Awkward conversations, forced smiles and avoidance – these things became integrated into my daily routine after my breakup.
When I met my now-ex-boyfriend my freshman year of college, I was ecstatic at how quickly and easily my ideal relationship seemed to fall right into my lap. We bonded over most things and joked about whatever we didn’t: He teased me over the fact that I didn’t watch movies, and I made fun of him for disliking coffee.
Over time, he became a well-integrated member of my friend group, as I tend to bring together those I consider most important in my life. Even though I built my first two years of college on a foundation with this person in mind, I thought the rest of my social life – friends, clubs – was well-rounded and stable.
Turns out, it was anything but.
Regardless, we both knew we weren’t as compatible as we’d originally thought, so we had a candid talk and, in the end, our relationship ended amicably.
When we eventually broke up, I was hit hard – as most young people are when having their rosy aspirations circulate down the drain. I couldn’t find a compelling reason to grab coffee or go on a hike with my friends. It was difficult to put on makeup in the morning or interact normally with others because I didn’t feel like myself. I cycled through every emotion possible – I was upset, I was angry, I was even relieved for a period of time.
Under the surface, this earthquake of a breakup left aftershocks in its wake, taking out my most cherished lines of communication in their path.
The breakup disrupted every significant relationship I had – and I didn’t know why.
When I relayed the breakup to my mom, I was met with an awkward silence that complemented the crackling on the other end of the line.
“Well,” she paused. I could picture her forehead lines deepening; I heard her feet shuffle rhythmically as she paced around the kitchen. “I’m sorry about that.”
My mom was at a complete loss for words, and I couldn’t blame her. At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed and frustrated when I’d thought I could come to my mom for anything.
But really, struggling with an appropriate response isn’t uncommon when dealing with emotional distress, said Dr. Benjamin Karney, a social psychology professor at UCLA.
“With emotional pain, a lot of times there isn’t a solution – there isn’t really advice you can give,” Karney said. “Sometimes the helper misunderstands what it is a person in need actually needs. Sometimes we want advice, other times we just want to be heard, we want to be seen.”
I couldn’t fill the empty pockets of silence left by the absence of the times I’d spent telling my mom stories about my relationship. Our conversations weren’t sustainable anymore, largely because neither of us knew how to act toward the other.
Sitting down for dinner one night a few weeks after the breakup, we rushed through surface level conversation about what I was doing in my classes and how nice the weather in Los Angeles is compared to my hometown in hopes of moving on to more scintillating conversation.
It was no use. Neither of us knew how to transition to deeper conversation when I’d grown tired of explaining the source of my sadness, only to make my mom feel uncomfortable in the silence that ensued.
So we drifted apart, slowly, because all we knew now was small talk. We couldn’t follow the same conversational flow and talk for hours like we used to, so we distanced ourselves. Weeks would pass without more than a few words exchanged, and I’d never felt so disconnected. Someone I heavily relied on for emotional support was no longer available in the same way, like they were when I was still in a romantic relationship.
Though it was easier to dismiss the relationship between my mom and me as a temporary rift that would eventually mend itself with some breathing room, the emotional distance felt more painfully obvious between my closest friends and me. These distances scared me the most because those relationships were the most transient and susceptible to breakage.
I noticed when my roommates would generate excuses like clockwork for staying outside our room. Whenever I’d enter, they’d fall silent, and the quiet felt increasingly oppressive until they eventually muttered an excuse for studying somewhere else or leaving for an errand. Conversations often switched from light-hearted banter to hesitant questions about how I was doing. They were uncomfortable, like my mom.
My palms would sweat and trigger an endless stream of doubts: “What should I say? Why aren’t they talking?” I felt like a stranger in my room, a million times removed from people I call my best friends. I was afraid to return to the familiar subject of my breakup time and time again at risk of being an emotional burden.
When I explained my situation to Thomas Bradbury, a psychology professor at UCLA who studies relationship science, he said there is often a large disconnect between how your friends feel like they can help you when they’re unsure about why the relationship ended.
