Why Does a Breakup Hurt So Much? Understanding Breakup Grief and How to Heal from Divorce or Relationship Loss
Grief can make reading hard. Want to listen to this article instead? Find its corresponding podcast episode here.
If you've ever grieved a breakup or divorce and someone in your life said a version of "Well, at least nobody died," I want to tell you this:
While it may be true that “no one died,” you are still experiencing a grief event.
Perhaps your ex partner didn’t die. But a version of you and the life that you knew absolutely died—as well as the version of the future you were building together. That’s is absolutely grief!
I recently sat down with Kendra Allen, breakup coach, host of the Heal Your Heartbreak podcast, and founder of Breakup Bestie, for an episode of Grief Grower. We talked about why breakups are a genuine grief event, why relationship loss can be so uniquely painful, what healing looks like, and how to be a better support to the people in your life who are grieving a breakup.
In this article, I'll cover:
Why breakup grief is grief—full stop—and what it has in common with death-related loss
What makes relationship loss uniquely painful in ways death-related grief isn't
The shame that often sneaks into breakup grief and makes it harder to talk about
What healing from a breakup actually looks like (hint: it's not closure)
How to be a better “breakup bestie” to someone in your life who's grieving one
If you’re wondering why you’re feeling so torn up about your relationship ending and how to move forward after a breakup, you’re in the right place.
Breakup Grief Is Grief, Even Though “No One Died”
For a host of garbage reasons, our society usually assigns the label of grief exclusively to death.
If the person you’re grievign is still alive, then whatever you're feeling is often viewed or treated as something smaller and less significant. Sadness, maybe. Or disappointment. Perhaps even petty resentment. But certainly not something as big and as life-changing as grief.
Instead of honoring the very real grief present in the ending of a relationship, society treats a breakup as an experience you should be able to shake off in a few weeks with enough Ben & Jerry’s, reality television, or one-night stands.
But as Kendra put it during our conversation, breakup loss takes away many of the things that death loss takes away—without the literal death.
For instance, a breakup can take away:
Your sense of identity
The future you were building with your partner
Happy, untainted memories from the past
Shared routines and rituals—or shared labor such as childcare or housework
A sense of safety or trust in the world
The positive traits or elements of yourself that your partner brought out or encouraged
On top of these losses, breakup grief often comes with its own version of the very specific, very disorienting questions that death grief brings.
For example, one of my Life After Loss Academy students wrote in the group about filling out a form at a new doctor’s office after her marriage ended. Under the prompt "Emergency contact" she didn't know who to list anymore. That's not a small, silly detail of her life; that's grief!
In many ways, it’s related to the emotional bewilderment a widow might feel reaching for the phone to call her late husband, or the despair a griever whose partner died might experience taking their loved one’s name off of their shared mortgage, lease agreement, insurance, or vehicle registration. It's the same experience of “reaching for someone who’s no longer there”—just wearing a different outfit, under different griefy circumstances.
In the wake of breakup grief, you might also recognize what Kendra calls “aftershocks”—the grief that continues, even long after the relationship is over. A song comes on the radio. You pass the restaurant where you had your first date. You catch yourself thinking, "I miss the person who always remembered to defrost the chicken," or "I miss the version of me who laughed that hard."
These aftershocks can show up years later—not because you're stuck or something’s wrong with you—but because connection, once formed, doesn't magically evaporate just because a relationship legally or logistically ends. The memory of the relationship continues to exist in your heart and mind—even though it’s no longer a part of your day-to-day.
What Makes Breakup Grief Different Than Death Grief?
There are two meaningful ways breakup grief and death grief diverge.
First, when someone dies, there is no alternate timeline to witness. You don't have to watch your deceased loved one build a new life, fall in love again, or post vacation photos from a trip you always wanted to take together. Death, for all its devastation, comes with a strange kind of finality that a breakup simply doesn't offer.
With a breakup or divorce, the person you were in a relationship with is still out there, living. And thanks to things like social media, working for the same company, living in the same city, or being required to co-parent, you often get a front-row seat to it—whether you want one or not.
