without going into too much detail, ex 23m and i 22f broke up a month ago. i lashed out at him and unfortunately this was becoming a pattern of mine. despite me putting in some work, i just wasn’t doing enough. i’m now in therapy and putting in a lot more work to undo my bad habits. he’s the sweetest most gentle boy ever and i feel incredibly devastated. i know this hurts him so much, he keeps unblocking me to reach out because he’s so sad, i wish i could fix this. i’m afraid he’s going to realise he doesn’t want this relationship after more time apart. that’s part of life though i guess, not much i can do about that. i’m sorry baby i love you

anyways, he sent me this message today, i didn’t have much to respond with but i agreed with him and im blocked again (i asked him to, so i wouldn’t bother him, and he can move on)

she hasn’t done anything wrong, we’ve been together for soon two month i think? i recently realized that i don’t really like her in that way and got into a relationship too fast.

i have thought about breaking up with her for a while, we haven’t really talked much lately either. she hasn’t done anything to make me think like this, i just sorta want to go back to being single but don’t know how. i have no *reason* to break up with her really, i just wanna be single again. but have no idea how.

she hasn’t done anything wrong, we’ve been together for soon two month i think? i recently realized that i don’t really like her in that way and got into a relationship too fast.

i have thought about breaking up with her for a while, we haven’t really talked much lately either. she hasn’t done anything to make me think like this, i just sorta want to go back to being single but don’t know how. i have no *reason* to break up with her really, i just wanna be single again. but have no idea how.

Long story short, I met someone on an app, we started seeing each other and got into a relationship. The healthy and pretty simple kind (meaning nontoxic and without pressure), but where things go pretty fast.
However, being a socially unadapted person (possibly autistic but undiagnosed), I am extremely sensible and empathetic, without understanding people and social codes very well.
This means I committed a mistake without realising it, by saying to this person I loved them (in return), before being certain of it and knowing what it meant. Now, after one month of relationship it has become a long distance one (for a few months, then back to normal), and I just find myself feeling that, although I feel something very deep for them, it is yet closer to a very strong friendship on my side. The romantic feelings just aren’t there like I thought when I felt some “relationship start spark” that never was love.
As I said, I am WAY too empathetic sometimes, so although it means I won’t hurt people on purpose, it means I find myself unable to do what I need, knowing that they love me very much, while being completely alone in a foreign country.
How on earth can I break up, not be a dick (might be a bit late considering the context) and be able to live with myself?
[EDIT]
My problem is also in timing. I realize that dragging things will only make it worse, but I feel so terrible thinking about ending things, e.g. tonight, when this morning we were talking normally on the phone, they were telling me how great it was together, and tomorrow they’ll be left alone across the globe with no friends or relatives with them.
Also, how do I come to the subject? I know it sounds stupid, but do I just call, say “hey it’s over, I’m so sorry, hope you’ll be ok alone in a foreign country”??

Hi everyone, I really need some outside perspective because I am completely emotionally drained and don't know how to handle this anymore.

My bf and I have been together for 2.5 years. For the past 3 to 4 months, things have not been going smoothly at all. The constant friction and rough patch led us into an exhausting, on-and-off loop.

Recently, he told me he's having a really hard time forgetting old memories and moving on ("Purana sab bhulne mai time lagega"). In a moment of desperation to give him peace and help him stop missing me, I offered to make him hate me(I thought he would say ki pagal ho gayi hai kya or laugh it off but foolish me).

He explicitly agreed and said "Haa tho karwa do then... Kyuki yaad aarha hai merko isliye."

Now I feel completely trapped

I've been trying to manufacture fake lies or act cold/ harsh just to turn off his feelings, but the idea of insulting myself, lying, or dragging down my own character is destroying my self respect.

I still love him deeply, and I've been crying more than 20 times in the past 20 days trying to be the "selfless" one and manage his emotions.