“We’re in the midst of struggling with very complicated things, like, ‘Why did this go wrong? What happened? Is there something wrong with me? Did I do something wrong?’ And there often are not really simple answers to that,” Bradbury said. “If a friend doesn’t know what happened, it’s hard for them to help you when you’re undergoing hardship.”
I wasn’t being fully honest with my friends because I was scared for my vulnerability to be met with silence and tension. It felt safer to guard my feelings rather than expose them to my friends who wouldn’t know how to respond. In turn, they weren’t sure how to breach the subject of my breakup to begin with. The disconnect in communication put us in very awkward limbo, but brought some comic relief when our words danced around one another whenever we’d try to start a conversation.
Similarly, I often had difficulty communicating to my friends that I needed them to be there for me.
I was so self-conscious about inadvertently directing the conversation back to my sadness that I ended up bottling up my feelings and not being honest about what I really needed from my friends. Whenever we’d go out to eat or do homework together, I would engage in lighthearted conversation like nothing was wrong because I assumed that everyone was tired of the exhausted subject.
I felt like I didn’t have an adequate way to release my feelings, which compounded anxiety and left me feeling more isolated than ever before.
Maybe my friends couldn’t relate to me because I wasn’t straightforward enough about needing emotional support, according to Giovanni Rossi, an assistant professor in UCLA’s sociology department.
Rossi said we’re not always clear enough. He said requesting help and offering help are very different interactions, and because of this, we’re not always explicit in our requests for help.
I struggled with stating outright that I needed my friends to be there for me and listen attentively to my grievances. I didn’t want to appear needy or admit that I was having trouble recuperating and moving on because I was terrified of displaying weakness.
And most surprisingly, as I’d suspected my friends were having a hard time speaking with me because they couldn’t understand me, they were likely also worried about a similar resurgence of distress.
I’m not the only one who has experienced heartbreak – I’ve sat at the edge of the bed while one of my closest friends wailed for hours on end, her cries echoing off the hallway and ringing painfully loud in the ears of whoever was around.
“We use our own experience to empathize – it has the potential cost of bringing back suffering that might not have been completely processed. It might have cascading and unwanted collateral effects,” Rossi said.
One of the issues, though, was that I didn’t know how to escape my anguish. Even when I left my room, the problem chased me. The sense of anonymity I thought I felt came back to me like a curse with a vengeance – I felt like everywhere I turned, I locked eyes with a person who transported me back to specific moments in time that I was trying to forget.
When I’d run into someone connected to my past around campus, our eye contact would linger for a few seconds too long as we evaluated the socially acceptable way to acknowledge each other. Oftentimes, the person would look away like they didn’t notice; other times, they’d force a half-smile and avert their gaze. A specific moment in time – studying, grabbing lunch – would surge back into my memory like a 30-foot wave. Every period of reminiscing led to days of dwelling and the inability to forget, no matter how much I tried to distract myself.
My momentary lack of confidence led me to question how well I’d be received if I attempted to reach out – and it seemed clear to me that with the averted gazes and faint smiles, the others felt the same way, too.
According to Karney, these uncomfortable social situations arise because one of the biggest problems after a breakup is people in your life having to choose a side.
“When people are in an intimate relationship, a lot of times they share their social network; they share their friends and the other relationships in their life with their partner,” Karney said. “If you break up with somebody, that breakup affects other people you were in a relationship with as well because they have to decide how to treat the two of you.”
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One afternoon, one of my closest friends and I decided to go into Westwood Village to catch up over dinner. I wasn’t feeling very good about myself that day; my frustration concerning my lack of progress in recovering from my breakup months later still brought my mood down. I could tell my face reflected my dejected emotions thanks to my friend’s uncomfortable shifting in her seat and occasional glance down at her plate.
I was staring intently at my bowl of shiny tomato soup when my friend let out a faint sigh. She opened her mouth, closed it as she turned thoughts around in her head and abruptly said, “I want to see you be more powerful.”
