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It's been 6 weeks since the breakup.. I am going out tonight with my best friend. I am scared. I am scared to be around people. I have never felt this way before in my life. I have always had that confidence, I have felt attractive, I was open to meet new people and being around them. Today I'm struggling to even find myself something to wear for tonight. I feel ugly, I am stressed, I want to stay in bed.
I feel like he still got some impact on me. I still avoid doing things that would make him angry. I still walk on eggshells even tho he is not around for so many weeks and he lives 3 hours away from me.
I do have better moments, I try not to think about him and about what happened. But in the back of my head it's still there and it seems it will be there for a very long time.
I have this constant feeling of "I made so many mistakes, I could do things differently", "If I would say something different in our last fight, we could work it out", "He was really upset, did I hurt him?", "God, I have hurt him so much".
This guilt doesn't leave me alone. My mom and my friends told me so many times that it didn't really matter what I said or what I did.. he would always sabotage this relationship. I know they are right but I know I wasn't saint either. Even tho my behaviour was simply the reflection of him abusing me. I feel like if I was a little bit stronger, a little bit wiser, a little bit calmer - I could do something to make it work.
This is how I felt after all our fights and breakups, but I was much weaker and I would do anything for him to come back. And he happily was coming back. And now I turned into that cold stone that pushed him away and didn't do anything to let him come back. And I know this is what I supposed to do long time ago, but I couldn't. I thought that maybe this time I was ready, but now I see I wasn't.
I wasn't ready yet to let him go for good.. Would I ever be if I stayed for longer?

hi imstillhere,


i think this is a fairly typical reaction to most breakups. dont over indulge, but give yourself permission to be alone, stay in bed, eat ice cream, cry, etc.


i had this problem. a lot of us were operating on adrenaline for a lot of our relationship, and that adrenaline has nowhere to go except to come out. there was a while that id have anxiety attacks every day, around 30 minutes after waking up.

i find that, as much as possible, doing those things that make you anxious, or like youre walking on eggshells, is good for breaking that impact. at first, it can feel like youre consciously "rebelling" against them...eventually, youre just doing those things for yourself, like you would.

but again, if its especially painful, dont overdo it.


im a huge believer in learning the mistakes from the relationship. there were a lot of things that friends and family tried to tell me, but i wasnt ready to hear for a while, but helped me a lot later on, when i was a bit more detached.

the problem is, its very difficult to look at the relationship in a balanced and detached way, when youre wounded, and in the middle of grieving. instead of "i could have done ______ better, ill learn that lesson for next time", it can feel more like "everything is all my fault".

my suggestion would be, for now, when you have these thoughts, try to put them in the back of your head, as something to process later on down the road. try to focus now on just fully grieving the relationship, but also finding a new normal.