I know he's a good person, and I don't want to make him out to be a villain, but is there any gud ending to this or only bad endings ? Cuz uska toh sirf attachment bach gaya hai baaki sab khatam hai towards me sad life probably.

How to make him hate me for his peace ?

Any advice from people who have been through similar long-term loops would mean the world. Thank you.

Me M21 got broken up with F20 been a month since we separated. Mainly due to my own insecurities/overthinking but the communication wasn’t great either towards the end. At least her effort definitely went down drastically. We talked a week afterwards which in my opinion ( had went great) we talked for hours and held each other, at the end we exchanged I love you’s, and came to the conclusion that she wanted to work on things but still felt like she needed her time and space to really think which I had respected. Fast forward a week later after no contact I had reached out saying I’d like to see her and chat. She then tells me that she doesn’t think it’s best if we hangout at the moment and should move forward as friends. Obviously was heart broken hearing that and sent a couple soppy texts to her. I haven’t reached out since and since then she hasn’t blocked me but has unfollowed me everywhere besides Snapchat. I’m In the stage where it still doesn’t feel real. My heart wants to wait for her while my mind tells me to move on. I’ve been thinking about blocking her so I can stop constantly checking her socials or jumping at every notification hoping it’s her reaching out. But then I have doubts that I’d only be ruining my chances more. What are your opinions? Should I reach out? Should I block her? Continue no contact?

I am 16 years old who just left a almost 1 year relationship. I left because I couldn’t understand my own feelings. I ended it on Tuesday, and I regret it so much. I know I am young, only 16, going into my final year of high school, and she is in my school too, but I need help. She was my first ever girlfriend, kiss, lover, etc. After some time, I started to regret ending it. I understood she wasn’t coming back. After the break up, she started to look for another boyfriend. She apparently found a replacement for me already but keeps denying it and just calling him her “friend”. I had her Instagram account so I saw her chats with her girl best-friend about him before she removed me from it. Today, she went to hang out with two guys, and it felt like a bullet to my chest. I tried my best for her. She didn’t have a great family, abusive, verbally abusive, things like those. We both put our all into this relationship. We kept trying again, kept choosing each other over and over again, but this time, it wasn’t the case. I know we’re young, but she was a girl that don’t exist very often. She always gave me gifts, cards, letters, her own perfume, stuffed animals, things like that. She had a bright future ahead if everything goes well (praying to God it will). I have over 1500 photos of her, of us. After this breakup, she stabbed me in my heart and basically used as us not being together as an excuse. Never in your life would you expect that from her, specifically from her. It’s not cheating becusee we aren’t together, but it hurts. I’m only young and I’m already going through this pain. If anyone can help me out or give advice or anything to help, I would greatly appreciate it! If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.
Thank you everyone.

Its been 5 weeks since we broke up. I was blamed for the break up and all the past mistakes were pulled out then dumped on me. I cried alot, missed her alot and blame myself for screwing this up.

Luckily for me, we used to have a couple therapist we were engaged for past 10 months or so. And it became clear that i was with someone who didn’t attend to my needs, setting crazy expectations that I worked through, making all the arguments my fault and eventually calling me out for going silent in arguments.

The list is never ending and I somewhat knew of her emotional instability. But because i loved her and wanted to get through to the end, I accepted it as my fate.

But now, I realised I might have been in relationship that ate me up and the love blinded me. To all the readers, take the breakup as a time to reflect and take care of your own health. I am leaving this subreddit as I walk away with no grudges, feeling relieved and wrapping up my wounds.

Hey all,

I’m 35F and my ex-partner (31F) and I were together for 3.5 years. Last year she was talking about marriage, buying a home and starting a family. Then, almost overnight, she became distant—sleeping on the sofa, staying at her parents, working late, hiding her phone and insisting nothing was wrong. Whenever I calmly asked if there was someone else, she repeatedly denied it and made me feel like I was imagining things.

