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“Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other.” ~ Jandy Nelson

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There’s something so soul destroying in grieving the breakdown or end of a relationship.

The anticipatory grief begins as we feel the knowing that the relationship we are in is no longer conducive to happiness. The person we are with seems like a stranger. The person we have become is a shadow of who we once were. The intense pain stabbing you so deep within your core, you are unsure you will ever recover. The realisation that the time, the energy, your everything that you invested to build this relationship is crumbling down around you.

And no matter how prepared you think you are, how detached you have become, how ready you are to let go and move on. The loss and grief will still be there. Maybe it will gradually creep up on you. Perhaps you will try and distract yourself from it, thinking some new attention will validate the voids left from the breakup. Maybe you will continue seeking this validation, moving from one soulless and meaningless connection to another. Never healing and never learning. Or maybe that loss will feel like a f*cking limb is missing and that grief will hit you so hard it will leave you gasping for air.

However that grief strikes, make no mistake, you will never be the same again.

Having had three significant relationship breakups, with the only three relationships I have had, I can say without hyperbole, they changed me. And it didn’t matter who initiated the breakup, because when you have built something with someone, believing it will last, believing they are your forever person, you are going to feel loss. You are going to grieve.

And I’m going to tell you a hard truth about breakup grief, and that is: it can feel harder to process than losing someone to death because they are still alive. They are still somewhere living life but a different life than the one they lived with you. Perhaps they still run in the same circles or workplace and you get a front row seat to their new life, and even when you try and switch off, or not look, you still see, hear, and feel. That can be a brutal pain. Excruciating in so many ways.

It’s hard to grieve a loss that is still present. A loss that may still be lingering. It’s a complicated grief and it takes work, time, and a heavy dose of self-love to move through it.

So how do we grieve our relationship breakdowns and breakups in healthy ways?

As someone who has experienced this grief on both sides of the relationship coin and as a therapist who specialises in loss, grief, and trauma, below are some helpful tips.

>> Give yourself time and space to process the end of your relationship. Grieve what you had, or what you thought you would have. Grieve the loss of that person, or who you thought they were. Grieve the parts of yourself you lost in that relationship. Grieve any broken trust. Grief is painful and breakups are bloody hard, but show yourself some love and compassion and allow yourself to feel.

>> The belief that getting underneath or on top of someone new will help you move on is for people too scared to allow themselves to feel. It’s for people who need others to fill their voids and validate them. It’s for people who really should be alone to work on themselves and dig deep to understand what’s so missing in themselves that they need someone else to fill them. Short-term attention and validation will not bring long-term fulfilment.

>> Lessons and blessings. Sit and reflect. Be honest with yourself. See the truth of them, of you, of the relationship. What did you learn? What are your shortfalls (we all have some)? What can you take out of this relationship to improve future relationships?

>> Don’t rush into another relationship because if you don’t heal your wounds, you are going to bleed all over your new partner. The fear of being alone should not be a reason to jump into something new. Distracting yourself from feeling the emotions by using someone else is not only unfair, it is unhealthy, and it’s likely that this relationship will be short-lived or filled with similar issues as your past relationship because you’ve not done any work on yourself.

>> See a therapist. If you are using unhealthy coping mechanisms and can’t be alone, it’s time to seek professional help.

I see so many people who can’t face themselves or the truth when their relationships breakdown. Filled with blame, judgement, bitterness, and resentment, they find it difficult to acknowledge that no matter the situation, there are learnings. There are always learnings.

Many people lack the self-awareness to self-reflect. Self-reflection and introspection are crucial to learn more about ourselves.

There are many people who don’t take the time to rediscover who they are outside of the relationship. We are whole beings, individuals who can gain so much insight when we allow ourselves to sit in solitude.

There are so many people who don’t know how to fill their own needs and their own cup. Contrary to the lies that fairy tales sell us, we are more than capable of meeting our own needs and filling our own cup. It doesn’t matter if we’re women or men, we both feel loss and grief. We both feel heartbreak. And we both have the choice on how we process the breakdown and loss and how we move through the grief.

I’m honestly tired of seeing self-proclaimed relationship/dating coaches belittle single people for taking time out to heal and grow. Who minimise the intense pain that a breakup can cause. Who desperately want to sell their services or their over-priced course, so arrogantly, yet so wrongly suggest there’s something wrong with you if you take longer than a few weeks to “get over” the breakup.

A breakup is a loss, and we grieve our losses. If we don’t allow ourselves to do this, we are going to cause ourselves and other potential partners misery. If we choose to bounce from one ill-fated relationship to another, we will never learn a damn thing.

I have spent the past few years alone. I’ve not dated. Not looked for anything. Not into casual hook-ups. And instead, I’ve gone inward and put the focus on me. Who I am. Who I was in my relationships. Who I am outside of a relationship. What were my toxic traits? What did I need to learn? What were my needs? What did I value the most? How did I fill my own cup? And it’s been such a beautiful experience. I realised I’m perfectly fulfilled alone and someone coming into my life would simply be the icing on the cake, rather than every ingredient to make the cake.

When my last relationship ended, the grief was immense. Overwhelmingly painful. I was scared to be alone, having never been alone. I could have jumped straight into something, the opportunity was there, but instead I chose me. And even though I felt the loss, sadness, and devastation deep within my core, I chose to not distract myself. I chose to sit with it. Feel it. Listen to what needed to be heard and see what needed to be seen. I felt the grief wash over me from the past breakups that I hadn’t dealt with. It was like all this loss and grief had been sitting in me, pushed down, because we are conditioned to just “get on with it.” To just “move forward” and “get over it.” So unhealthy and it does us no favours.

Why is it so hard for us to allow ourselves to feel? To allow ourselves time in solitude? To actually really reflect?. To grieve for what has been lost?

Because we are repeatedly told we need a partner. We believe we are not whole without another half. That we get over someone by finding someone else. That there’s something wrong with us if we are single. All lies. Stories we tell ourselves because we have been taught that being alone is something to fear. We hate feeling our feelings and sitting in discomfort. We thrive on external validation and measure our self-worth by how others value us.

Here’s the cold hard truth. Nobody will value us if we don’t value ourselves. Nobody can fulfil us, and it’s not their job to do so. Nobody can meet all our needs, and we as grown and independent adults can actually meet our own needs.

No relationship is going to be healthy if we’ve not taken the time to grieve our previous relationships and done some work on ourselves. External validation is like a drug fix; it’s a short-term solution to a long-term self-worth problem. And connection comes from all different places, not just a romantic relationship.

Honour your feelings of loss and grief when a relationship ends. Let the pain move through you. Let the lessons come to you and learn from them. Be brutally honest with yourself and rediscover who you are and who you want to be. Work on your self-belief and self-worth. Make friends with yourself and embrace the solitude. And allow yourself grace.

“One of the hardest things you will ever have to do, my dear, is grieve the loss of a person who is still alive.” ~ Jeannette Walls

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