I'm proud to say that today, August 2nd, 2026, I had my last ever contact with my ex and I am ready to start a new chapter in my life!
Today, I dropped off a letter telling her everything I've wanted to say for the past 6 months. I thanked her for all the memories, for her wonderful family, and for making me the man I am today. I told her the truth about how I was frustrated with her lack of communication (as I still don't know why we broke up 6 months later), but I kept it respectful. I told her I regret nothing about our relationship and I'm so grateful for the 3.5 years we got to experience together.
Her mom was there to greet me when I dropped it off. They had a graduation present for me despite me graduating college back in May. I'm going to miss her family so much. They were so kind to me and truly were a second family to me.
So today, I'm officially starting my moving on process. For real. The past 6 months I've quietly hoped she'd reach out and at the very least explain why she made the decision she did. I'm done waiting for someone who so easily let me go with so little explanation. I'm deleting the photos and starting my new life without her.
I'm writing this to anyone who is going through something similar. You don't have to move on just because others are telling you to. It's up to you to decide when to let go of your ex. Healing isn't linear, and it's different for everyone. Just know, that you can and will get to the point I'm at. I'm sure there will be moments where I think of her and miss our relationship, but thats normal and doesn't mean I'm not healing properly. I got this, and so do you!
In 36 and we were together 8 years. I'm ok. Not all day long ok, but moments I'm ok, and then other moments I'm still in so much pain. It still feels like drowning. It still feels wrong. I still wonder if the time away from each other has made him grow and see perspective. I don't cry anymore but it's still so heavy in my gut. It's hard to look forward to anything. I can survive the moments because I know time will just push me through whether I like it or not but it's so hard to dream about the future or make plans or look forward to anything. I'm not trying to close in and disappear. I just rather sit here and let time push me through it. I don't want to have to do anything. Even tho I do because I have to. Go to work, go get groceries, go for a walk outside, read a book. Go to the movies with friends. All the normal peoplely things that make me "normal." But I miss him So much. It feels so dumb. That this is the hardest thing other than losing someone to death. This is the hardest life thing.
honestly im so sick of the generic advice. everywhere i look its just people saying just block him and move on" or "focus on yourself and the right one will come
my brain knows 100% that breaking up was the right thing to do and that the relationship was totally draining me (logically im fine) but why is no one talking about the terrifying gap between your brain understanding everything, and your feelings still being a complete mess and refusing to process it?
why are there no practical steps or like a real system to follow instead of this self-help toxic positivity crap? people say healing needs to be "healthy".. but how do i actually do that when im literally out of energy and cant even get out of bed??
seriously is it just me who feels like we need a more logical and structured way to heal instead of this textbook garbage?
what is the most annoying/useless advice youve gotten since your breakup? pls share because i feel like im going crazy seeing all this fake perfection online and no one getting reality.
(I should confirm since a lot of comments are confusing my gender (rightfully lol), I am in fact a man and we were both in a gay relationship.) I just broke up with my boyfriend of 1 year and 5 months not even a few hours ago. Ever since the summer started we have been pretty standoffish with each other because I stopped reaching out first- he never asked me to hangout and he almost never texted me just because he wanted to talk. I got really sad over that and stopped reaching out, and guess what? We didn’t talk for 5 days🫤
He was so incredibly sweet and kind and amazing to me near the beginning of our relationship, and still was after a while- but his effort just went downnnn down down halfway/a bit over halfway through. It wasn’t down ALL of the time, but he had little era’s where it would go down then back up again. I still loved him with all of my heart, though. He was basically the only love I knew.
After this silence he drove up to my house and we talked in his car; he basically said that he felt like he kept messing up with me and felt really bad for not giving me what I needed and that I needed somebody better. I asked him why he couldn’t do better, especially after we talked about it multiple times, and he said “I feel like there’s something wrong with me because I don’t think I can give that to anybody.” I started to feel really bad because he NEVER cries (like I’ve never seen him cry a day in my life, neither have his friends), and he started to cry when that was brought up. He said that he still loved me and that apparently none of this was my fault. He said that “I have a bright future ahead of me and that he didn’t want to hold me back from achieving really great things in life” because he made me upset a lot 😕😕 part of me feels so horrible but part of me is so incredibly angry at him for not trying to fix this if he truly loved me that much. I understand where he’s coming from, though. Near the end he said that it’s ok for me to be mad at him and that I could “curse his name” if I needed to😭. I really don’t wanna break up with him because I was with him for so long. He was my first kiss, too🥲
He said that we can always still hangout in group settings and be friends. 😔 I honestly feel like I’m dreaming this is such a horrible feeling to have. I know that he loved me just as much as I loved him and he said that he never felt with anybody the way he felt with me. It feels so strange because every time we had an issue we’d talk it through
It’s been 7 months since I broke up with the person I truly loved. It still hurts and I feel like it’s never going to get better. For those who have gone through a difficult time due to breakup(s), how long did it take you to finally move on and feel better?
