I read the chats of the past few moths again. She is soo done with me, she just wanted to escape and I didn’t let her, I kept feeling there is something, something inside of her for me, if I can just get to that, maybe she will come back. But I should have understood when she started comparing our situation to me and my other ex, how she was able to cut contact when she loved me. Fuck I feel so horrible and regretful, not only did I lose my self respect in front of her, pushed her away a lot and wasted so much of both of our time, she just simply didn’t want me, why tf was I so rigid to understand that, a month of disbelief is ok, but 5 months of being in denial, she got so tired of me, I’m sure she feels a bit relieved now. It’s sooo fucking tragic how things became between us, how absolutely sure she is, it hurts me so damn much. I must move on, this is no way to live life. She is grieving but she has moved on from the idea of me and she is extremely extremely stubborn as a person on her decisions so she will stick to it no matter what and that is what scared me the most but I don’t have an option now😞

Karma doesn't exist. Or at least, negative karma always exists when it comes to me. At the slightest hint of a vaguely immoral action, karma strikes and makes me miserable. Yet the rest of the time, I’m kind and good to everyone; I do plenty of favors and try to make everyone happy. And karma stays silent. Or maybe I should just be grateful to be alive? Fuck it, I hate my life.

For five years, I made so many sacrifices for my girlfriend—I literally saved her life. Then, one day, she wakes up and decides she doesn't love me anymore; she starts an OnlyFans account and begins seeing a bunch of guys less than a week after leaving me. What happened to post-breakup respect? To avoiding hurting the person you loved for so long? She can do whatever she wants with her life, but couldn't she at least wait a few months? Because if I were in her shoes, I would have done that without anyone even asking; I’ve always done so after a breakup.

And here I am, telling myself: "One day she’ll come back and beg to get back together, because I was the best guy she could have ever had"—but what a deluded fool I am. Now she goes out every day, has people around her who care about her, has fun, can sleep with whoever she wants, and doesn't think about me anymore. Meanwhile, I haven't slept in months; I keep waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety because I dream of the lovely girl she used to be and realize we aren't together anymore. I can't get back to sleep, I can't eat, and I suffer from constant panic attacks where I try to hurt myself—or worse. She took all the money I had; I’m alone all day with no one to talk to or go out with. I’ve been reduced to writing here all day, looking so desperate as I churn out post after post and cry because no one answers—all just to find a little company and avoiding to have one my crisis.

And a year from now, I’ll still be alone, without friends, working every day for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, she’ll already have a loving new boyfriend, be rich thanks to OnlyFans, and won’t even remember the guy who saved her life from her abusive family.

And everyone tells me, "You have to try to understand." I have to try to understand? I’m always making excuses for other people's actions, even when they’re downright cruel to me. Why doesn't anyone ever try to understand ME? Why am I always the one who has to make an effort for others, while no one ever makes an effort for me? I’ve always been the least appreciated son, the family outcast, the one excluded from every friend group and bullied, the one who struggled in school, I’m not anyone’s first choice, nor their second, got rejected by every girl, and has no bright future ahead. I don’t think I ever did anything wrong to deserve all this pain, and I’m tired of having to be the mature adult when no one else is willing to be that way with me. I don’t even have the courage to end it all once and for all.

I am exhausted by this life. Everything was fine; I had the one person who made me happy, and now she’s the worst of them all. I didn't really do anything to make her leave—I was building her dream, supporting her for years while she worked on her own dreams. But I suppose I asked too much from my life. I just wanted to have one person with me who truly loves me and wants to be with me. I have no one to hug. Not even my parents. I truly, simply want someone who loves and cares for me, who shows it, and who cuddles me.

I’m 24 days post-breakup, 22 days since I last saw him in person, and 14 days into no contact after our final logistical text exchange.
(This timeline doesn’t even feel real.)

This has been the most heartbreaking loss of my life. I’ve never experienced this depth of grief, pain, and longing after a relationship ended. 💔

Journaling has helped me organize my thoughts and feelings, and I wanted to share something that has helped me in hopes that it resonates with someone here.

Yesterday I wrote:

“By the end… we were both grasping at straws. The relationship needed to end.

We were two people who loved each other, but had become increasingly incompatible in the way we related to one another.

