What to Do in the First Few Days After a Breakup

What should you do in the first few days after a breakup?

Very little, and that's the point.

The first few days after a breakup are some of the strangest you'll ever live through. One minute you're crying so hard you can't picture feeling normal again. Twenty minutes later you're making toast and thinking, Wait… did that actually just happen?

You wake up and, for about three seconds, everything is fine. Then you remember.

Your phone is oddly quiet. Their name is still sitting in your messages. Their toothbrush might still be in your bathroom. You keep thinking of things you'd normally tell them, then remembering you can't.

Meanwhile, everyone keeps talking about moving on while you're still trying to work out what happened on Tuesday.

So set moving on aside for now. These days aren't about a revenge body, finding yourself, downloading Hinge or starting a mysterious new era. Sometimes they're only about getting through the day. The rest of this article is about how to do that.

Is it normal to feel fine one minute and devastated the next?

Yes. You might feel crushed in the morning and oddly okay by lunchtime. Then a song comes on in Tesco and you're crying beside the pasta.

There's no correct way to react to a breakup:

• You might cry constantly, or not at all.
• You might want to tell everyone, or want nobody to know.
• You might feel relieved and heartbroken at exactly the same time.

Try not to pick apart every feeling as it arrives. You're adjusting to a huge change, and your brain needs time to catch up. You're allowed to be all over the place while it does.

Why do I keep replaying the breakup at 2am?

Because your brain wants an explanation, and an explanation feels like control.

It usually goes like this. You reread the messages. You replay the final conversation. You come up with the perfect thing you should have said. You check when they were last online. Then you're somehow on their sister's Instagram, studying a photo from six months ago for clues.

You probably aren't going to solve your heartbreak at 2am. Some questions may never get a satisfying answer at all. You don't need to understand the whole relationship right now. What you need tonight is some sleep.

Should I send my ex that long message?

Not yet.

You know the one. It's in your Notes app. Maybe it's an apology, or everything you wish you'd said, or the final-final-final message explaining exactly how you feel.

Write it. Just don't necessarily send it, especially in the first few days, when everything feels urgent. Very few things need deciding tonight.

Try to leave a gap between feeling something and doing something about it. You can always send the message tomorrow. You can't unsend the eight-paragraph emotional thesis you delivered at 1:14am.

What does looking after yourself actually look like right now?

Make your world very small. This isn't the week to plan your entire future. Ask yourself a few simple questions instead:

• Have you eaten something?
• Have you showered?
• Have you been outside?
• Have you spoken to another person?
• Have you slept?

That's enough. If all you manage today is getting dressed, answering one email, eating dinner and going for a walk with a friend while you tell her the exact story you told her yesterday, that counts as a successful day.

There'll be time for the new you later. For now, look after the current one.

Should I check my ex's Instagram?

It's better not to. You only want to check one thing. Then one thing becomes who liked their latest photo, whether their following count has changed, when they were last online and who that new person is. You almost never find anything that makes you feel better.

Some ways to make it easier:

• If you need to mute them, mute them.
• If you need to remove them, remove them.
• If you need a friend to take your phone away for the evening, hand it over.

That isn't being dramatic. It's making the next few days slightly easier. You don't need live updates from a life you're trying to adjust to not being part of.

How do I lean on friends without feeling like a burden?

You might worry you're being annoying. You probably aren't.

Send the voice note. Go round to your friend's house, or ask someone to come to yours. If you don't want advice, tell them so. Sometimes you just need someone sitting next to you while you say, "I genuinely don't understand how this happened," for the fifteenth time.

And if you don't feel like talking about it, say that too. Good friends don't need you to perform heartbreak correctly.

How long will I feel this bad?

This question tends to show up very early, and nobody can give you an exact answer. What is true is that the way you feel on day two isn't how you'll feel forever.

There will be a morning when they aren't your first thought. A night when you realise you haven't checked their profile all day. A song you can listen to again. A Saturday you genuinely enjoy.

You don't need to believe that yet. Just remember that the first few days are exactly that: the first few days. They aren't your new life.

What don't I need to do yet?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. Right now you don't need to:

• turn the breakup into a lesson
• forgive them
• find closure
• start dating again
• prove you're thriving
• have a five-step plan for becoming the best version of yourself by next Monday

Today can just be sad. Tomorrow might be sad too. Then one day something will make you laugh and you'll realise you forgot to be heartbroken for thirty seconds. Then it'll be five minutes. Then an hour. Slowly, almost annoyingly slowly, life starts filling in the spaces again.

So if you're in those first few days now, stop worrying about getting over them. Eat something. Have a shower. Call your friend. Put your phone down. Get through today.

Tomorrow can wait until it gets here.