Tell me about your WORST break up; how you reacted; how insane you were etc

[innerstrength100]

Very recent hideous and heartrbreaking break up. Will not go into details here; but it is currently helping me hearing other people's stories of their worst ever break up. So. Please tell about your WORST ever, including:

1. How you felt and how you reacted, including any insane or random actions you took; how you behaved in the weeks following, both when you were alone and when you were with other people.
   

1. What helped? What didn't help?
   

1. How long before you felt you had properly recovered?

[newstartforme]

Hi inner. Am going through the very same thing as you right now.. The crazy thing is that this relationship only lasted months!! but right now I ache inside, I feel sick am not sleeping and dreading xmas..
Sorry thats not really helping you I guess.. But the ONE thing that is helpling me right now is knowing this is WILL pass and each minute, hour day that I get through is getting me nearer peace..

[TheHermitCrab]

You don't want to go into details but want other people to go into theirs for you and bring up a horrible time in their life?

[LooksLikeRainDear]

Was dumped with a character assassination in 1999.. anti depressants helped. I thought i was better after 9 months but i wasnt. I was just functioning. I made a really bad choice when i got back out there though, self esteem was in the gutter because of what had happened. I felt better though so i didnt recognise i had a low self esteem until i was figuring out how to get out of abusive relatiinship. That guy that dumped me didnt break my heart so much as my spirit & self esteem. Terrible time.

[innerstrength100]

Sorry Hermit - only not going into details here because that has already been done on other threads where I have told all, and don't want to repeat myself and bore everyone!

[LooksLikeRainDear]

Ps, mutual friends perceived me to me "crazy" because i didnt want him to come over to my house. Felt like not only had i been dumped but people wanted me to disappear too. So i reacted with anger and "proved" i was crazy. Well i was, but the crazy was fanned by lack of sensitivity.
I do think that the view of acquaintances seemed to be that a man can dump you and you cant even show ur upset /anger so i was labelled mad for a while. :-( i feel stronger for the experience now though. Lived and learned from it.

[ocelot41]

DP of three years who I adored and would have trusted with my life had an OW. All our friends knew and no one told me. Ex DP made himself feel better by engaging in character assassinations and I was promptly dropped by several friends who believed what he said. This was only a few months after escaping from an attempted rape.

Never had my heart broken so badly before or since.I was so violently angry I scared myself and remember thanking God for the UK's tight gun laws (with zero understanding of what a drama queen I sounded).

Self-esteem was in tiny, tiny bits and it took around a year to feel normal again.

People ( perhaps conveniently) forget how acutely painful it is to be rejected by the person you love most in the world. I still have nightmares about it occasionally when I am feeling anxious about something - and that was twenty bloody years ago!

I am told that they are happily married so that was obviously the right decision for them and I am now happily married to. But Jesus, it was carnage!

[isseywithcats]

3 years ago when i found out my now ex husband had cheated on me for the third time, i threw him and his stuff out, then spiralled into crying every day, not wanting to come home to an empty house, had the worst christmas and new year of my life, a few weeks later went through all the photos i had from our 68 years together, wrote in big letters on each one of him and i together things like LIAR< CHEAT< BASTARD etc on each one put them in an envelope went round to his new house and posted them through the letter box and yes i know he saw what i had done as his daughter told me, and then by 3 months after all this i started to get back to normal and slowly i cared less and cried less each day, 3 years later i am now with someone who would not treat me the way he did so there is gold at the end of the rainbow eventually

[isseywithcats]

thats 8 years not 68 oops

[Lottapianos]

I was 22 and it was my first boyfriend. When it came to men and relationships, I was the emotional equivalent of an 11 year old girl who is obsessed with Disney. We were only together for a few months but I had built it up in my head to be the Love Affair Of The Century. He said he was moving back home to New Zealand (not because of me!)

I can't remember very clearly how I felt but I do remember honestly believing that I would never ever smile again, let alone be happy with anyone else. I felt utterly brokenhearted. I had pretty crap self esteem anyway (thanks parents!) but this left it in tatters. I was in my final year of my degree and I don't know how I didn't go off the rails. I kept it together but used to come home every night and sob. I think I was distraught for a couple of months then got it out of my system but doing a bit of shagging about. Obviously this is a completely different situation to people who have been dumped/cheated on by long term partners. You do go a bit insane though, and within reason, I think its important to allow yourself to not be ok for a while

[Mammanat222]

I was quite young but had a horrible experience

Met a guy abroad, had a fling, developed a LDR for 6 months and then he moved down to London.