We were desperately trying to save something that neither of our nervous systems knew how to stabilize anymore.

I felt deeply in love with him the entire relationship, but another truth that existed was the way I would tense up and feel anxious every morning waking up next to him… and that same feeling whenever one of us entered the same room.”

I’ve been trying to accept the end a little more each day, and upon reflecting today, this thought has helped me:

I’m not grieving a place I can go back to.

I realized that the relationship I’m longing to return to… no longer existed by the end.

I’m grieving the version of the relationship where we both felt safe, connected, and hopeful. But that wasn’t where we were anymore.

We hadn’t been there for a long time leading up to the breakup.. 😞

Even if he called today and said, “Let’s try again,” (as much as I WISH for that) I know that I wouldn’t be stepping back into a place of secure attachment.

The pain, exhaustion, tension, and resentment wouldn’t simply disappear.

I’m grieving something that was real, beautiful, and meaningful, but also something that had already changed.

I can’t go back.

So I have to let go.

I know it’s easier said than done.. but this helped me to push through another day and I hope it helps someone else. ❤️‍🩹

He broke up with me August 1st, 2024 and the anniversary is coming up. I don't feel as down as I did when it first happened but it still hurts. I want to be with him still but he doesn't want to be with me anymore at least not like that.

It hurts that all he wants to do is be my friend with benefits. I want more than that. I'm always hinting at it and he will completely ignore it. It's so draining. I'm so tired of it.

I met this woman (we are both in our early 20s) on Reddit over a year back and she was amazing. She was funny, beautiful, interested in the same things, an introvert like me, she was kind and caring. She was real, we would video chat often. She never asked for anything of monetary value from me. I always told her “if anything is bothering you, you can tell me and we’ll work it out together as a team”

We were long distance and we planned for her to move here (moving west was always her dream). She was stressed but swore everything would work out and I was the only one she wanted to be with. So I started to figure out the logistics of it despite it all being very stressful for me as well because of my already prevalent depression and anxiety disorders. I swore I would make it as easy as I possible could (still not easy for her ofc).

One day she begged me to never leave her and be with her forever. That was exactly what was on my mind so I agreed, “I plan to be yours forever” I told her. Three days later she said that she wanted to end it, it was so cold. Not a tear from her eyes, not a shiver in her voice. She said it would be too hard to move (which I understand to some extent but we didn’t even try a visit) and she said that I’m not worth it.

I shattered. yeah we were only together for like a year and a half but we spoke every night for hours. She knew everything about me and I her, at least I thought I did. She said she wouldn’t block me or anything and I could text her but she was already blocking me on some platforms and ignoring any questions I had or things I wanted to speak about. She treated me so coldly that I couldn’t comprehend it. I went to her in my worst times before this and she was as at least there for me but now I’m like a stranger to her.

She said I did nothing wrong but she also said that I raised her standards (I would tell her that she deserves the world and everything like that and she said that I was giving her a big head) and now I’m below her standards.

I wasn’t perfect, and neither was she. She’s blocked me on everything and I’m still so confused over a month later. I went from feeling like her one and only special person to being an inhuman nuisance. I was apologetic to the end, I was sorry that I wasn’t enough but after she’s blocked me, I feel like I need to tell her that she needs professional help or something. There’s a lot that I haven’t talked about here in this post but to everyone I talked about it all with, they said she was a narcissist. I thought “she used me to fight off her loneliness for the time, then discarded me like trash”. Now I live with more fog in my mind, I feel like a zombie. It hurts, it really hurts and I want to ask more questions, I want to tell her that she should look into speaking about this with a psychiatrist but I’m not the type to go out of my way to contact her when she doesn’t want to be contacted.

I’m lost.

I knew her my whole life. We have the same friend group, and all our friends were rooting for us. We started finally dating after 10 years and she love bombed me, said she knew we were always meant for each other. Then 6 months in she started going distant and cold. I have no idea why to this day. She kept saying she still liked me and was still interested, she even invited me to an event this weekend after texting me all week.

Then today I saw it on instagram. Her holding hands on a date with the guy she's been seeing for months already while stringing me along the whole time. It's been the most soul crushing experience of my life. That image will be burned into my head until the day I die. I don't get how someone who seemed so sweet, kind and genuine can be so heartless and cruel. I just don't get it.