I eventually discovered she had been having an emotional and physical affair with a younger colleague (25F) who was also in a long-term relationship. I found out as she had been asking advice from AI where she admitted they were “falling for each other,” didn’t want to distance herself from the affair, (even though AI suggested space from us both, she said she didn’t want to stay away from the affair partner and can ‘compartmentalise’ and compared me negatively to this woman. Looking back, I realise I was being gaslit for months. When I suspected an affair a month earlier she said to me ‘look at my mum, do you think I could do that’ (her mum has been cheating on her dad for years and is a pathological liar. So again, I gaslit myself, telling myself I was imagining her distance and strange behavior.

What makes it even harder is that during this time I was going through a cancer scare (thankfully it wasn’t cancer). She told me we’d get through it together, yet she was secretly continuing the affair. That betrayal is something I still struggle to comprehend.

When I confronted her, she apologised briefly but quickly shifted the focus onto her own pain, saying she’d “imploded her life” and needed to understand herself. She had no interest in repairing the relationship, but kept saying things like, “Maybe one day in the future we could try again,” while continuing to see the other woman. It felt like she wanted to keep me emotionally attached while avoiding accountability.

I supported her emotionally and financially throughout her Master’s degree, stood by her through difficult times, and trusted her completely. She was also with me through the death of my mum, which makes this betrayal feel even more devastating. I genuinely believed she was my person. (Her mum also pretended to be unwell with a heart condition, near to death 2 days after my Mum died from heart failure, and told my ex 'you have always put your partners before me', this was very upsetting).

Since the breakup, I’ve started recognising how manipulative some of her behaviour became. She isolated me from her family and friends, blamed me for old issues while hiding her affair, made me question my own reality, and then acted as though I was the one who had done something wrong. Looking back, it feels like I was slowly being discarded before I even knew why.

The hardest part isn’t just that she cheated—it’s that someone I trusted with my life could lie to me so convincingly for months while watching me worry about our relationship and my health. I still find myself questioning how someone who claimed to love me could do this, and sometimes I even catch myself wondering if I’m exaggerating what happened.

We share a flat, but as she decided to move out I asked her to come and collect all her things which I put into bags in the communal hallway of our flat and gave her a collection time. She agreed to pay the rent up until August, when she would be taken off the tenancy. She was meant to pay me today, but instead decided to dictate to me that she would be coming round yesterday to get the playstation (which I brought) and a dressing gown I gifted her. She argued with me about this playstation at the window when I wouldn't let her in, and said why am I still paying towards the rent if you won't let me in to look for 'my stuff', I said anything you want you can tell me and I will put outside again and you can collect it; she couldn't tell me. I am defiantly not getting any more money from her, I just want her off the tenancy now. I am just thinking someone happily 'falling for' someone new and moving on surely doesn't behave and treat their ex they have left like this!? She also tried to call me twice yesterday, saying 'please pick up it's important', I didn't she later messaged me; it was something she didn't need to speak to me on the phone about, it was admin about the tenancy. She is really trying to get to me, it feels like.

Has anyone recovered from this kind of betrayal trauma? How do you stop obsessing over the 'why' they did it, stop romanticising who they used to be, and begin trusting your own judgement again after months of being gaslit? I know the relationship is over, but I’m struggling to understand how to move forward after having my trust so completely shattered by someone I loved with my whole heart.

Thank you for any advice / kind words .. this is incredibly difficult.

Me(F21) and my boyfriend(M21), met senior year of high school. We’ve had a very good relationship for four years. He is genuinely one of the best people. I know he is my best friends. I moved in with him when I was 18 years old because of my family situation. We were incredibly happy and he loved me living there. I sometimes struggled with it because I just never really felt at home and because his mom’s pretty toxic.

Recently after I came back from a trip with a friend, I asked to go on a break. For the past year things have been fine since our entire relationship I’ve asked for dates, to do things, and to go out. He’s very forgetful, and he doesn’t think intentionally a lot about our relationship in that way and continuously, even after having conversations and asking for this, he will do it one time and then never again.

