How did you cope with your break up?

LegacyUser

Hi all

So I'll try not to waffle on too much...
Long story short is I split with my boyfriend last week, we have been together 16 months and I fell for him badly. Really loved him with all my heart.
The split was a mutual (reluctant) decision, but I am terribly heartbroken over it.
I don't think the issues can be resolved (they involve his children) so in my heart I know this is probably best and I should move on etc but I am struggling so far.

When I get in after work I just want to lie in bed and cry.

I have forced myself to go out for a walk/jog every evening which does make me feel better and I also went out with friends at the weekend as I knew that it was doing me no good just sitting at home thinking.

He has asked if we can still be friends which is what I want and he came over last night to watch Game of Thrones with me, when he left though I felt so down and I woke up feeling like it again today.

I know it's over, I guess I would just like some advice/tips on how to move forward from this...I don't want the suggestion of cutting contact as that's not going to happen, just maybe some stories on how some of you have coped with emotional break ups?
How long did it take before you stopped thinking about them every second, until that sick feeling in your stomach went away?
I've never split with someone I love before, my last break up was with someone I had stopped having feelings for long before we ended things so it was very easy.
However this time I am in bits and finding things very difficult.

I have no family in this country and not many close friends so I am alone for a good chunk of the time. The friends I do have are wonderful but have husbands/children and I don't want to impose on them too much during the week with my problems.

Jimmy Bottlehead

OP, it is going to hurt. You have to accept that. It will hurt for a while, and it may feel like it'll never end.

All you can do is put one foot in front of the other and repeat. Just plod forward one step and one day at a time. Even one hour at a time. Bit by bit, it'll ease and fade. You'll never forget him, but he won't be lodged in your heart like he is now.
Spending time with the friends you do have here will help, but you could also try taking up a new hobby which gets you out and about, meeting new people and also reminds you that you can learn and experience new things and grow from them.

And as much as it'll hurt, you should really consider cutting contact for a while at least. It's so difficult, but it will make moving on easier. If he's still there in semi-boyfriend mode, it'll keep that flame in your heart alight when it needs to die down so you can recover.

Best of luck OP. My heart goes out to you, cos we've all been there at some point.

pookie82

You could do all that's listed above and more, but it won't help very much if he's still calling over once a week to snuggle up and watch a box set.

There's no question that cutting contact is best, for at least 6 months or so anyway, until it stops being so raw. Having your ex still be your Netflix buddy would be torture in my book. How can you hope to move on?

giggle84

I_need_cheering_up wrote: »

I have forced myself to go out for a walk/jog every evening which does make me feel better and I also went out with friends at the weekend as I knew that it was doing me no good just sitting at home thinking.

Hi OP,

Keep this up as this will definitely help, you had a routine with him and now you need a new one so good for you.

I'm so sorry to hear what you're going through, I know it's so hard. I know you said not to bother advising to cut contact but I'm afraid I agree with the other posters, that would be best for you in the long run. I've read before that you should have no contact at all for a minimum of 60 days. After that when you've had time and distance from him you can decide with a clearer head whether contact is appropriate at that time.

It's time to be selfish now and think of yourself. You do not have to help him through this.

Mind yourself xx

zcorpian88

Still getting over a break up myself, my few other relationships ended amicably but my recent one I ended which was a first for me,

I've dropped my story on here once or twice in the last while when I read other people's misfortune on here so I'm going to drop my story here so people can relate to it or let people know that there is people that are worse off.

My breakup was unbelievably difficult for me to do as it was the longest relationship I had been in, was nearly 2 years and it was a long distance relationship, both of us were heavily invested emotionally, I fell for her and compromised all the way, I came up to see her as often as I could, anything she wanted I tried to get it for her and succeeded most of the time, when she was feeling down I comforted her to make her feel better, anything she wanted to do we did, I listened and tried to the best of my ability to understand our conversations about her masters and her PhD that she was doing when I ended it, complex as it was.

I ended it because I was bottling up an issue she fired at me in the second year of the relationship, well the the first year she kept saying in a jokey way that she didn't want kids and being that we weren't going out long it was the last thing on my mind were only 22 and 24 at the time and I didn't want to settle down until I have the money to look after a family. Anyway into the second year she got a little bit more serious on the subject and said because she is an academic in a science field that she is statistically to have a child with autism. I didn't know how to react to what was said so I just stayed silent on it really and the issue was poking at me on and off for months but I didn't want to break it off because really it wasn't in my comprehension to do that, I really don't get this lucky with someone like her everyday. I was thinking "Maybe she'll change her mind and open up to the possibility of it and take a chance" She made me the happiest I've ever been but the issue was just poking and proding me for quite some time.

I didn't want her to believe everything she reads and to diagnose herself to be sort of inferior and limiting herself of doing whatever she wanted and I was willing to take it further as long as she was happy with me. I also think it's partly to do with the fact she's adopted and has some issues with her biological mother who she met a number of years ago and might not want to continue the gene pool so to speak because of her. She despises the woman and she had a number of remarks throughout the relationship like "Oh I would have been so much cleverer if not for her and her lifestyle" Where I look at her and say "You're fine the way you are, how could you be more clever? You're a young phD student for God's sake" She used to beat herself up for ridiculous things that didn't even matter and I constantly had to comfort her over all sorts of things, it was exhausting but I did it because I loved her and she'd do the same for me.