My partner (33M) and I (26F) were together for almost 2 years in a long-distance relationship. We cared about each other but we had completely different communication styles. He was emotionally reserved, avoided conflict, and often needed space. I, on the other hand, needed reassurance and open communication.
Over time, I felt emotionally neglected. I started suppressing my own feelings because whenever I needed comfort, I felt like I was asking for too much. Eventually, I reached my breaking point. We had a huge argument where I completely lost control, said hurtful things that I deeply regretted and told him I wish you the worst out of anger but I sincerely apologized afterward.
Instead of breaking up with me, he said he forgave me but that the relationship had reached its limits, that he was emotionally exhausted, and that he needed space to think. He never explicitly ended the relationship or gave me a final answer.
It’s now been 17 days of complete silence. I have respected the space he asked for and haven’t contacted him, but I honestly don’t know how to interpret this anymore.
I’m not looking for false hope I’d just like to hear from people who have been in a similar situation. If your partner asked for space, did they eventually come back? If yes, how long did it take, and what happened afterward?

TL;DR: My partner asked for space after a major argument but never officially ended the relationship. It’s been 17 days of no contact. Has anyone experienced something similar, and did their partner eventually come back?

Long story short, I’m the one that broke up with my bf a month ago. I broke my own heart too, but it needed to happen. I was emotionally overloaded and exhausted from months of emotional labor. I wasn’t doing things right I admit.

Starting about a week after the breakup, once I relieved a lot of the burden and initial shock and grief, my emotions came back. So did my anxiety. Extreme anxiety. The kind that puts a painful ticklish string through your core. Since then (so for about 3 weeks), every weekday at about 3pm I get this full-body ticklish heaviness, almost like a panic attack or heart attack, that sits for about an hour or two. I work out every evening and it relieves it, but in the moment I sometimes feel like I’m genuinely going to have a heart attack or pass out. I do something different but am still in office each time it happens. No triggers I’ve noticed, nothing extremely repetitive.

Has anyone heard of this before? Does anyone know why this could be happening? I’m young, active, managing my emotions through physical and mental therapy tactics, but it comes through only when I’m working at 2-3pm EVERY. DAY. Without fail. Please dont tell me im dying lmao.

I don’t know how you make peace with something like this.

I’m not claiming my perspective is the objectively correct one. I know I have my own biases and blind spots, just like she has hers.
But I’m genuinely bewildered by how differently we seem to remember our relationship.

Sometimes it feels like things have been reframed to the point where I barely recognize our relationship, myself, or even the person I loved. That’s been one of the hardest parts to grieve.

I don’t want to be right. I don’t want to “win.” More than anything, I wanted us to arrive at a shared understanding of what happened. I know we’re not in a place where that’s possible right now, and maybe we never will be.

I’m just trying to hold onto who I know myself to be while accepting that someone I loved came to understand me in a way that feels almost unrecognizable to me.

I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this, but it has been one of the loneliest parts of losing someone I loved.

My chest feels heavy. My throat feels tight. My mouth is dry. My nose is hot. My eyes are heavy. My hands tremble. My legs tingle. I feel like my mind is floating.

The pain is visceral. The grief is—grief is profound.

I had not yet found a love that felt real; now that I know, I am changed. The love I have for her transcends words. There is no amount of writing that would ever do it justice.

All my life, I’ve only encountered love, true love, once. The rest were counterfeits.

When I lived with my grandparents, I was truly loved. I did wrong, I was broken, I was different, and God, they loved me. There was nothing I could do or say that would have changed that. I was a troublemaker at times. My grandma loved me through it. She saw the brokenness in me and loved me regardless.

My grandpa was on oxygen. He didn’t speak very clearly because the cancer made him very short of breath. But even in small whispers, I knew he saw the world in me. He loved me endlessly.

They were my first and only exposure to true unconditional love. Love with them was selfless. They wanted the best for me. They lifted me up, listened, and supported me. They were so proud of me, whatever I did.

Losing them felt like living in cement. My body was physically heavy. I threw up. I cried. I still cry.

How do you carry on without the loves of your life?

