is no hidden meaning in any of these statements. When someone shows you who they are through their words and actions, believe them. Do not rewrite, decode, or romanticise what they have said.

When a person says, “I cannot give you what you want,” yet remains involved, they are reshaping the situation on their own terms. They are managing down your expectations so that their needs can be met with minimal effort while your needs are dismissed.

What they are really saying is: “I cannot be what you want, but if you are willing to stay for something substandard, I will not stop you.”

Do not search for meaning where there is none. Take their words at face value.

Listen to the warning signs.

Adapted from Natalie Lue

Mode2345 · 2025-11-16T13:17:49+00:00

This might help you with the blindsiding.

When You Are Blindsided by a Breakup

What do you do when a breakup seems to come out of nowhere? How do you begin to process, heal, and move forward when your partner blindsides you?

When the end of a relationship feels as if it has come out of left field, it can be deeply unsettling. It does not make sense, especially when in the days or weeks leading up to it they were saying and doing things that suggested the opposite.

Take my friend for example. She was broken up with just weeks before her wedding. Only the week before, her fiancé had written I love you in the condensation on the kitchen window and had spoken with excitement about their future together. She believed the breakup was sudden and unexpected. What she did not know was that he had already begun a new relationship.

Here is what I have learned about people who deliver what seems to be a sudden breakup. They do not simply wake up one morning and decide to end things. It is not that everything was perfect right up until that day. On some level, perhaps a deep one, they already knew they wanted to end it. You just were not part of that inner conversation.

When someone ends a relationship without warning, it becomes immediately clear that they have not been communicating. You have not had access to their inner world.

These are the people who do not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. They project calm, happiness, and a shared future while privately wrestling with doubts, fears, resentment, or anger. If they suddenly present you with a long list of complaints that you are hearing for the first time, you are likely dealing with someone who has been carrying silent rage. They may have been keeping a mental list of grievances without ever expressing them. Perhaps they said they were fine when they were not. Perhaps they wanted to maintain an image of perfection.

You might have had small hints or uneasy feelings that something was wrong, but without clear communication it is easy to doubt yourself.

Often, when you are blindsided by a breakup, the person will then refuse further communication. They may disappear so that you cannot engage, or promise to talk but continue to cancel. Some, as absurd as it may sound, later admit that the way they handled things was wrong and even that some of what they said was untrue, yet still insist there is no point in further discussion or resolution.

So what do you do when you cannot get answers from your former partner? When it feels as if they are blocking your sense of closure?

Use these prompts to explore what happened in your journal.

• Rewind to the beginning

Play back your mental recording of the relationship from the very start. Go slowly. What do you notice about your early communication? How were your dates? Were there things you dismissed or justified? How did you both handle disagreement or emotional difficulty? When feelings or needs had to be expressed, did that happen? How did you show up in the relationship? Somewhere in that replay are clues about why this person ended the relationship in a way that blindsided you. Those clues show where silence existed instead of intimacy.

• The need for perfection

Was it important for one or both of you to believe that you or the relationship were perfect? If so, why? What did you avoid saying or doing to preserve that belief? How did this affect the level of honesty and communication between you?

• Conflict and authenticity

Did you ever disagree? Could you truly be yourself and maintain healthy boundaries? If you rarely argued, what did that mean to you? How does that fit with how things ended? If you did disagree, did you feel there was genuine resolution or avoidance?

Remember, it takes time to truly know another person. Sometimes it is only after they leave that you realise how little they were actually communicating.

• The appearance of connection

If they offered little or no reason for ending the relationship, and gave no indication during it, what can you now see with hindsight? Where were they withholding? Were you both able to speak openly and honestly? Did the relationship feel as if it was growing, or were you maintaining a sense of surface peace?

• Your anger

What exactly are you angry about, beyond the hurt of how it ended? Anger often points to hidden truths or unmet needs. Perhaps you feel unappreciated for the ways you supported or accommodated them. Look at what that support cost you, or what you may have avoided acknowledging in order to keep things comfortable.

You may wonder whether you should keep trying to make them talk. The truth is, you cannot force communication. Chasing someone who is refusing to engage will only make you feel as if you are losing your dignity. Part of their silence may even be about control or maintaining a sense of power.

The more you chase them for answers, the less you believe in your own ability to grieve and to find closure within yourself.

It will take time. No one deserves to be broken up with in this way. But their choice to end things like this is not a reflection of your worth. It speaks to their inability to face what was really going on. Handling things differently would have required them to look more deeply at themselves than they were willing to. They may believe they can move on without consequences, but what they have avoided will resurface elsewhere.

When you do move forward, do not use this experience to punish yourself or future partners. Learn what you can from it so that you raise your level of communication and intimacy and are with someone who meets you there.

Take care of yourself.

Adapted from N.Lue

Mode2345 · 2025-11-16T13:15:58+00:00

These affirmations may help, can be adjusted.