She is an insanely dedicated academic and towards the end she made very little time for me and it was my birthday back in October and I wanted her to come down and visit me for a get together with my friends and I wanted everyone that was important to me to be there, but she signed up to some paper through her supervisor which is joined with some woman in America which she wasn't obligated to do but she kept saying "Yes" and jumping to his every whim even if she doesn't have to and she could have been just doing her own research instead of taking on so much with others and everything else gets put on the long finger, so rather than come see me for my birthday she chose to stay at home e-mailing this one in America till all hours of the night because of the time difference. Then I have to out on my birthday with my friends and their partners and have to look at pitiful expressions from everyone after they ask me "Where's herself?" then I explain and I get "the look"

I went up to see her the following week and it was the same story, still tied to the computer working all day and well into the night barely uttering a sentence at me unless it was work related, wouldn't even apologize about intentionally missing my birthday get together and wouldn't make it up to me, pretty much willingly stressing and working herself into the ground and never enjoying herself. The passive behaviour towards me the whole weekend just made me burn out and it triggered everything I had been burying and I just blew up and I ended it, I won't go into details about how exactly I ended it but I could have done it better.

I always feel awful about it, her parents really liked me and treated me like one of the family and always welcomed me and I got on like a house on fire with them and I feel like I let them down and to be honest I do miss them. I feel like I let my friends down too since they loved her, she had her good qualities which is why I fell for her, feel like I've deprived them of her company and her of theirs.

All I wanted really was the relationship to take a natural course and have the future I think it deserved as long as she was happy with me and for her not to believe herself to be a lesser woman, which she isn't, because at the end of it I had 100% faith in her and everything would be ok and it would work out. We were close and I thought she'd be the one for me because we related in so many ways but I was afraid to open my mouth on the children thing because I didn't want to wreck everything and have to start from square one. I also wanted her to have more fun and socialize and for us to do things together and for to realize that staying inside the house working morning, noon and night isn't healthy and she will end up burning out herself if she doesn't blow off some steam and relax. I couldn't bring her to do either and I felt I had no choice but to end it and I'm ridden with guilt over it still 5 months later because at the end of it I still love her and I just wanted to take things in the direction I expected it should go.

I was even thinking of asking her to move down to where I live if I could have changed her mind about children and leaving options open and to not work so much, I understand it's a PhD but for God's sake, if you can't take a weekend for yourself what's the point of living? but she is incredibly stubborn and has an "I'm always right" attitude. I wasn't going to ask her straight away about moving if I could have changed her mind because she is an only child and she is pretty tied to her parents as they would be leaning on elderly age, they'd be in their early 60's but they are independent enough and they are in perfect health but she felt obligated to look after them. I would have asked her for multiple reasons and not just my selfish needs, she lived in an isolated part of the country so she never really saw her own friends that often, they are very scattered about and are tied down to work/college so she spends too much time on her own I really don't know how she doesn't get any sort of cabin fever she is that isolated. My friends loved her and if she lived here, she could have seen them all the time and could have had some sort of a social life instead of living in complete solitude, she could have done her research where it's more populated and urban and easier to get around, she would have been nearer to her own friends and I'd have been happy to have them visit, it was a huge long shot though because she was thinking of doing another course after her PhD that would have went well with it, she's one of them people that lives, sleeps and breathes college.

All this was in my head if I could have opened her mind to children, and I've seen her with children before and she is amazing with them, we babysat two kids at one point, a 9 year old and a 5 year old and baked cake and buns with them, played games and watched kids movies it was a blast and I just couldn't understand this view she had about "being likely to have an autistic child because of being a high functioning academic" call me a primitive thinking person but I don't believe that, I would rather leave it up to chance or faith or whatever you want to call it than listen to some article writing ponce writing material that interferes with and controls what we have going on, some of this also has to do with her biological mother also, I think the worst thing she ever did was meet her and now she keeps this defeatist view of herself which isn't fair on her and wasn't fair on our relationship and it got to a point where it killed me to end it because she is wonderful in lots of ways but the views she has about herself and denying herself of things anyone would want and it gave me no choice and it was the hardest thing I've had to do. I've probably experienced every emotion over it but its been more frustration than anything else because I did everything right, I bent over backwards to make it work, I did everything possible and never complained, pretty much worshiped the ground she walked on and it all led to this!


As for your question, how to cope? I've had a rough couple of months since the s**t hit the fan, I've been up and down for a while. For me and anyone else they'd just say keep occupied, just do things more often than you would if you were in a relationship, some sort of hobby or pastime, go out with friends as often as you can, mine have/still are getting me through mine, don't drink it away either I've tried that, it doesn't work and leads to problems. Just keep occupied give yourself jobs to do, it is a shame you don't have too many friends "I_need_cheering_up", maybe join a gym or some sort of class perhaps? You can make some there

What you're feeling is completely normal OP, break ups are incredibly painful. It's still very early days, you're going to hurt for a while but as time goes on that pain will lessen. However, I agree with the others, to give yourself a chance to recover you really need to cut contact for a while. If you truly want to be friends in the long run, you can't be around each other right now. It's too raw, it's like constantly picking at an open wound. Why do that to yourself?

I think the mark of whether you can be friends with an ex is to ask yourself "if he introduced me to his new girlfriend tomorrow would I be 100% fine with it, and happy for them?" If the answer is no (which it obviously is at this point) you can't be friends without getting hurt.

I went through a very sudden break up of a long term relationship, and I found that getting out of the house as much as possible was good, even just to go on a walk. Please talk to your friends, I'm sure they'll understand and will want to be there for you. My friends are all coupled up too, but they were amazing after my break up. They might not always know what to say (sometimes there's not much you can say) but I'm sure they'll be there to listen when you need them.

Most of all, don't put pressure on yourself to feel ok or back to normal. Dealing with a break up is a process and it takes time. You'll get there, but in the meantime focus on yourself and doing things that make you happy.