I’ve been told I was loved before, and after them. People who hurt me, people who judged me and made me feel less than, people who used me as a punching bag. I thought that was love, and my grandparents were just special. Their kind of love only comes from grandparents; it doesn’t exist anywhere else.

Real-world relationships are conditional. Love is earned, not free.

I accepted being physically abused, emotionally tormented, and ignored. I thought that was the price to be loved. It was all I knew, aside from a few years as a teenager.

I looked online for connection, only to find people who would say anything to get what they wanted from me, then turned their backs on me when I reacted. That love hurt more than anything. It wasn’t worth it.

It was when I was least expecting it that it came organically. No swiping, no negotiating, no questioning my worth or how much pain I’m willing to bear.

It was soft. It was gentle and attentive. I didn’t feel the desperation of trying to get my needs met and feeling like they were too much to ask.

I was broken. I made mistakes. I was far from perfect. She looked at me like I put the stars in the sky.

That distant memory of unconditional love came back.

The funny thing about being loved is it pulls me away from rational thought. I start to think it is perfect, that I need it, and if it feels right, it has to work out.

But that isn’t love; it’s attachment.

I might receive love, but I cling with desperation and fear of losing it, unconditional or not. That is the side of me I’ve yet to make full peace with, because underneath that desperation is a girl who felt too broken to really be loved by anyone.

She was not broken, but I still feel her emptiness decades later.

In this version of love, the only familiar love I’ve felt since I was a teen, I feel peace. That is something I do not experience frequently.

When I am with her, I don’t need to prove I am lovable. She just loves me. I don’t need to perform. I can just exist, and she makes me feel calm.

There is a level of nostalgia paired with novelty in our connection. It’s like my soul found the rare beam of light that went missing when my grandparents died, but this time it’s fuller and more radiant.

She’s someone I feel like I’ve known forever. Being with her is easy.

I want all the best things in the world for her. I want her to be happy. I want her to be joyful.

She deserves freedom, unconditional support, softness, and comfort. She deserves autonomy. She deserves to be exactly who she is without fear or rejection.

She deserves a soft place to land. She deserves to be heard and seen. She deserves to be understood. She deserves to never feel like a burden, but to be cared for without having to beg for it.

She deserves all the things in this life that bring her joy, peace, and comfort.

I want to know that she is safe. I want to know she is never in harm’s way and can relax in her own space.

I want her to feel connected to her family and community in ways that fill her cup. I want her to have the relationship with God that she craves and works toward.

And I know that’s how she feels toward me.

This love is not compulsive. It is gentle and safe. It is an open hand, a full hug, a soft voice.

It is remembering little details. It is being reminded of them when they’re not there. It is respecting them.

It is trust. It is real. It is selfless.

The flesh in me wants her for myself, but I would ruin her life.

It hurts knowing I am poison. It hurts knowing she is medicine.

She says she will ask for me in the afterlife, and that I am what she wants most. She says I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to her.

She says life isn’t a movie. She says I am a test. She says she can’t have everything she wants.

She says loving men feels like a sin, but I feel right.

I ask for reassurance. I feel grief again.

I feel like I’m living in cement.

My body is physically heavy. I cried. I cry. I will cry again.

How do you carry on without the love of your life?

As a kid I used to get nauseous every day. My parents never figured out what it is. The doctor said I’d grow out of it. I took medicine every night but it didn’t help. I would be doubled over in pain every night.

I felt that stabbing feeling again. Like my body is on fire. That unsettled feeling is back.

I feel like I’m dying. Not in the sense that I want to die. In the sense that my body was thrown into the Atlantic. Like a cold shock of impending doom.

I have done it before. I will do it again. But like before, part of me dies again. I am changed for the better. And I’m grateful. And I will cry for her the way I cry for them. A love this rare is something I will always cherish. A love like this is a gift. A loss like this is too painful for words. All I can say is I am changed. And I will always carry it. All of it. I feel like I’ve died.

How do you carry on without the love of your life?

Necesito consejos o desahogarme me enteré que mi ex se casó con su novia rusa, ya pasaron dos años y medio que terminamos pero me sentí horrible creo que aún tenía esperanzas.

