u/lastperhaps404

I don't even know where to start.

I moved to a new city almost a year ago for my master's. I genuinely thought moving out would make me grow as a person. Instead, I feel like I've become someone I don't even recognise.

I live alone now. I don't really have close friends, just classmates w whom I dont feel connected to. There are times my mind keep replaying my breakup/ memories w my ex over and over again.

The worst part is that whenever something good/bad happens in life, my brain immediately wants to run back to my ex.

It's almost like my nervous system still thinks he's "home," even though logically I know he isn't.

Recently something happened in my family, and I completely panicked. My first instinct wasn't to call a friend or my parents. It was, I just want to tell him.

And I hate that.

Because I also remember the reality.

Our relationship wasn't purely healthy. There were constant breakups, ghosting, blocking, mixed signals, and I never really felt emotionally safe. Even while we were together, I remember asking him once if he'd be there for me during an emergency, and his answer wasn't exactly reassuring.

So why is my brain still reaching for the one person who probably wouldn't be there when I actually needed him?

I think living alone has made everything worse. When you're by yourself all day, every thought gets louder. Every fear gets louder. Some nights I genuinely don't know who to call, so my mind just goes back to the person who used to be my comfort, even if he also became the source of a lot of my pain.

I know people will probably say, "Don't text him."

Logically, I know that too.

But how do you stop your body from craving someone who no longer wants to be there for you?

Has anyone else experienced this after moving away, living alone, or going through a difficult breakup? How did you stop your brain from treating your ex like your emergency contact when they clearly aren't anymore?

I shifted to a new city thinking my life would finally get better. I thought I’d meet new people, become more independent, move on from my breakup, maybe finally feel excited about life again. Instead, I somehow feel more lonely than I ever have.

I live alone. I cook for myself even though I barely know how to cook. Some days I just order because my appetite has been dead for months. My breakup happened a year ago and I still haven’t been able to move on. He wasn’t even that great to me for a major part of the relationship but I just can’t get him out of my head. Other guys have approached me and tried talking to me but I don’t even feel like giving anyone a chance. It almost feels like I’m saving myself for someone who isn’t even here anymore.

I was doing an internship for the last month but all the interns got removed because of some internal issues. So now I don’t even have that. My classes don’t start for another few months and I suddenly have no routine, no purpose, nothing to wake up for. I haven’t told my parents because I know they’ll either ask me to come back home or create unnecessary drama around it.

The last two weeks I’ve literally just been sitting in my room. I kept telling myself I’d read books, write more, explore the city, cook properly, do all the things I never had time for. Instead I just scroll on my phone for hours. My whole body hurts, I have headaches all the time and I realised I haven’t had proper human interaction in days.

I have classmates and acquaintances but nobody I actually feel close to. I talk to my friends on call but everyone has their own lives and eventually the call ends. Whenever someone is around me or I’m talking to someone, I feel okay for a while. The moment the silence comes back, I feel like I’m crashing again.

I even tried reading the Bhagavad Gita because I thought maybe I’d find some meaning in all this, but honestly I just feel lost. I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore.

I don’t want to text my ex just because
I’m lonely. I don’t want loneliness to be the only reason I keep going back mentally. I just don’t know how people build a life from scratch in a city where everything feels unfamiliar and every day feels exactly the same.

I don’t even know what I’m asking for here. I think I just wanted to tell someone because keeping all of this inside my room every day is starting to feel unbearable.

I shifted to a new city thinking my life would finally get better. I thought I’d meet new people, become more independent, move on from my breakup, maybe finally feel excited about life again. Instead, I somehow feel more lonely than I ever have.

I live alone. I cook for myself even though I barely know how to cook. Some days I just order because my appetite has been dead for months. My breakup happened a year ago and I still haven’t been able to move on. He wasn’t even that great to me for a major part of the relationship but I just can’t get him out of my head. Other guys have approached me and tried talking to me but I don’t even feel like giving anyone a chance. It almost feels like I’m saving myself for someone who isn’t even here anymore.

I was doing an internship for the last month but all the interns got removed because of some internal issues. So now I don’t even have that. My classes don’t start for another few months and I suddenly have no routine, no purpose, nothing to wake up for. I haven’t told my parents because I know they’ll either ask me to come back home or create unnecessary drama around it.