He was here for about a year, he had a job and a flat share. We were planning to get a place together, had a holiday booked and were very much in love.

He rang me one day at work (I'd left him just a few hours prior) and he was on the train 'home' [up North] He'd jacked in his job, left my stuff with his flatmate and that was it. He was sorry, it wasn't "me", ha hated London. He then rang off and never switched his mobile on again.

To say I was bereft was an understatement. Yes I was young and yes we hadn't been together that long BUT it was the nature of the abandonment that really got to me and of course the fact I had lots of unanswered questions and had no "closure" - I loathe that word but it's the only way to describe it.

I had his parents number and address and rang a few times in the weeks that followed but it soon became clear I was not going to hear from this man again. This was very early 00's so predated most social media. Short of turning up on hos doortstep - which I contemplated many times - I knew I had to get through it without any answers.

I ended up in a terrible way to be honest, went out drinking A LOT (I was early 20's so it was easy to facilitate going out with friends) and fell into a FWB type relationship that resulted in a pregnancy I didn't continue with.

I actually then ended up in classic rebound relationship that was a disaster and ended up causing a lot of hurt the the bloke over many years.

All in all it took a very long time to get over and even now 13 years down the line I still think I was treated disgustingly.

[Mammanat222]

• I must add I have been with my OH now for 7 years, it's a very happy relationship and we have a DS and DD due next month, so life worked out for the best but at the time it was tough!

[Chattymummyhere]

In my late teens.

I was with my then bf for 4 years, lived together. He had been flirting with other women and becoming violent, I was an ex self harmer. He dumped me one night and I went into self destruct I thought life was not worth living I cut myself pretty badly and got my nan to pick up sobbing in the street to take me to my mums house, drank until I passed out.

We got back together after a week then a few months later I dumped him. I still missed him for years, kept sending him messages about how sorry I was for messing things up when ever I hit a down point.

Still to this day 8years on there is just something about him then when I'm feeling sad I get the urge to message him.. I don't and my dh would die a little inside I'm sure if he knew I thought about texting ex

[LooksLikeRainDear]

ocelot the character assassination thing is real cognitive dissonance. I get it now, it shows them up for the flawed human beings they are, when you can see things clearly, but at the time, omg the pain, to be dumped is bad enough but dumped with a character assassination, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

[HollyJollyXmas]

I wont give too many details as it may out me. But...

It was horrific. I felt like I was going mad and would never recover. It also took me very much by surprise, in terms of the strength of my feelings. I had no idea I could sink to such depths of emotional pain and insanity and pathetic-ness.

It took me 18 months to feel 'not mad' (as in crazy) over him. The pain lasted a lot longer, but in waves rather than constant emotional turmoil.

It was the worst thing I have ever been through.

[LooksLikeRainDear]

"It took 18 months to feel 'not mad'."

yeh!

the man who dumped me with a brutal character assassination, he had in the last two years had about 3 girlfriends and gone out with them for about 5 months before finishing with them. I didn't feel that that was any kind of warning because it felt so right, so exciting, so easy with him....... but I was just the next one to be dumped and lucky me, I was the first to be dumped with a character assassination too. Possibly because on one level his conscience was beginning to squeak?? so he had to demonise me.

Anyway, I later heard that some girl had dumped him and he was devasted. I can honestly say that although I am a kind, decent person that doesn't generally take an pleasure in anybody else's pain, I was glad he was finally experiencing something like the pain he had caused many times to other people. He only finally understood it when he felt it himself I guess. Although who knows, perhaps it was different when it was his pain and he never even joined the dots! I wouldn't know.

[MrsMarigold]

1. How you felt and how you reacted, including any insane or random actions you took; how you behaved in the weeks following, both when you were alone and when you were with other people.

Like an idiot, I tortured myself by thinking about it too much, also coincided with being made redundant from work, ended up in hospital.

2. What helped? What didn't help?

No contact. Trying to focus on hobbies and going on holiday. Not bothering with relationships with new men until I felt confident on my own.

Someone told me not disregard the relationship that went wrong as a complete disaster, just think that that person has stepped aside, so in future you'll be able to meet someone else who is really great.

I also saw a shrink who said after three months the pain dulls - it might not be true but it seemed to be pyschosomatic, I counted down the days until three months had past and suddenly the world didn't seem like such a bad place, the sun shone again and a months after that I fell in love again.

3. How long before you felt you had properly recovered?

About six months.