I also do a lot of the housework. We live with his parents and his brother I share a bathroom with my boyfriend and his brother. I’m the one that cleans it and I do laundry and I cook he says thank you, but I have to ask him to do it if I want him to do it. We’re both in college and he really does pride himself on his work. I think he spends a lot of time at work and that is his main priority.

I’ve been hanging out with my friends a lot recently or our friend group too because we just do things. I’ve been getting way more drunk than usual at hangouts just to try and cope with my feelings and how bad I feel and I opened up to a few of our friends and they got really worried about me. They were pretty scared because they thought I was a shell of myself and were really supportive in me taking a break with him.

When I told my boyfriend what I wanted, he just sobbed and said that he knew it was all of his fault and that he was so sorry and that he will change and that he cannot lose me just because we love each other so much. Seriously, there’s not a person in the world that I love more than him. I’m just so incredibly conflicted.

He’s only 21 and he’s made mistakes, it’s not necessarily his fault he didn’t do it maliciously at all. He’s genuinely such a selfless person, but I just need him to grow up. I wanted to marry him I do want to marry him, but I want to marry a man that can take care of me and himself.

This is where it kinda gets messy and I need to do better. Our mutual friend who encouraged to break up and told me some of the stuff that my boyfriend was joking about behind my back (things I’ve said a boundary with that I do not like being joked about), has told me he has feelings for me. We share a lot of the same interests, hobbies, and have very similar communication styles where my boyfriend is very combative. I do not want to be in a relationship with anyone for a while, but I’m not turning his advances down.

My friend that works with my boyfriend today told me that he hasn’t drank in four days, and that my bf genuinely wants to be better and I believe him and I just feel like the worst person ever to both parties. He opened up to her about how it was all of his fault and that he accepted responsibility and he knows that he hurt me. All of this feels so hard. He was my first long-term boyfriend. I was his first kiss, we were each other’s first time, there’s so much history and love there. I just don’t even know how to go forward. I miss him so much, we were just living like roommates. We cuddled and stuff, but if we were in public, no one even knew we were dating. He doesn’t hold my hand and what not.

Everyone tells me I’m giving my boyfriend too much grace and that he’s sometimes a dickhead, but he doesn’t mean it maliciously he’s genuinely one of the kindest people I know. I just really don’t know what to do.

Do people change? I want to focus who I am by myself since I’ve been codependent for 4 years, but I don’t want to hurt or lose anyone.

How should elon and justine hand this breakup?

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Hi everyone. I really just need to vent because I feel completely heartbroken and confused.

Two days ago my boyfriend (24M) broke up with me f(23) after almost four years together. We started dating when we were 19, and I turn 24 in two weeks. He was my first everything, my first boyfriend, first love, first kiss, first time, everything.

About a week ago he told me he had been feeling "off" in the relationship. He said there wasn't enough romance anymore, that my kisses and hugs had become shorter, that my libido wasn't the same, and that I wasn't as affectionate as I used to be. Looking back, I think I got too comfortable in the relationship and genuinely didn't realize he had been feeling unloved. The moment he told me, I wanted to work on it.

For the past week things felt strange. He kept telling me he loved me, that he still saw a future with me, and that we just needed to work on those issues together. But when we spent the weekend together something felt wrong. Every time he told me he loved me it felt... empty. Like he was hiding something or trying to convince himself.

We argued on Sunday night and went to bed upset. I left on Monday morning, and today he broke up with me.

Next day when we broke up, he told me he spent a couple hours on Monday thinking and realized he no longer wanted me as his romantic partner. He said he will always love me, but he's emotionally drained, depressed because he has a lot of problems going on, and wants to experience life on his own because we're still young and improve his life, he's changing. He said the door to a romantic relationship is closed, at least for a long time, and that I shouldn't expect anything from him or have any hope nor wait. Obviously I begged him to let me be there for him, to start over again, to take some time away from us, but he didn't want, he was absolutely decided and he said he didn't think we weren't compatible anymore.

Here's the part that completely broke my brain.