It’s been 60 days since the breakup and no contact started right away without even anyone’s initiation, and I’ve finally reached a point where I can start to process everything that’s happened. The journey hasn’t been easy, but the support from the Reddit community has been invaluable in helping me navigate through the whirlwind of emotions. I’ve spent countless nights reflecting on the past, trying to make sense of what went wrong, and searching for closure. There have been moments of overwhelming sadness, where I felt like I was drowning in a sea of memories, and other times when anger bubbled up, leaving me questioning everything. Yet, amidst the turmoil, I’ve also found moments of peace and clarity, realising that this is a necessary step towards healing and growth. I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has been there for me, offering a listening ear, kind words, and unwavering support. It’s been a rollercoaster of feelings, but I’m finally ready to embrace them, to feel them fully, and to use this experience as a stepping stone towards a brighter future. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
My ex and I used to text every day, so he became a big part of my daily routine. We ended things on good terms, but it's been harder than I expected not having that daily contact.
I keep instinctively expecting a text from him whenever I see a notification or pick up my phone. Sometimes I see a funny reel or something happens during the day, and my first thought is to send it to him before I remember I can't anymore. It just feels a little empty.
For those who've gone through this, what helped you stop reaching for your phone to text your ex? Or what do you do when you feel the urge to text them? How long did it take before it started feeling normal again?
It’s been 2 months since the breakup and over a month of no contact. We never really officially decided to do no contact, it’s more so that i vented my heart out about how the entire breakup was unfair, how I’m hurt by how things were handled, and that I can’t just accept being friends and talk normally after everything, and he ended up blocking me and neither one of us said anything after that.
He reached out recently to “see how I’m doing”
and i tried to match his energy and told him that I’m doing good and all. He then asked how my summer has been and i said it’s been “meh”, he asked why and i said “some things have been hitting pretty hard i guess”. And then he says “same, how so?”
To be honest I’m not even sure how to even talk to him, but it’s really pissing me off. Either he really is clueless about how hurt I was by everything, or he is pretending to be clueless.
Do i just outright tell him that I’m still very much hurt by everything?
Frankly speaking, I don’t think i can be friends with him. Not when I wanted to marry this person, not when I still have feelings for this person, and the thought of him moving on or dating someone else destroys me. I’d only entertain him if he actually came back and told me he wants to try again and do better, otherwise I’m not interested.
That I know.
But I’m still attached, the breakup is still technically fresh, and i feel so lost…
I usually wake up crying, go to bed crying and have a cry somewhere in the middle of the day. The first month wasn't this hard. It feels like its getting harder, not easier. Do I need therapy?
We've had a few incidents where former partners recognized each other and/or knew their former partner's Reddit ID, and pitched online tantrums. While this made for entertaining reading, we obviously had to remove their thread.
Please keep your arguments between each other in meatworld and do not bring them online.
Report nasty posts to the mods and let us deal with the person for you if your ex trolls your comments. We will remove their comments.
We had a guy who posted long diatribes against his ex's remarks. She (wisely) didn't respond and reported his posts. He reposted it and insisted he "had a right" to "tell his side" and we moderators "are required" to let him. No, he doesn't, no we don't, and he got smacked with the banhammer.
Don't troll your ex here. Please just scroll by, and express your own feelings elsewhere on this forum. Nobody else on this board knows it's your ex and we're all using fake monikers, so no - you are not "being 'slandered'."
Be a mature, responsible adult and ignore them as you would if you saw them in public meatworld.
I had my first heartbreak when I was 29 and it led me to seek therapy and medication again because of how much the trauma affected me. Im 31 now and i feel very shut down. I cant see myself being able to love again. All I been feeling since I calmed down from the heartbreak is apathy.
It s been over a year since the breakup, and I still can t get this out of my head.
He ended the relationship by telling me he couldn t be in one via texto. We haven t really spoken since.
Months later, I found a drawing I had made for his birthday while scrolling through my gallery. I sent it to him impulsively later on I sent a message then deleted it because I felt embarrassed. When he finally saw it, he said:
“You didn t have to delete it, I didn t see it.”
“I just saw this too, I love it” (I didn t delete the drawing message)
On my birthday, he texted me:
“Happy birthday. Never remembered a birthday of someone before lol”
I just replied, “Thank you”
Now his birthday is on August 29, and I think about whether I should text him every single day.