[elsabelle]

HollyJaneXmas that's where i am now! Several months on from break up and i still feel crazy and broken (ive had a bereavement at the same time which has intensified everything).

Please tell me youre ok now and happily moved on ? :-)

OP hope youre doing ok. What's helping me is talking to / sobbing hysterically on friends, staying NC & keeping busy - i have started some volunteering, yoga and counselling (which helps a lot).

[ocelot41]

In terms of what helped...music. Lots of comforting, empowering tracks on loop repeat. Lots of post its (written on the back of door/phone reminding me why it was not a good idea to call/go and see him).

Going travelling to somewhere I had always wanted to go. Focusing on anything that I enjoyed and helped me experience 'flow' moments. Congratulating myself every time I had managed not to think about him for 5 mins, then ten, then twenty and so on. Hard exercise - kick boxing is good. Being in beautiful places.

But all of this is about us, what about you OP? Do you want to talk about what's happened and how you are feeling?

[HollyJollyXmas]

I'm better now .

I am with my lovely DH and there are joyful moments and people in my life.
Things that helped (but only slowly, over time, and with setbacks along the way) were:

• planning lots of things, no matter how small, that I enjoyed doing. Just making sure every single day had something to look forward to.
  
• exercise - walks in fresh air, yoga, getting fit
  
• looking after myself in other ways - keeping my appearance good, for example, so that I could keep some pride in myself.
  
• psychotherapy. I resisted it for a long time, and at first it was painful and destabilizing, but it helped enormously in the long run
  

Oh, and cutting ALL contact. Not looking at his FB page. Not looking at photos. Cutting all 'real' connection with him so that what I was fighting to get over was 'just' the stuff in my head, iyswim.

Good luck. It was horrific. I have been through things in my life that on paper should have been much, much worse than the break up of a relationship. But I can honestly say, nothing has ever hurt me so badly or damaged me so profoundly as that break-up. X

[loveareadingthanks]

Think I had something of a mental breakdown, a very nasty, complicated break up where no contact was not possible and he seemed to go out of his way to make it as awful as possible. The continued lying was what got to me most, once I'd got over the initial shock and pain (a few months of that). It took 7 months for him to finally stop lying - sufficiently anyway - so that I could stop feeling and acting like a crazy woman. I moved on, I thought, OK ish after that but to be honest still had the sleepless nights/obssessive thoughts for nearly two years altogether.

[Lottapianos]

Mammanat222, you're right - that really is disgusting behaviour. What a total coward. That must have been so utterly traumatic for you, to have the rug pulled from under you like that with no answers. You poor thing. I hope he's miserable somewhere!

[elsabelle]

HollyJollyXmas - ah thanks, thats good to know and gives me hope :) I've cut all real contact too but my head is still playing catch up unfortunately and torturing me with all the what ifs and memories of the good times. Think i have to resign myself that it will take a long old time to get over this but i'll get there in the end

[innerstrength100]

Thank you so much for so many replies already! It does help to read your stories, to reinforce that the huge pain I feel, and the mentally unstable way I feel, is what others have experienced.

Very very early days for me. I agree that the having something to look forward to each day, even sonething tiny, is a really good strategy.

Other things that are helping in these early days are: having counselling, having periods of time where I try and block all thoughts of him, to gain some respite from the pain. Totally no contact and have removed all gifts and other objects in house that remind me of him. Setting at least one goal to achieve each day, even if just cleaning bathroom. Going to church. (I was not a regular church goer until this happened, but am finding it very comforting at the moment eg have to hold some sort of belief that this has happened for a reason and a better plan is awaiting.)

[NickiFury]

My ex was cheating, financially, emotionally and occasionally physically abusive, I was asking him to leave for about a year but he wouldn't go even though he agreed we didn't have a marriage anymore. He lived like a single man within our family home, a tiny flat where we could never avoid each other. So that was my worst breakup simply because it went on for so long. In the end he attacked me in front of my child and something clicked. I called the police and had him removed. It was horrendous though. His parents said I was lying and had picked a fight with him on purpose to get him thrown out, in fact that's what everyone except my own family said. I was very unpopular for a long time.

I was unhappy and in shock I think afterwards and have never felt so awful but deep down I knew I could not let my child ever see that again and having him back would make me feel far worse than I did at that moment.

[BitOutOfPractice]

The maddest thing I did was drink a whole bottle of advocat in one evening. Let me tell you inner you do not want a snowball hangover. Ever. it was FILTHY