This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace professional support. If you are thinking about dying or harming yourself, call your doctor the same day, or the emergency services in your country if you are in immediate danger: a break-up is one of the events that most often precedes a suicidal crisis, especially in young people, and this kind of pain can be treated. If your ex threatens you, follows you or harasses you, or if you were afraid of them during the relationship, read our programme Coercive control: recognising it and getting free and contact a specialist helpline in your country. Allow about thirty-five minutes to read.
1. Before you begin
A few days or a few weeks ago, someone walked out of your life. A message, a conversation in the kitchen, a silence that set in until one of you said the word. Since then, your phone has become a dangerous object. You wake at four in the morning with the same question. You reread old messages looking for the moment when everything changed. Your friends tell you that you deserve better, and it makes no difference.
Or the break-up happened several months ago, and you are angry with yourself for not having "moved on".
Three things, right away.
The pain of a break-up is real, and it is not proportional to how long the relationship lasted. Four months together can leave more damage than ten years of marriage. What matters is the place the person held in your days, your plans and the way you saw yourself.
It does ease, even if you do not believe it. People followed after a break-up almost all overestimate how long and how intensely they will suffer. Sadness decreases, in fits and starts, with very bad days in the middle of better ones.
Some things prolong it, others ease it, and you have a say over many of them. This guide does not ask you to stop loving someone overnight. It helps you stop feeding, without meaning to, what keeps you at the bottom.
Who this guide is for
For you if you were left, if the separation was decided by both of you, or if you were the one who left and the sadness has taken you by surprise.
For you if the break-up is recent, or if it happened months ago and you cannot turn the page.
It applies whatever your age, sex or orientation, whether you lived together or not, whether the relationship lasted three months or fifteen years. If you were married or have children together, our programme Divorce: getting through the separation for yourself also covers the legal process, money and co-parenting.
If you are a parent and it is your teenager going through a break-up, read section 16.
What this guide is not
It will not teach you how to "get your ex back". Section 14 talks honestly about the wish to go back, without condemning it, but that is not the purpose of this guide.
It does not ask you to hate the person, or to act as if they did not matter.
It does not replace help when sadness turns into depression. Section 17 explains how to tell the difference.
How it is organised
Sections 2 to 4 explain what is happening inside you and what research has shown. Sections 5 to 13 are the practical core: the first days, contact with the ex, social media, thoughts that go round in circles, your sense of self, daily life, memories, difficult emotions, and taking stock of the relationship. Sections 14 to 16 deal with the wish to go back, new relationships and particular situations. Sections 17 to 20 say when to seek help, answer common questions and sum up the essentials.
You do not need to read everything today. If the break-up happened yesterday, read sections 5 and 6, and come back to the rest in a few days.
2. Why a break-up hurts so much
Craving, in the literal sense
When you are in love, the person you love becomes a major source of reward: their voice, their messages, their presence activate the brain systems that push us to seek out what makes us feel good. When they disappear, those systems do not switch off. In people recently left and still very much in love, brain imaging shows activity in regions linked to motivation and craving, similar to those seen in an irresistible urge for a substance.
That is what explains the almost physical urge to write, to call, to walk past their home. It is not a lack of dignity. It is a reward-seeking system looking for its reward. And as with any craving, each contact brings relief for a few minutes and revives the urge for hours.
A part of yourself that goes
In a relationship, identities blend. You took on shared habits, shared friends, some of the other person's tastes, a way of seeing yourself through their eyes. You said "we" when talking about your weekends and your plans.
After the break-up, many people say: "I don't know who I am any more." Studies confirm it: a break-up blurs the clarity of your sense of self, and the thicker that fog, the greater the distress. Getting over a break-up therefore also means rebuilding an answer to the question "who am I, on my own?". Section 9 is devoted to it.
The endless question
"Why?" "What did I do?" "Did they ever love me?" "What does the new person have that I don't?"
These questions keep coming back because the mind is trying to make sense of a loss, and to prevent it from happening again. But they often concern things you will never know for certain: what the other person really felt, what would have happened if. The mind then goes round in circles without moving forward. This is rumination, and it feeds sadness far more than it sheds light on anything. Section 8 offers ways out of it.
Rejection and humiliation
Being left also means being chosen against. Even when the break-up is handled with care, it touches on the question of your worth: "I wasn't enough". If the other person is already with someone else, if your friends knew before you, if the break-up happened by message, humiliation is added to grief. Shame pushes you to hide, not to talk about it, which cuts you off from the support you most need.
Grieving a future life
You do not only lose a person. You lose the flat you were going to look for, the summer trip, the children you imagined, growing old together. Those losses are invisible to the people around you, who do not always understand why a "not that long" relationship causes so much damage.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to get over a break-up?
There is no normal length of time. The formulas that circulate, such as "half the length of the relationship", are not based on any study. What we know is that sadness decreases on average over the weeks and months, in fits and starts, and that we almost always overestimate how long it will last at the moment of the shock. If, after several months, nothing has shifted, that is a signal to ask for help, not proof that something is wrong with you.
Is it normal to think about the other person all the time?
Yes, at the beginning. Intrusive thoughts are an expected reaction to losing someone important. They become a problem when they do not decrease over time, and especially when they are kept going by checking, contact and rumination.
Should I block my ex?
It is not compulsory. Hiding their posts is enough for many people. Blocking becomes useful if you cannot stop yourself from looking or writing, or if the other person keeps writing without respecting your request. It is not an aggressive act, it is a protective one.
They tell me we can stay friends. Is that possible?
Sometimes, later. Almost never in the weeks that follow. Immediate friendship often keeps hope alive and prevents the sadness from coming down. You can reply: "Maybe one day. For now, I need distance."
I begged, I sent messages I regret. Have I ruined everything?
Almost everyone does things they are not proud of during a break-up. They are not revelations about your worth. What matters now is what you do from today: stopping contact, looking after yourself, talking to someone about it.
Will I find someone again?
Nobody can promise you that. What we know is that the conviction of never finding anyone again, so common after a break-up, is a prediction made at the worst moment, and such predictions are very often too dark.
What if they were the love of my life?
It is a very common thought, and it makes the break-up even more painful. A relationship that could not continue, for one reason or another, was not the relationship of your life as you will live it. You can have loved someone very deeply with whom a shared life was not possible.
My ex is already with someone else. Were they cheating on me?
Not necessarily. The person who leaves has often started to detach long before the break-up, which explains how they can commit elsewhere quickly. Sometimes, indeed, the new relationship had begun before. You may never know for certain, and trying to find out often keeps rumination going more than it brings relief.
Can heartbreak make you ill?
It can come with sleep problems, loss of appetite, fatigue, and sometimes depression. Chest pain is common in moments of anxiety, but unusual chest pain must always be examined by a doctor, and not automatically put down to heartbreak.