If this is your first break-up, welcome. If it’s your tenth, welcome back. We keep each other warm here. We get through it together here. You’re not alone <3
Watch your favorite break up movie at least 3 times. If you don’t have one, I highly recommend “Someone Great”.
Break-up = haircut. Get a haircut.
Make a playlist of the songs you’re putting on repeat right now. These are your power songs. Songs that make you feel things, even if it’s sad. Songs that make you face your feelings. Songs that prop you up. Songs linked to good memories. it’s ok to have good memories.
Send thinking of you texts to your friends.
Give it & yourself time. If you think this is the one, if you think you’ll find your way back to each other, wait. Clearly, the two version of yourselves you are now don’t work together. And you won’t have changed tomorrow. So if it’s going to work again, let yourself change. Give it at least 6 months (I recommend a year).
Find the joy. If the scenario is that you want to be with someone forever someday, that means most of your life will be spent as someone’s partner. So enjoy the years that are just yours <3
Take a walk with the playlist you made at #4.
Masturbate. Reconnect with what it’s like to have your body be entirely, unapolegitically your own.
Drink an aperol spritz. I find it really hard to cry while holding an orange fizzy drink you’re not even sure is good but keep ordering anyways.
Give yourself a breakup allowance. How much can you spare for an unexpected expense right now? Define it and buy yourself something entirely for you. A break-up dress you won’t dare wear outside your apartment? A new bed because the old one holds too many memories? Take-out from a place your partner hated? Anything goes.
Tell your people what you need. Whether you feel close to just one person or 500 online friends in a forum, tell them. You’ll discover how kind people can be :)
Accept you’ll never know fully why. And that’s life. You need to move on without knowing all the whys or resolving all the what ifs. Why is in the past. Facts are your present. Action is your future.
Make a list of 10 good reasons why this didn’t work. No relationship is 100%. Name the 10% that didn’t work. Be honest.
You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.