I feel stuck in my own thoughts. I miss her but can't let go. Suddenly she was gone. Did she ghost me, did something happen? I haven't heard from her in a while now and thought i was OK. But then yesterday it hit me again. Talking with people, i just miss the connection i had with her, nobody compared to her. I don't dare move on, hoping she will return explain why she wasn't able to reach out. I don't dare let go, I'm in denial. Or maybe she really is in trouble, she did say the weeks before she vanished that things were getting more tense for her, that she had to communicate less often, but never said nothing at all. I still hold on to that hope she might return. I opened up to her, i let her in. I hadn't done that for most people ever, I'm a super private person, it takes a lot for me to trust someone, I'm usually paranoid and always on guard, even if i trust someone. But with her that all went, i didn't have a guard up anymore. It makes it so much harder to not talk with her daily. She's still on my mind every day. Secretly i even hope she reads this now. I'm even thinking is she testing how loyal i am, how long i will keep waiting for her?

How do you deal with this?

Those who ghosted, why? Was it easy?

Those who were ghosted, how do you cope?

It’s literally taking every ounce of effort left in me to hold myself steady, I just wanna ask her if she’s genuinely ok, if she’s happy, now that I’m not in her life anymore, ik she took a very pragmatic decision with all the logic falling correctly in her head, But I really wish she knew me better. If what she said about how much she did love me was true, I wish she had more want for me, I wish she wasn’t this pessimistic, I wish she believed that this guy is different, that for me, she would make an exception. She just put me in a category and drew a box around me, which I can never escape because she owns that, she controls it and I’m just tied to it because of my own brain and my own wants. Because I do believe in myself , I did believe in us more than her, I wish it didn’t have to be like this, so much suffering, because of strong conviction, I wish there was more love and especially more trust. I wish she trusted we could rebuild. Now im so broken I don’t even know if I have it in me anymore. I wish I didn’t fuckup things so bad.

you are my last person

matching tattoos

same tastes

i wanted us to have the same name

the sun

the moon

yours together

mines apart

all anyone wants now

is someone to keep them company

not a bad strategy i guess

good company to walk through life with

i didnt want us to only be good company

i wouldve loved the shit out of you

good days

bad days

and every one in between

i wouldve loved you so hard

it wouldve righted every wrong

anyone has ever done to us

every time we received less

than we deserved

i wouldve made up for

even though our past makes us

we wouldve been brand new people

nothing before us meeting mattered

every story you told me

i still keep secret

if i may

something happened to me

that shaped the course

of the person i am today

no one knows but me

i keep it guarded under lock and key

with my life i swore id never tell

i almost let slip

the most tramatic part of me

whenever you tell

secrets

its intimate

its scary

but it wasnt with you

it was normal

i almost questioned why i even

still held it so close

you are my last person

so i guess my secrets safe

i didnt just want us to be good company

I can give way.

I can give way now.

I give way so you can be happy even without me.

-Maria.ph

First off I can't afford a therapist, so I'm here. I fell in love with this guy I had a summer thing with years ago and still think about him everyday. I don't have any delusions that we'll ever become anything more than a memory, and that makes it even harder that it's just a dead end. I don't know how to let him go and stop thinking about him, it feels unhealthy and I feel stuck. I don't have anyone that I can talk to about this and would love some help. Thanks for listening.

We dated for 1.5 years. I had the BIGGEST crush on her for almost a year before we started dating, it was like a movie , the way I liked her , all the stories and all the things we shared with each other. She saw the truest and realest form of me. During the end, I got really busy and got drowned in work because of which we ended up having a spat and she broke up with me. I annoyed her and tried guilt tripping her into staying which made her hate me more than ever.

I know what all I’ve done wrong. For once in my life I’ve worked towards changing, all the bad things about me like my anger or my ego. I’m not perfect but I’m doing so much better. It’s been a year since we broke up and I’m so proud of my progress , I’m such a better person and it’s all because she stuck to her decision which made me want to change.

But, despite how much I try telling myself that the change was for everyone around me, I just want that one person to see it. To not hate me for the mistakes I made but remember all the good things that came before.

I hate that I can’t get over her. The fact that it was my mistake that led to it ending and her hating me is something I’ve just not come to peace with.