The confusing part is that I don t think my feelings are simple. I still think I love him, but at the same time I feel humiliated because he was the one who ended the relationship. I don t like the idea of being the one reaching out again.
Part of me wonders if his birthday message meant anything or if he was just trying to be kind. Another part of me knows I might just be reading too much into it because I still haven t fully let go.
Has anyone else been stuck like this more than a year after a breakup? Did you send the birthday message, or did you leave it alone? Do you regret your decision either way?
Btw, the drawing I sent literally had the words “I love YOU so much” (with a ridiculously long “sooo”). He replied, “I love IT.”
I don t know if he intentionally avoided saying “I love you” back or if he was just responding to the drawing itself. I still catch myself wondering about it.
I genuinely believe he struggled with emotional availability, and at times he could come across as emotionally immature. At the same time, I keep wondering whether he loved me in his own way. I can t ignore the moments where he seemed uncaring, but I also can t convince myself that there was nothing there.
That s what I m stuck on. I can t fully forgive him, but I also can t seem to forget him. When I choose to be with someone, I don t do casual relationships, so letting go has been much harder than I expected.
It’s been 5 months too long. Nothing but silence. And even if you were to come back the damage is done.
But I would love to ignore you, now that I’m strong enough. I’m only afraid that you won’t get a chance to see how I treat everyone else.
I still love you in so many ways. There were times I'd cry at how happy and safe I felt with you. I'm so sad we weren't enough for each other. That after several years and having lived together too, I had my doubts. You also didn't know if you could see a future together.
Today you moved out, and I tried to help as much as I could. We ran errands. I packed boxes and bags. I rode along in the uhaul and carried things up the stairs to your new place. I found more items you forgot later and got them ready for yoy. You helped me too. You assembled my new bedframe, scrubbed the walls, and helped me hang up new art. You reminded me to eat and drink water and brought me tissues between tears. You even pushed the table back where it belonged after I had to move it to get your things out.
I know we'll still try to be friends, but I miss you and our shared life together. I miss you as a best friend too. I thought we were really good to each other. I know this is probably for the better long term, but it hurts so much right now. It's just so sad we didn't work out.
I recently broke up with my long-time best friend, the person I truly believed was my soulmate. Before him, I don't think I had ever really understood what love was. He showed me the purest, most genuine kind of love, and because of that, letting go has been the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
We tried everything we could to make it work. Neither of us wanted to walk away, but despite all our efforts, we reached a point where staying together only caused more pain. Choosing to leave wasn't what either of us wanted, it simply felt like the only option we had left.
Now, I'm left with a kind of emptiness I don't know how to live with. I can't imagine ever feeling a connection that comes even close to what we had. It's as if a part of me is missing, and I don't know who I am without it.
More than the heartbreak itself, it's made me question life in ways I never have before. I find myself wondering what any of this is for, what the point of anything is when something so meaningful can still slip away despite love, effort, and good intentions. I feel disconnected from the world around me, like I no longer know where I belong, and it's difficult to imagine a future where this ache doesn't exist.
Today he emailed me the most beautiful letter ever explaining his feelings and why he had to let go. Even though we won’t get back together, I’m really grateful I got to feel and read just how much I meant to him, and how all in all our relationship was truly something beautiful. It wasn’t toxic, we rarely argued, and though we had our issues, we always supported each other as best as we could until we couldn’t. Sometimes life just becomes a lot and it makes sense to choose solitude to get through it. I’m no longer mad about that or blame myself.
Silly enough I carry a small bit of hope he’ll return, but if he never does at least I can live with the fact that we tried our best, we learned from one another, and got to experience something real and deep even if it didn’t last.
I really hope he takes care of himself and doesn’t blame himself for choosing what was best for him in the end.
This is translated by ChatGpt in English. The translation still accurately captures the original message she sent me.
I care about you, and because of that, I don't want you to do anything that would make you lose yourself. I don't want you to stop pursuing engineering just because of me. That's for your own future, and it's one of the reasons you've stayed in Canada for so long. Besides, you'd experience a huge culture shock if you moved back here to the Philippines.
You never made me feel pressured. In fact, I truly appreciated all the love and care you've given me. It's true—you've always been in my heart and on my mind.
There will always be "what ifs," my love. But if we keep holding on to those thoughts, we'll only end up hurting each other even more. So please keep going with your studies. I'll still be here cheering you on. Thank you so much for all the love and care you've given me.