The last two weeks I’ve literally just been sitting in my room. I kept telling myself I’d read books, write more, explore the city, cook properly, do all the things I never had time for. Instead I just scroll on my phone for hours. My whole body hurts, I have headaches all the time and I realised I haven’t had proper human interaction in days.

I have classmates and acquaintances but nobody I actually feel close to. I talk to my friends on call but everyone has their own lives and eventually the call ends. Whenever someone is around me or I’m talking to someone, I feel okay for a while. The moment the silence comes back, I feel like I’m crashing again.

I even tried reading the Bhagavad Gita because I thought maybe I’d find some meaning in all this, but honestly I just feel lost. I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore.

I don’t want to text my ex just because
I’m lonely. I don’t want loneliness to be the only reason I keep going back mentally. I just don’t know how people build a life from scratch in a city where everything feels unfamiliar and every day feels exactly the same.

I don’t even know what I’m asking for here. I think I just wanted to tell someone because keeping all of this inside my room every day is starting to feel unbearable.

It’s been over a year since my breakup and I genuinely don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.

I’ve moved to a different city. I’ve met new people. I’ve tried therapy. I’ve picked up hobbies. I’ve made friends. I’ve had other men show interest in me. I’ve deleted social media. I’ve done almost everything people tell you to do after a breakup.

And yet every morning when I wake up and every night before I sleep, I find myself missing my ex.

The worst part is that he didn’t even treat me that well. If someone looked at the relationship from the outside, they would probably wonder why I’m still so attached. That’s what confuses me too. Do I miss him? Do I miss the few moments when he was kind? Do I miss the chaos and emotional intensity? Do I miss feeling chosen by someone, even if it wasn’t consistent?

I honestly don’t know anymore.

Sometimes it feels like I’m saving myself for some imaginary future where we’ll meet again in another lifetime or somehow find our way back to each other. I know how irrational that sounds, but that’s genuinely how it feels.

I’m 27. In my culture, this is the age where everyone seems to be getting married, getting engaged, planning proposals, having rokas, talking about children. Meanwhile, I feel emotionally frozen in time.

My friends are kind, but I don’t think they understand anymore. When I bring it up, it’s almost become a joke because I’ve been stuck in the same loop for so long. My parents keep asking about marriage and sometimes make comments that leave me feeling even worse about myself.

Lately I’ve started feeling disconnected from almost everything. From my friends. From this city. From dating. From social media. From the idea of starting over with someone new.

Dating apps feel exhausting. Meeting new people feels forced. Even when I try, it feels like I’m just wasting time and I’d rather be alone in a room than with them

At times I feel I don’t really matter to the people in my life as much as they matter to me. I think about old friendships, relationships, people I’ve loved, and I keep coming back to the same feeling of being replaceable.

I know this probably sounds dramatic, but life has started feeling strangely empty and meaningless. Not because I want my ex back specifically, but because losing him seems to have broken something much bigger inside me like my will to live, my ability to trust, connect, and look forward to the future.

Has anyone else been stuck for this long after a breakup? How did you finally let go? Because rn all I think of is giving up

I compensate for crying over you
by imagining being around you.

apparently,
there’s a textbook term for it
maladaptive daydreaming.

as if reducing you
to a clinical phrase
could make my body
miss you less.

so instead
I replay the smallest things.

when I used to kiss
the tip of your big nose
because it always carried anger,

and the way you’d kiss
all over my face
until I felt unbearably loved.

the way I’d slide my hand
against your skin just to annoy you,
tickling you into that shy laugh
you tried so hard to hide.

dammit,
you looked like
the softest person alive
in those moments.

if only
I could still watch
your smile appear slowly
beneath those beautiful eyes
one more time.

so now I compensate

through imagined versions of us,
through memories replayed
until they blur into dreams,
through conversations
that only exist inside my head.

and maybe that’s all this is
grief rehearsing intimacy
to survive itself.

a private ritual
where memory becomes
emotional compensation.

/ ws.

This is something I’ve been confused about for a while.
Whenever I’m happy, content, busy with life, meeting people, reading books, or just existing peacefully, I barely feel the urge to write. I can go days without opening my journal. But the moment something hurts me, even a little, I suddenly want to write for hours.
Not just write, but research everything. Psychology, philosophy, relationships, attachment styles, literature, human behaviour, random academic papers, old novels—anything that might help me understand what I’m feeling. It’s like my brain becomes obsessed with making sense of things.
The strange part is that I genuinely think my writing becomes better when I’m sad. Sometimes I’ll go back and read something I wrote during a painful period and wonder where those thoughts even came from. The writing feels deeper, more honest, more alive somehow.
I don’t enjoy being sad and I definitely don’t romanticise suffering, but I can’t ignore the pattern. When life is good, I want to live it. When life hurts, I want to understand it.
Does this happen to anyone else? Why does pain create so much motivation to think, read, analyse and write, while happiness makes me want to put the pen down completely?
I’m genuinely curious about the psychology behind it.

