Breakups are hard. During this period, you lose someone who is important to you and are left with a hole in your schedule, a crater in your heart, and eyes that seem to have a bottomless pit of water underneath them. Damn.
You’re overwhelmed by feelings of regret, worries that you made the wrong decision, longing to be close with someone, and constant tugging between hating your ex and hating yourself.
1. Denial
You see your relationship as better than it actually was, which inevitably makes it harder for you to let go.
2. Second Thoughts
This is hard, you think. Maybe I made the wrong choice. Your ex starts texting you, asking to see you…and honestly that sounds pretty great right now.
3. Rebound/Bad Choices
To keep yourself from thinking about your ex, you start flirting with all the fuckboys in your phone that you haven’t talked to in ages. After all, it feels nice to feel wanted. This stage is also usually accompanied with some pretty bad decisions.
Maybe you’ll stay up til 3am singing/crying to a breakup playlist you made in high school, drinking a bottle of wine by yourself, and telling guys that you’re down to Netflix and Chill (when you really aren’t). Or maybe you’ll go out and do cocaine for the first time.
4. Anger/Depression
But then you come to realize that this temporary happiness doesn’t end up making you feel any better in the end. In this stage, you run back and forth from anger to depression, throwing plates and screaming in pillows to calling up and crying to your mom.
5. Recovery
And finally, recovery. You’ve come out stronger from this break-up with lessons about who you are and what you want and now you’re going to take the free time and free life that you have to do what’s important to you. And you know that eventually you’ll find someone who knows you better and might even be your soulmate.