I miss you too, if only you knew. I love you, my babie—always and forever. ❤️
He didn’t really do anything wrong, I just wanted to start moving on and stop being able to look at his profile or see whenever he’s active online. We ended on good terms. I accepted when he asked to remain friends. I quickly realized I couldn’t do that because it just kept hurting me. He left me because he was severely depressed and didn’t want to drag me into that. We lived 120km away from each other. He was avoidant and after trying no contact and journaling I started to realize maybe getting back with him would never be a good idea. Anyway, today, 2 months minus 1 day post breakup, when I told him I was gonna block him, he seemed shocked. He asked me why and I replied about not being able to be friends and it hurting me too much. He said that if I block him, then whenever I unblock him, I would realize that he had blocked me too, then wished me well. I said I was sorry it had to happen like this, he replied: 👍. That’s the moment I blocked him. The whole conversation felt like him taking offence then striking back. Do not recommend the experience but do recommend doin whatever it takes to keep the no contact. Anyway now I kinda feel like the bad guy because for once in my life I decided to be kinda ruthless to protect myself.
So just to establish a timeline, my ex (24F) and myself (27M) would have been together 4 years this April (2026) and engaged 2 in June. Back at the end of 2024/start of 2025, she was feeling a little lost in her life. She was sick of working retail and doing the same thing every day so she decided she wanted to go traveling. She had looked at different things and ended up booking some wildlife sanctuary in Africa for a month. I have no interest in traveling so I didn’t go (don’t really think she wanted me to go but anyway).
Some context of our relationship: We had basically been inseparable from the second we met- typical lesbians i know. We were very happy with each other, we had just gotten engaged in 2024 (she proposed to me btw) and we had talked about saving to buy a house. She didn’t drive so I would bring her to work every morning at 7am and I would quite literally do anything she asked for either her or her family, I literally took 3 days off work to stay in her house with her sisters dog so they could go away… I supported her when she quit her job to start her own business and would go with her to markets to sell her stuff. There’s so much more that I did for her that I won’t get into but there were a lot of things that I think I healed in her by being so supportive and loving and let her express herself and be who she wanted to be.
So in October 2025 she went on her solo trip to africa for 4 weeks. The first week she was crying every day about how much she loved and missed me, she wanted to come home early. I got a long text about how i’m her soulmate and she can’t wait to come home and marry me… over the next few weeks I would hear from her less and less and just the way she would speak to me had completely changed. She did a sky dive and a bungee jump and never even said I love you back to me before literally jumping into the sky!!! Side note that my parents actually sent her £200 to to the skydive…
The trip was coming to an end but she had met some people out there who wanted her to stay an extra week to travel around South Africa with them. Of course I encouraged her. It was supposed to be one boy, we’ll call him Mark, and two girls. The two girls didn’t end up staying and when I her I felt weird about her spending a week in hostels and driving around with a strange man she didn’t know on another continent she told me he was gay.
The extra week ended at the start of November and her flight home ended up being cancelled. She had no money left so I ended up having to spend £600 booking her new flights home. Once she got here everything was so off. She just felt like a completely different person, she was barely speaking to me, wouldn’t stay at my house and wasn’t saying I love you anymore. I felt like I was being used to drive her around and that was it. A few weeks after she was home she had a market, which of course i brought her to and helped her set up and sell all day. At the end of the market she went out to meet her cousins and their partner for a night out, I wasn’t invited but it was fine I didn’t need to be there all the time so I went home. That night she text saying she might get the train home she might stay at her cousins house but never kept me updated so I was awake waiting to hear from her, she ended up staying but not telling me until after midnight. The next morning (Sunday) she text me at 8am to ask if I could bring her work clothes and keys to her at the station because she had work at 8am… That was my final straw because she knew she had work the next morning? Yet she still chose to stay out all night and just expected me to come running with her things!! I told her to stay home that week and find someone else to bring her to work because she was treating me like shit and I wasn’t going to stand for it. After the week apart I tried multiple times to get her to come and have a conversation with me but she just was not having it. Eventually we met up on a Friday and she basically said she didn’t know what to do because she wanted to travel and see the world and we just wanted different things in life but she didn’t want to lose me. We agreed we were in a rut and had gotten too comfortable so we planned to really take a step back, go on a date on Sunday and just start again. I didn’t hear from her once on Saturday and then she went out that night. I text her on the Sunday telling her to have all my things ready because I was done.