I really need some advice and comfort from people who understand what it is like to live completely by themselves.

A little while ago, I moved to a new city entirely on my own. Before this move, I was in a relationship for two years. It was a very intense, confusing connection, and I loved him with everything I had. But the moment I shifted cities, everything broke down. He completely left me, and the way things ended left me questioning my own reality, my intelligence, and my sanity. It was an incredibly painful emotional shock.

Now, I am living completely alone in this new city, and it feels like I have entirely isolated myself. I am finding it so hard to make new friends here. Everyone seems to already have their own groups, and the loneliness can get incredibly heavy, especially at night.

To make things harder, I have a hybrid job. On the days I work from home, the quiet in my apartment becomes too loud. When I am stuck inside these four walls by myself, my mind starts racing. It takes me back to dark memories of the breakup, making me overthink everything that happened, and it creates a lot of anxiety and fear about being alone. My sleep schedule is completely broken right now, and I find myself awake until the early morning hours because my brain refuses to shut down and feel safe.

I want to get over those two years of manipulation and heartbreak. I want to build a real, safe life for myself here, but right now, the isolation feels like a mountain I can’t climb.

How do you guys handle the heavy quiet of living alone after a bad breakup? How do you stop your mind from going to dark places when working from home and being all by yourself? And how do you start making friends (real connections and not performative, forced friendships) in a brand new city when you feel this drained?

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I feel like people here might understand where I'm coming from.

I'm 27F. My last serious relationship was with my ex (29M), and we were together for about 3 years before I found out he had been unfaithful. The breakup was painful, but what has stayed with me even longer is the damage it did to my ability to trust.

Recently I watched Haq, and it unexpectedly hit a nerve. Combined with everything I've been carrying since the breakup, it sent me into a spiral about love, commitment, and whether the kind of relationship I want is even realistic anymore.

I keep asking myself do people actually love someone deeply and choose them every day because they genuinely want to?

Not because they're obligated to. Not because they're afraid of being alone. Not because they don't have other options.

I know being in a relationship doesn't make you blind. I know people can still find others attractive. That's not what I'm struggling with.

What I'm struggling with is the feeling that everywhere I look, I see stories of cheating, emotional affairs, people keeping backup options, seeking validation from others, or constantly wondering if there's someone better out there.

Sometimes it feels like loyalty has become rare.

I've also been reading Sapiens, and while I know it doesn't directly argue against monogamy, some of the discussions about human behaviour and relationships left me feeling even more cynical. It made me wonder whether people are actually capable of being content choosing one person long-term, or whether we're all just fighting against our nature.

I hate that I've become this sceptical.

Before my breakup, I believed that if you truly loved someone, you protected the relationship. You chose them, even when life got boring or difficult. Now I find myself questioning everything.

Maybe my trust is just broken.

Maybe I'm focusing too much on negative stories because that's what people tend to share online.

Maybe healthy, loyal relationships are simply quieter than the dysfunctional ones.

But right now, I genuinely don't know.

For those of you who have healed from being cheated on, did you ever get your faith in love back?

Have you met people who are genuinely loyal because they want to be?

Do relationships exist where both people are deeply in love, faithful, and happy choosing each other year after year?

I guess I'm looking for hope, but I also want honesty.

Because after this breakup, I'm struggling to tell the difference between being realistic and becoming cynical.

I rewatched Rockstar recently, and this time I found myself looking at it very differently.

I know it’s a fictional story, and I understand that the film is trying to portray obsession, longing, and a love that consumes people. I also genuinely love the movie. But after experiencing infidelity in my own life, I couldn’t stop thinking about Heer’s husband.

One thing I rarely see discussed is how little the film seems to care about his perspective. The audience is encouraged to root for Jordan and Heer, while the husband is mostly treated as an obstacle rather than a person whose marriage is being repeatedly violated.

Do you think the film romanticises infidelity in the name of obsession and “true love”? