This Is The Most Difficult Part About Breaking Up

Breakups are always difficult. Period. No matter which side you are on or who is actually at fault, they are painful.

They are painful even when your partner is stubborn or selfish. Even in the cases in which you are so unhappy that your heart constantly hurts. Even when the actions of your partner are infuriating or patronizing or demeaning.

Leaving is not an easy decision to make, even when you are the one who eventually leaves the relationship because you feel like you are caged into a draining emotional situation in which you are powerless and insignificant.

And nor is the healing process easy. Rather, it is often the most difficult part of all, because it involves an acknowledgement which is incredibly painful. In acknowledging the fact that you left because they didn’t treat you well is also to admit to yourself that another person did not see enough worth in you. That you were not worthy enough for them to want you, and that you were not worthy enough for them to want to try to be with you.

That is an incredibly difficult thought to wake up to every day, and it is so hard to process and to work through.

And despite their best intentions, no amount of repetition of “you are amazing” and “he doesn’t realize what he has thrown away” by your friends and family will ever be enough to erase that conviction that you were not enough. Even if you know, deep down, that it’s not at all your fault that things ended – or how they ended – the niggling, nagging thought is still there in the back of your mind, haunting you.

Your friends and family may rally around you in support and tell you that you are amazing and fantastic and special. But what you are left with once the relationship is over is not proof that you are amazing or fantastic or special. The very fact that the relationship has ended is proof only that another person did not want you. It is proof that another person was happy to stand by and let you be unhappy, and that they weren’t interested enough in you anymore to even want to be with you.

And confronting that thought that can be the hardest part of all.