About six months ago, the man I thought I was going to marry came over to my house at 8:30 in the morning and told me he had slept in bed with another girl. He had kissed her and held her. I broke up with him on our one year anniversary.
Naturally, being a chronic giver of second, third, and fourth chances, I got back together with him multiple times over the next four months. I told him I still loved him and that we could spend eternity together, but that I would never forgive him. I screamed at him and held him while he cried over his guilt.
We ended things for good in April, and frankly, I’ve been a mess. I have trouble predicting my own actions and thoughts. Sometimes I’m sure I’m going insane.
If you’re going through a serious breakup, you know exactly what I’m referring to. Let me warn you- a million people are about to tell you that it will get better. They’ll assure you that at some point in the not-so-distant future, you won’t feel so heartbroken. You’re not going to believe them. It’s probably true, but it’s not what you want to hear right now.
Instead, let me tell you a little bit about what you should expect over the next few months — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Two weeks post break-up
For the first two weeks after my break-up, I lived on my couch. I was unable to spend a night in my bed because that was a bed we once shared. Too many memories slept there, and I could not fit comfortably beside them. I brought out my comforter, pillows, and stuffed animals, and turned the couch into a bed.
This couch also worked in my favor because I could sleep with the television on. In the first two weeks after a break-up, television will be your best friend. The four-girls-in-the-city format is my personal favorite (Sex and the City and HBO’s Girls — I’m looking at you). Amidst the pain, there’s something very comforting about falling asleep to the voices of characters who are going through the same things you are and handling them just as poorly.
The first two weeks are also going to be filled with a lot of tears. Everything is going to remind you of your partner, who is now your ex-partner, and therefore, everything is going to make you cry. The expired milk in the fridge will make you tear up because they brought it home from the store a few weeks ago. Their photos are still on your wall, and their socks are all over your bedroom floor.
Let yourself cry it out. Crying is your body’s way to physically process things, to purge those negative experiences. Don’t deny it that.
These two weeks, just let your emotions take control. Wallow. Eat 3,000 calories in one sitting. Finish HBO’s Girls in two days (can’t recommend this one enough). Cry yourself to sleep. Call your mom. Drink a bottle of wine and scroll through all the pictures. Curse their name. Sanity is for next week.
One-month post break-up
If you hit this point and haven’t tried to get back together, congratulations. Genuinely. It’s a lot harder than it looks. When it had been a month without my ex and I hadn’t gone back, I was pleasantly surprised with myself. I was still sad, sad beyond words, but I was starting to make some kind of peace with the situation.
One month is when I realized that I was still a person, a person who existed for 19 years before I met this man, and one who would somehow manage to exist after him. I spent more time with my friends than I had in a long while. I forced them to go out with me on week nights. We were always dancing. Nothing cleanses the mind like dancing does.
At this phase in the breakup, you’re going to try and distract yourself with a lot of different things, and that’s okay. You’ll download dating apps to swipe through instead of looking at photos of your ex for the 7,000th time. It will be cathartic to start reading trashy romances like Twilight. You’ll discover new music. You’ll go to concerts and parties, and dive bars. When you’re distracted, everything will feel okay — even if it’s not actually okay yet. But it’s nice to pretend until the real stability eventually comes.
The inevitable breach of no-contact
You totally won’t break no-contact, just like I totally didn’t walk out of my own house party to send my ex 34 texts (all unanswered), followed up by six unanswered calls. I also definitely didn’t ask to meet up with him and end up getting back together with him… twice.
We can lie to ourselves, or we can learn from our mistakes and move on. Although I am by no means encouraging it, you are probably going to find yourself drunk dialing your ex one night, or maybe even sober-dialing them. You’re human, and you miss this person. They were once a huge facet of your life and future, so it’s not insane that you’ll reach out. You might talk to them for a while, or want to get back together.
I can’t tell you if this is the right or wrong decision, but after you break the no-contact rule, remind yourself of the reasons you ended things. Remember the independence you’ve discovered over the past few months, and that relationships don’t just end for no reason. It may be hard to recall these things when you hear their voice for the first time again, but they are really important.
Two Months Post Break-Up
Two months after the break-up, which is around right now for me, the distractions start to wear off. You realize that this is real, that they are really gone, and that they might never come back. Time has passed, and in some ways, you feel just as sad as the day you broke up. But you also know that you have to grow up and move on, because there’s no other choice.
This period is hard and full of self-reflection. It’s about doing what’s going to be good for you in the long run, even if that consists of things you don’t want to do right now. You go to the gym or take a pilates class. You force yourself to do something creative. Maybe you just start a new television show instead of watching something you’ve seen a million times. You cook yourself dinner, even though it takes a long time and you’re lazy. You limit looking at their photos to a once-a-week activity.
Positive change is something that takes an enormous amount of effort, unless you are one of those rare people who just roll out of bed happy every single morning. If that’s you, congratulations. But for everyone else, it’s just hard and it sucks that the rewards won’t come until later. But it also starts to feel good gradually. Little changes are everything, and you deserve all the good that comes with them.
I highly recommend starting to keep a journal during this phase of the break-up. Write in it daily or weekly — whatever works for you. It’s healthy to have a physical place to work through your feelings and it might help you to understand yourself better.
Putting space between you (literally)
The last piece of advice I’ll leave you with is this: go away. Go. Run away as far as you can. It’s fine if that means driving two towns over for a day-trip, or if it means spending a year in another country. Travel alone or with your family or with your girls. It literally doesn’t matter.
The best thing you can do to get through a breakup is to go to a place you’ve never been with them. Experience it for yourself. Prove to yourself that the world is bigger than them, because it is.
Take it all in — sights and food and music. Talk to strangers. Dance. Hike and feel the sun. The world is so big and you are so much more than someone they once loved. Go out and prove it to yourself.
Break-ups aren’t always romantic. Check out this article about healing from losing a friend.