I was so caught up in anticipating that those around me would be sympathetic that I wasn’t prepared for the bout of tough love. Red rushed to my cheeks and I remained mute, embarrassed that I once again couldn’t stow away my feelings at the expense of someone I deeply cared about.
The rest of the meal was awkward, as I wasn’t sure how to humble myself by admitting that she had a right to be frustrated. I wasn’t alone in my feelings of detachment – the emotional distance was aggravating those close to me, too.
In order for me to fully appreciate my relationships again, I first had to grapple with accepting myself for the person I was. I felt insecure and less worthy of future relationships, so I had to have a real heart-to-heart – with myself.
My realization in that moment was twofold: I wasn’t upholding my end of the bargain with the relationships I perceived to be floundering, and it was ludicrous to expect that everyone would cater to my feelings during my time of sadness.
I was constantly at war with the idea that I knew my situation wasn’t unique or special. Relatable, yes, and almost everybody goes through a similar scenario in life and it isn’t any less valid nor emotionally demanding. I needed to work on actively bridging the gap with others instead of waiting for them to tend to my feelings.
Accepting myself bloomed at odd intervals throughout the journey. It started with angrily sitting in the piercer’s chair and waiting for the needle to puncture my ear in retaliation for feeling hurt. It’s the most cliche trick in the book, but cutting my hair rang in the fresh change I wanted to see in my life. Altering my physical appearance in subtle ways provided a small enough distraction to catalyze accepting my current situation for what it was and that it was perfectly okay.
Every morning, the oppressive feeling of heartbreak was the first emotion I’d feel each day when I sat up in bed. I still go throughout my day combating feelings of anger and sadness – whether I’m walking to Kerckhoff or taking notes in class, my mind always wanders back to the broken relationship, even though it happened many months ago.
“Time heals all wounds” – whenever I heard that saying after my breakup, I’d roll my eyes and reminisce on feelings of fresh hurt, such as curling up under the covers and avoiding homework for days, that persisted long after the breakup was over.
In reality, though, it’s miraculous how tenacious we can be when we have time on our side.
As students, we still have so much life to live, and it’s important to keep focusing on exciting prospects for the future. Life doesn’t slow down, and the weight of the severed ties perhaps becomes the second, the third or the fourth thing you think about each day instead of the first when you have plans in motion. Though it still occupies a space in my mind, that space becomes smaller every day, making room for the people who have stuck with me through it all.
“Give yourself time to feel whatever feelings you need to feel – no one expects you to bounce back from a breakup immediately,” Karney said. “You have people that you care about – the period after a breakup is a chance to reconnect with those people.”
And reconnecting was something I had to pull myself together enough to do. I had to swallow my pride and understand that my actions toward everyone I knew affected them more than I’d previously considered.
One afternoon, I stared at my phone, waiting for feedback after I’d offered to do something fun with my roommates for the first time since the breakup. I was worried that I’d become so far removed they would brush off the offer, wondering why I was just now deciding to reach out. I texted my mom, asking if we could talk about what really happened when the relationship came to an end: I had to be completely open and honest if there was any chance for me to start feeling better and therefore treating others better.
After a while, messages between my friends and me detailing plans in the works popped up on my screen. My mom and I agreed to set aside time to have a much-needed, cathartic discussion. I exhaled a sigh of relief, tears instantly clouding my vision.
The people in my life who I’d momentarily lost sight of were still there. After looking past my personal heartbreak and realizing how important it was to have people on my side, I was finally able to dig through the rubble and uncover pieces – relationships – that demanded salvaging.
The unfamiliarity of faces as I meander past clusters of students daily is something I’ve found immense comfort in throughout my three years at UCLA. I can rest easily knowing that there’s lots of potential for many new relationships and social and emotional growth.
I can still walk around without seeing a familiar face, but my social networks have grown; they’ve become intricate and intertwined. Even in a crowd where I don’t recognize anyone, I think back to my friends and family and all the people who make me more connected than I realize.
Many people will leave us throughout our lifetimes, but we overlook the fact that oftentimes, the most important ones remain. It’s okay to detach and drift away – as long as you find yourself back with the people who matter most to you.