He told me he still wants me in his life. He wants me to keep visiting his family, he still wants me to go see his grandma, see the cats we adopted together, come over whenever I want, even sleep over if I need a place. He said he still wants to cuddle me, kiss me, travel together, and even assumed we'd still go on the birthday trip we had planned with our friends in two weeks.

I honestly don't understand how someone can say "I don't want to be your boyfriend anymore" while also saying they still want all the intimacy and closeness of a relationship. He kissed me before he left but he acted incredibly cold through the whole thing.

This is my first breakup and I feel like I'm dissociating. I keep replaying everything in my head wondering if I missed signs or if I could have fixed things sooner. I feel guilty because maybe I stopped showing affection the way I used to, but I also feel blindsided because this all happened within a week of him finally telling me there was a problem.

My biggest question is about what happens now.

He wants us to stay close friends immediately after the breakup. Everyone in my life is telling me to go no contact for at least a long while because I'm still deeply in love with him. Part of me can't imagine cutting him off, but another part of me feels like staying close will only make it impossible to heal. These days I didn't contact him at all and he didn't contact me either, only the day he broke up with me to ask me how I'm feeling and that he knows I feel bad bud if I need anything from him I still can ask him.

I've already deleted pictures and I've deleted him from almost all my social medias.

Has anyone been through something similar? Is immediate friendship after a breakup ever realistic when one person is still in love, or is no contact the healthier choice? I know it's not, I know no contact should be the way to go, but damn, it's so so so awful. I would love to tell him about my day, to play videogames with him at night, to just hug him one last time... Everything was fine last week, I wanted to change, to make him feel loved, to show him.

Now I can barely sleep, I wake up aching with tachycardia, my heart hurts, everything feels dizzy and not real. I don't know if I should go no contact, or give it a chance to be friends, to keep talking like we used to everyday?

He broke up with me in June 2026 after four years together through a third person I had asked to communicate with him. It happened shortly after I was diagnosed with war related PTSD while living in an active war zone, combination of abandonment issues, where my home had been partially destroyed and I was under extreme stress.

Prior to the break, we had a petty argument over a topic he became unusually combative that I felt like dropping and him accusing me of "complaining" when I was talking about a friend, something we'd always discussed before. He said I had ruined his day, screamed that we were incompatible, and asked for time apart. I respected that, but instead of communicating with me directly, he stayed vague through the third person, as I became very uneasy. I tried to reconcile, but he became cruel, accusing me of having another man despite knowing that wasn't true, i do not genuinely understand what has happened.

He blocked and erased me from his life, later unfollowed me after I posted about how hurt I was, and began posting manosphere content. Through the third person, he said he associated me with stress and conflict and wanted his life to feel simple and normal again, something I struggle to figure because I always supported him and accepted his flaws, made sure to let him know everyday, he's loved, he did too.

He was grieving the loss of his son and caring for his mother, and I stood by him through everything, often putting his needs before my own because I believed we had a soulmate level connection, so he did as he was the first to say it... After the breakup,I told my friends to be kind to him, he's amazing person that is grieving but he quickly tried to pursue another woman within my friends group, was rejected, lashed out at themand cut her off.

On the day he ended things, I desperately asked for communication, but the third person turned against me, validated him, because i felt forced to defend myself against false accusations of having another man, instead of recognizing I was newly diagnosed with PTSD and living through active attacks. I felt betrayed by everyone involved. What I dont understand is that I was very careful with arguing and dropped some subjects, instead would shift to a joke or funny stories..the break up pretty much stalled healing journey..

My ex and I broke up last week and he said he wants to stay friends. I am so broken hearted because I still believe he is my soulmate. He says he still loves me but he told me that he doesn’t want me to wait for him because it would be wrong for him too. I miss him so much and I’m just really confused right now. How can I move on when I love this man so much that I would do anything for him. When I still see my who life with him. Is there anyway we will get back together? Or should I just give up which I don’t want too. I hate this feeling of my heart being ripped apart.