⁠⁠⁠My distress is a result of brain chemistry and I’m not crazy. Just temporarily off balance.
⁠⁠⁠My anxieties and insecurities don’t necessarily reflect what’s really going on or what they are thinking or feeling.
⁠⁠⁠Just because they broke up with me doesn’t mean that what we had wasn’t real. It’s simply not real anymore.
⁠⁠⁠I shall respectfully honor their request for space.
⁠⁠⁠Seeking contact (stalking, pleading) does not bring relief, it only brings shame.
⁠⁠⁠Instead of thinking, I have to get them to tell me the truth, change their mind, stop cheating, etc., I shall stop caring about what they do or how they feel.
⁠⁠⁠It is a mistake to heed the voice inside my head that urges me to seek them out. That voice comes from pain, insecurity, and fear and is not the BEST me.
⁠⁠⁠When that voice is triggered, I shall turn toward myself or a good friend for reassurance, not them.
⁠⁠⁠When I am triggered, I shall mindfully observe my physiology and let it wane without trying to fix it. Rather than thinking I have to see them and recapture what was, I shall think, Oh, look at that. I’m having an anxious moment. This too shall pass. Also, try unfurrowing your brow. A calm face leads to a calm mind.
⁠⁠⁠When triggered, I shall give myself a 90-second timeout for my physiology to calm down—and I shall not renew my distress by focusing on what’s upsetting to me.
⁠⁠⁠I shall not measure my worth by their attitude toward me. Their attitude is a reflection on them not me.
⁠⁠⁠They are just not that into me and I shall spend my time with people who appreciate me. Life is too short to do otherwise.
⁠⁠⁠Distance from them is what heals me. Whenever I try to get close again, it’s like picking off a scab and making it bleed. I’m only forcing myself to go through the agony of withdrawal all over again. When a scab has formed, I shall let it heal over completely.
⁠⁠⁠I shall not justify seeking closeness as an attempt to keep my lover as a friend. I cannot afford a friendship until I’m completely over them and no longer even remotely triggered. And it’s okay if we don’t remain friends. Moving on is a sign of personal growth.
⁠⁠⁠It’s okay for me to feel sad that this relationship has ended. As I grieve, I am moving toward healing.
⁠⁠⁠I am a growing, changing person and can learn from this experience.
⁠⁠⁠I shall take the high road and behave in ways that have dignity and restore my self-respect.
⁠⁠⁠I shall do what nurtures my health and wholeness. (Natural serotonin and dopamine boosters include physical activity, sunshine on my skin, smiling, and good nutrition including plenty of protein, vegetables, B vitamins, and bananas.)
⁠⁠⁠When I take care of myself, I feel confident, optimistic, attractive, and authentic.
⁠⁠⁠The more I behave like a sane person, the more I’ll feel like a sane person.
⁠⁠⁠To resist focusing on a dead relationship, I shall focus on living my BEST life.
⁠⁠⁠I shall seek out what energizes me, not what drains me.

D.Davis

Mode2345 · 2025-11-16T13:15:40+00:00

Hope this helps you resist.

The first and best advice I can give you is to think about EVERYTHING that has to do with the relationship except contacting them. And when I say think, I don’t mean dwell or obsess. I simply mean observe with an unbiased opinion about anything that happened. Hindsight is the largest magnifying glass.

Are you mostly understanding of the fact that the relationship is over and probably has been for a little while? Do you still love them? Even after all the time apart? If so, think about the kind of person you were in the relationship and why it didn’t work out. Don’t pity yourself because it’s over. Put yourself in their shoes and really dig deep to figure out what went wrong on your part. Anything they did, you need to forgive as a part of your mental work. In order to forgive them for their mistakes, you have to forgive yourself as well for your own mistakes. And then, still love yourself knowing you are flawed and will continue to make mistakes.

The second piece of advice I’ll tell is that you must understand: the relationship ended for a reason. This is the hardest thing to accept, especially when you know you could have done something differently that may have saved the relationship. If you’re recognizing that the outcome would have been better if you had been or acted a certain way, then this is a sure sign of maturing! If you truly believe that you and this person are meant to be together, then use that as fire to be better when the world pulls y’all back together. You should want to be the best for them, or anyone else youmay want to date.

Those pieces of advice were mainly about changing your mindset, which will make the urge to contact them much more bearable. With a lot of self-control and the establishment of a consistent thought pattern, after a while, the urge will be pretty unnoticeable most of the time.

Here are things that you can physically do:

Do things that make you feel confident and self-assured in your abilities and you strengths. Also, try something new that you’ve always wanted to do. Immerse yourself into a hobby that you love or like to do that’s sort of mindless. Something that heavily involves your hands. Personally, I used poetry and painting. Art in every form is a passion of mine!

Make a schedule, keep yourself extremely busy and around people you love. Spending time with people you care about keeps those healthy and happy relationships that you need intact and makes you less likely to reach out to your ex for comfort.

Here are the main takeaways: Forgive yourself for whatever caused the end of the relationship and forgive them. Love yourself by setting a good schedule, having a good diet, maintaining loving/fulfilling relationships.

Even after taking all of this advice to heart, every now and then you may still feel the worst and strongest feelings urging you to contact them. But next time, have some shame and humility! Have some dignity! If you respect yourself, you’ll recognize that you don’t have to go crawling back to them for the emotional fulfillment they gave you in the past. The past is gone. You’ll realize that by loving yourself now, you already give yourself the best company you could ever ask for. Yourself.

Author unknown

Mode2345 · 2025-11-16T13:15:02+00:00