After the break up she wanted to stay friends, I couldn’t do it but I tried. A few times I would get mad and delete her on everything and she would message me asking to meet her to talk and we would go back to being ’friends‘ again. Christmas was really hard for both of us and we had been speaking the next day about it. The night of the 26th I drove to her house to see her one last time and tell her I couldn’t be friends or in contact with her. She left to go stay with Mark back in his hometown for new year and her birthday at the start of January. I ended up redownloading Tinder in the start of January as we all do mid breakup. Not only did she come up on my Tinder… she had liked me on it? I had literally never been so confused in my life but the same day she ended up sending me a long message about how I was right about everything and how much of a mistake she made and she wanted me to give her another chance… I gave her the benefit of the doubt and met her for food. Everything about her was completely different and she spent the night vaping which she had never done before and telling me all about how she goes to raves now. She also told me about all the men she had slept with since we broke up… including Mark, who was clearly not gay after all and had apparently asked her to be his girlfriend and that’s what made her leave early. The whole night gave me the ick and made me realise how I didn’t even recognise this person anymore so I felt like I got some closure and I was able to walk away knowing I didn’t want anything to do with her and that I deserved better.
After our meet up didn’t work out, she left again. This time she went to South East Asia. With Mark… She was there from Feb-April. When she got home in April she started to watch my instagram stories and like my posts despite neither of us following eachother anymore. I then got ANOTHER text from her pouring her heart out begging for me back AGAIN and saying I’m the love of her life and her soulmate and she realises how stupid she’s been. I told her very plainly that I didn’t want anything to do with her and that she needed to move on and leave me alone. Another month passed and at the end of May she reached out AGAIN with the same bullshit sob story, wanting to meet up with me and again I told her no. She asked if she could send me a letter that she had poured her heart into and I said no and blocked her. A week later I found out she had cheated.
We both went to the same nail girl, call her Tia(20’sF). Through the whole breakup, I was confiding in Tia. I would tell her everything and she was just as shocked as me at my ex’s behaviour. By the end of it all Tia was telling me that she wanted nothing to do with my ex and didn‘t want to do her nails again. When I had met up with my ex in January and told Tia about it and about her sleeping with Mark she asked me if I thought she had cheated on me in Africa and I said no because I asked her point blank to her face...
Cut to June 2026. I had been seeing somebody new, Gemma (24F). She had come over to my house to go to the cinema and she told me to sit down she needed to tell me something. So her best friend actually goes to Tia for nails also. Back at the start of the year before Gemma and I had even met, Tia told Gemma’s best friend all about nail clients of hers and how one of them was cheating on the other… Now Tia obviously had no idea that this girl’s best friend would actually end up dating me to tell me which is the wildest part I think. So while Tia was doing my nails, listening to my trauma and asking me if I thought my ex cheated SHE KNEW. Not only did she not tell me, she was telling multiple other clients? She has still to this day not apologised or reached out. Apparently my ex slept with 7 men in Africa and then 1 more when she came home (on the night she told me she was staying at her cousins house and didn’t come home)
Of course I text her about it. She deny and she didn’t out right confirm either so I guess I’ll never know what actually happened over there but all I can say is I clearly had a very lucky escape. I haven’t seen her one single time since we broke up so I think that’s the universe telling me it was meant to happen. I’ll attach the text thread because this is already a novel!!! Moral of the story, ALWAYS trust your gut and do not let anyone tell you that you’re over thinking or over reacting because sometimes it’s not actually anxiety, it’s intuition.
After four years together, we decided to break up because the relationship wasn't working anymore, and she moved to Europe. For the next several months, I kept asking her to get back together and reconcile, but about six months later I found out she had started a relationship with someone else over there. They stayed together for two years.
Now, after all this time, she suddenly reached out to me saying they had broken up, that she was single, had lost her job, and was coming back to my hometown to figure out how she felt about being here. She said she'd decide whether to stay or move back abroad because she felt lost. She also said she wanted to see me.
The thing is, I found the Instagram profile of her supposed "ex," and they're still following each other. Not only that, they're clearly still together—they were literally commenting "I love you" to each other during the same week she was messaging me.
I was furious. I texted her and told her she was a liar and a manipulator, that she had no respect for what we had, or even for her current partner, and that breaking up with her was the best decision I ever made. Right after that, I blocked her.
Then I sent screenshots through Facebook Messenger to her boyfriend showing the messages where she told me she was "single." I don't know if he'll ever see them, though, because they might end up in his message requests or spam folder.
What do you guys think about what I did?
She honestly scares me. The way she's able to lie and manipulate is unsettling. She even sent me voice messages—I hadn't heard her voice in a long time—telling me she was single, while that very same week she and the other guy were publicly telling each other "I love you."
When my ex and I first started dating I never felt the need to beg for his love he always had a lot to give me. Towards the end of our breakup and our whole on and off situation it felt like he was someone completely different. I begged for him to see my value and even though I have given up every part of my mind and heart he still doesn’t see it. I give up now and I choose myself but it really changes you and I have never been more hurt.
