How do I deal with getting broken up with?

Thank you for reaching out to BetterHelp. My name is Julie and I am a clinical psychotherapist and relationship coach. I have worked with individual patients and couples for over 20 years. I understand that losing a relationship can be difficult. It sounds as though you have come to the realization that you had something special and need to work on acceptance of the end of the relationship.

As much as we might wish otherwise, relationships sometimes come to an end. Whether you are the one deciding to move on, your significant other has decided to end things, or even if the break up was mutual, ending a relationship is difficult for everyone. Recovering from a break up, moving forward, and moving on takes time. Exactly how much time depends on the number of factors including the seriousness of the relationship, the length of time we were together, the expectations you had for the future, and how much of your life was intertwined (house, car, finances, friends, etc).

While the actual experience varies from person to person, the stages of a break up follow a fairly predictable set of stages that are similar to the stages of grief. Knowing what to expect in each stage of a break up and how to move through these phases will help you process, grow and move on.  Those stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and hope. These are the natural ways for your heart to heal. 

While both partners are going to feel feelings about the break up and need time to process their emotions. Being broken up with, especially if you didn't see it coming, generally takes more time and effort to move on from. Being gentle with yourself and giving yourself time and patience are essentials as you move through the states of a break up. Break ups are a stressful life event a kin to losing a loved one. Having a support system in place is essential for helping you work through this difficult time. Therapy can be very healing and will help to develop healthy coping skills as well as strengthening and empowering yourself. 

Moving on from a break up takes time and it varies from person to person. The time you spend on each state of the break up process really depends on your own experience. The journey may not be linear either. Some people may progress from one stage to the next in numerical order while others bounce back to one and then skip and relapse and go to another one.

An important part of the healing process is called self-concept re-organization, which involves rebuilding and strengthening the sense of who you are independent of the relationship. Relationships have a profound effect and impact on the beliefs we have about ourselves, whether we realize it or not. During the course of a relationship it's very normal to intertwine with a partner. Goals and directions change, as well as wants and needs for now and for the future. This isn't because you lose yourself, though certainly that can happen, but intimacy involves opening up to another person - opening up to their love, wants, needs, opinions, love, goals and dreams. When that happens you can't help but be influenced and eventually move in the same direction. Sometimes that involves adjusting your own sails. It's all healthy part of being with someone fully, and part of the unpredictable magic of relationships.

A break up means the undoing of this merging, which is painful to go through. However strong and independent a person maybe, the fracturing of a relationship can also mean the fracturing of the self concept. One of the most painful parts of a break up is that it ends things as you've come to know them. The familiar is gone, plans are changed and the future all of a sudden has too many blank spaces where happy things were.

There are ways that using therapy and talking about a break up can facilitate healing. The first is that talking about the relationship will help to bring a different perspective to things. It's not called a break up because it's working well. Being in love or being in like hides things and dresses things up, sometimes at the cost of clarity. There will be a level of insight that will flow and will help you change the narrative when you talk about the relationship from a more distant perspective. Talking helps to construct a story of the relationship that gives meaning to the experience including the experience of the relationship, the break up, and perhaps more importantly for healing and the recovery.

Having an emotional release and journaling can be important to healing. And journaling is one way to do this as it allows you to capture and give definition to the thoughts and feelings that are swirling around inside. Journaling doesn't have to be done every day to have an effect. Even a few times a week will help the healing. Writing can also be helpful during the process of a break up. It can be an emotional release, also encouraging a fresh perspective and new insights. 

Reclaiming yourself is another strong self-concept that you will learn through therapy. You will establish who you are outside of the relationship and it will be an enormous part of this recovery process. Think about the parts of yourself that might have been pushed aside during the relationship. When you find these, find ways to build them and nurture them and expand them. When you feel ready, you may want to take up new interests, establish new goals or reestablish your direction. Given that your need to connect has been broken through the relationship ending, anything that will give you the opportunity connect with others who will also see you as your own unique person will enhance the healing process. 

A break up is an ending, not a rejection. It might not feel like that initially, but it's an important thing to remember. Healing from a broken heart is as much a physical process as it is an emotional one. Above all else, remember that there were things about you that were beautiful strong and vibrant and extraordinary before the relationship. Nothing has changed.