You might see your ex post a photo with a new romantic partner. You might find out through a mutual friend that they finally took that trip to Portugal you two always talked about. You might share custody of children, a workplace, or a friend group, which means you don't just grieve the ending of the relationship; you grieve the continued, very-much-alive alternate timeline version of both of your lives over and over in the grocery store, at the school pickup line, on Instagram, and in the group chat.
Second, Kendra named something during our interview that I hadn't considered before: because your ex is alive, there's almost always a flicker of hope—sometimes conscious, sometimes not—that the relationship can be repaired or rekindled. That hope can keep you tethered to the relationship in ways that make healing and moving forward more complicated, because unlike a death-related loss you may still hope for a future that could theoretically be rewritten. This is a very different grief experience than one where death has made that specific flavor of hope impossible.
The Shame That Sneaks Into Breakup Grief
There's another layer to breakup grief that most death-related losses don't carry: shame.
Kendra told me that regardless of who ended the relationship or why, shame shows up almost universally after a breakup, noting, "There's something so personal about someone saying, ‘I don't want to be with you, or ‘I can't be the person you want me to be.’“
For that reason, breakups can be closely tied to your sense of worthiness or personal value.
You might have self-deprecating or self-critical thoughts like:
If only I was taller/prettier/stronger.
I’m not smart/sporty/outdoorsy enough to be with them.
I should be able to get my emotions under control or, I should be able to show more emotion.
I’m not successful enough to deserve them.
I’m too needy/loud/sad/introverted.
Whether your shame-based thoughts are about your physical appearance, your behavior, your personality, your monetary or career-based value, or your beliefs, this kind of thinking can convince you that your breakup is evidence of something fundamentally wrong with you, rather than evidence that you and your ex simply weren't compatible.
If you’re feeling shame, it’s worth naming out loud—to a friend, a therapist, a coach, or even just to yourself in a journal, because shame tends to lose some of its intensity the moment it's witnessed. When you say your inner thoughts aloud, notice if they sound harsh, clinical, or cruel in a way you’d never speak to a friend. That’s usually a sign that shame—not truth—is dominating the story of your breakup.
3 Ways to Start Healing From a Breakup
Throughout our conversation, Kendra offered three practical, gentle ways to begin healing from breakup grief—whether your loss involved a divorce, the end of an engagement, or the breakup of a dating relationship.
Give this list a read and be sure to check out our episode of Grief Grower for more tools for coping with breakup grief:
1. Take an inventory of what the breakup didn't take from you.
Grab a notebook or open your Notes app and make two columns. In the first column, list the traits, habits, or parts of yourself that you feel like you lost along with the relationship. Maybe you lost your sense of adventure, your confidence, your Sunday-morning routine, your identity as someone's partner. Then, in the second column next to each one, ask yourself: Did I lose this completely, or did I lose the way I was doing this with them?
In our chat, Kendra shared a version of this from her own life. After a breakup, she grieved the loss of her adventurous side—exploring new restaurants and comedy shows with her ex. It felt gone entirely, until she gathered a group of girlfriends and recreated the experience herself. The adventurous part of her hadn't disappeared; it had just lost its old container.
You might find that you didn't lose your entire self in this breakup. You lost the version of yourself that existed alongside a specific person, in a specific configuration. Some of what feels gone can be reclaimed, revisited, or rebuilt in a new shape, even if it takes longer or looks differently than you'd like.
2. Retell the story of your breakup—or your ex.
Early on, most people tell a story that sounds like "The relationship was good, the breakup is bad, and I lost everything." Healing often looks like softening that extremist all-or-nothing story into something more nuanced and more true. For instance: “This relationship had real, beautiful things in it, and it also wasn't right for me. Both of those things can exist at once.”
You can also rewrite the story you tell yourself and others about your ex. Instead of "They were perfect," or "They were the worst person alive," the truth often lands somewhere in the middle. For example: “This person had real qualities I loved, and also qualities that weren't compatible with me, and that's simply what happened.”
3. Notice when obsession goes down and self-compassion goes up.
Healing rarely looks like waking up one day fully "over it." Instead, it can look like tracking small measures of progress. Two measures that Kendra recommended are obsession and self-compassion. You might notice less obsession (checking your ex’s social media, ruminating on “what ifs”, or revisiting sentimental items you don’t want to be revisiting) or you might notice more self-compassion (catching yourself in a spiral, validating your emotions, speaking to yourself with kindness, and so on). Both are helpful indicators that you’re taking steps towards healing—even and especially on days when it doesn’t feel like it.
