Heartbreak doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t ask if you dated and for how long. Heartbreak doesn’t care for labels. It doesn’t feel any less real just because they weren’t your boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes it hurts, even more, getting over someone you were never with solely because there’s that what if factor that plays into it.
When relationships have labels you’re either together or you’re not. You’re either single or with them. But when you’re emotionally invested in someone who won’t commit to you or give you what you need you constantly seek validation through lines that are blurry and rewritten time and time again.
You hold onto hope that one day it will be something.
But then you get hit with a cold reality that this thing you are so emotionally invested in has come to a dead end.
The hard part about endings is when there wasn’t a beginning to compare it to. Suddenly you were just emotionally invested in this person with no going back.
Then it’s over and you’re just expected to be okay.
You’re left having to mourn a relationship that wasn’t actually one but you loved them like it was real.
Feelings are real and you don’t need a label to justify that.
Don’t let someone make you feel guilty for this heartbreak. Sometimes we love people we didn’t date deeper than anyone we did.
It’s not a breakup but it feels like one. You aren’t sleeping at night. You find yourself crying at three am. You wake up tired looking at your phone remembering when they used to be that text or notification you woke up to. Now your phone it a little more silent. You miss them but you also miss the possibility and belief that this could have been something. The pain is a little deeper but you can’t express these things publicly.
You can’t break down because if you do people will try and justify this reaction and say something like, “well you didn’t even date?”
You don’t have to date people to fall in love with them. And you don’t have to date people to get hurt by them. When your heart is invested in someone the pain feels exactly the same.
But the hardest part is trying to move on when they don’t realize you are hurting. When they don’t even realize how much of an emotional toll you took on them.
So you answer their texts. You try and be strong. You pretend that you accept the circumstances and you guys can be friendly and cordial.
But it’s destroying you every time they reach out because seeing them is this reminder of what you’ll never be. And you’re losing sleep over someone who is probably sleeping with someone else.
I know how much it hurts. I know what it’s like to replay everything in the past wondering what signs you read wrong. I know what it’s like to spend time with someone that you might not even have had a physical relationship with but emotionally it couldn’t have just been you that felt it.
And I know what it’s like to not be able to clearly articulate this pain that consumes you. You got your heart broken by someone who should be easy to get over. But when you love someone and you really wanted to be something more the pain you feel is something that will take time to get over. And that’s okay.
But what isn’t okay is you trying to be strong by keeping them in your life.
Maybe they notice as you pull away. Maybe they realize you aren’t talking as much. Maybe they call you out on it wondering if something is wrong.
And part of you wants to scream yes. I’m hurt. I feel completely broken. You destroyed me. But you stay silent because something about mourning an ending when there wasn’t actually a beginning makes you look like a fool.
But it’s not all on you. This person led you to believe something was there. Had they been completely honest from the start you wouldn’t have fallen so fast but they didn’t. Instead, they knew how you felt maybe they added fuel to the fire. Maybe there was a physical relationship there without a label. Maybe they told you everything you wanted to hear to keep you around because your presence boosted their ego.
Regardless of how it applies to you and your situation, someone let you fall for them when they had no intention of catching you. So don’t feel guilty for these pain you feel you have to repress just because there wasn’t some label attached to it.
Cry as hard as you need to. Feel things as deeply as you do. Pull away without an explanation because you don’t deserve this pain and they don’t deserve you.
But be sure that when you do heal and your tears dry you never allow them to make you feel this way again.
Because just as you deserved a relationship in all this, you also deserve time to heal even if they weren’t yours completely.
By Kirsten Corley for ThoughtCatalog