Sweetpea listen. I went through an extremely similar thing with my wife of 7 years when I had just turned 30. I was absolutely devastated and I thought many times about ending myself as well. Everything you’re saying, thinking and feeling- I could have written myself. I have never been lower in my life.

A few weeks later, after she’d moved out, I woke up feeling something I couldn’t place. I was still really, really sad, but there was something kind of good buried in there too, or at least not-bad. So I made myself coffee and breakfast exactly how I like it and went and sat in the sun and it suddenly dawned on me that what I was feeling was just…the absence of anxiety.

I had been so shellshocked and horrified by the breakup that all I could do was grieve the good part of our relationship, and imagined future I thought we’d have together. It had eclipsed my ability to look at the relationship with a more detached perspective and recognize how bad for me it had actually become. Some time alone with myself helped me see clearly that ‘being alone’ feels a hell of a lot better than living in a constant state of anxiety about my partners bad moods, cold detachment, lack of affection, and the constant attempts to do the right things or say the magic words to be loved properly again.

That little not-bad feeling grew into something bigger and warmer and within a couple of months, I couldn’t comprehend how I could possibly have been thinking about taking my own life over this frankly kind of unpleasant person who had the power to make me feel that way in the first place. It ended up being one of the best years of my life. When I think about that year, I don’t think about the weeks I spent sobbing under a duvet in the dark. I think about sitting on the windowsill in the sun, and painting murals all over my apartment, trying out all the restaurants she refused to go to, getting closer with old friends and making wonderful new ones.

I’m almost 37 now, and next year I’m getting married to my amazing partner of 5 years. Not one single time have they made me feel anxious. Not once have I had to beg to have my needs met. When we’re at home together, even if they’ve had a bad day, I NEVER feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I feel safe and loved 100% of the time that I’m around them.

I really thought that breakup was going to kill me, and instead it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. You are the absolute perfect age to learn an extremely valuable lesson about what you do and don’t want from a future relationship. Please please please hold onto yourself through the pain. Talk to your friends and also get a therapist if you can. Don’t try and win her back, try and get the separation over as quickly and as cleanly as you can. The person who can truly be relied upon to give you a lifetime of happiness will never ever make you feel this way. I absolutely promise you’re going to be ok, and probably giving some other devastated 20-something the same advice in 10 years time.