Remember: Healing Is Not Closure
If you've ever gone looking for closure after a breakup—a final conversation, a clean explanation, a tidy reason why—and found it impossible for whatever reason, that's not a failure on your part.
Closure is a myth in breakup-related losses just as much as it is in death-related losses. You can read more about why and how closure is a myth (and how to heal without it) here.
Even if your ex sat across from you and answered every one of your lingering questions honestly or if you got the opportunity to air your grievances without a fight, that likely wouldn't deliver the relief you're imagining. You might still feel hurt or unsatisfied—or you may still want your ex or your breakup situation to be different than what it is.
Kendra agreed with this in our conversation, and it echoes something I teach inside Life After Loss Academy: there is no finish line for grief. There is only integration—the ongoing, unglamorous work of folding loss into the life you're building.
5 Tips to Support Someone Through a Breakup
If someone in your life is grieving a breakup or divorce, here's how to meaningfully show up for them, drawn from both Kendra's work and my own. Kendra calls this being a “Breakup Bestie.”
1. Validate their feelings without rushing them.
Skip clichés, meaning-making statements, and toxic positivity promises, for example: "At least they're still alive" or "You'll find someone better." Instead, try phrases from my book, Of Course I'm Here Right Now: 3 Actually Helpful Things to Say to Someone Grieving: "Of course this hurts." "I'm here for you." "Right now this feels impossible, and that makes sense."
For more tips on supporting someone through any kind of loss, check out my free Supporting Someone series of blog articles and podcast episodes inspired by my book.
2. Offer a mix of distraction and feeling.
Kendra's advice for being a good Breakup Bestie? Don't only sit in the sadness with them, and don't only try to distract them out of it. Ask what they need in the moment—a walk, a good cry, a night out, a rage room session—and let their answer guide your actions. Many grief professionals echo this healing wisdom. The dual-process model of grief demonstrates that returning to life after loss involves oscillating between engaging with grief and engaging with living. Both are necessary for moving forward.
3. Keep issuing invitations, even if they say no.
One of the tips I share in the “I’m Here” section of my book Of Course I’m Here Right Now is: Don't stop inviting a griever to things just because they're newly single, or because you assume they need space. Keep issuing invitations and allow them the autonomy to decline. Unless the event is explicitly for couples, make sure they always feel included. This is a simple way to demonstrate your continued presence and support.
4. Stick to feelings, not villain stories.
Kendra pointed out that when a grieving friend goes into detail about everything their ex did wrong, it can become exhausting to keep validating their story, especially if you have your own relationship with their ex. Instead, gently guide them toward the underlying feeling. For example, "It sounds like you're feeling really betrayed by that,” or “I imagine you’d feel so disappointed by that.” This serves two purposes: 1) You get to validate their emotions instead of feeling pressured to agree with their story and 2) They receive clear language to describe their feelings to you and others.
5. Remember dates that matter to them.
If you know your grieving friend and their ex had a trip planned, a party on the calendar, or a holiday tradition tied to their ex's family, make a note of it and acknowledge it. A simple text, email, handwritten card, or in-person sentiment like, "I know this weekend you were supposed to go to Aruba with [ex]. I've been thinking about you," can help them know their pain is not forgotten.
Closing Thoughts: Breakups Are Loss Events, and Your Grief Is Valid
Whether you’re grieving a divorce, a breakup, or the end of a long-term relationship or situationship, I hope you know now that your loss is real and profound—and it deserves the space to be seen, processed, and honored for the grief it left you with.
You lost a future. You lost routines. You may have lost pieces of your identity, or found yourself grieving the version of you that only existed alongside someone else.
And even though your ex is still out there living, still breathing, and still present on social media, your grief is not somehow smaller or less valid because of that.
I hope you'll be gentle with yourself as you figure out what healing looks like for you.
If you’d like to listen to the full conversation that inspired this article, including more insights from the OG Breakup Bestie, Kendra Allen, check out this episode of Grief Grower.
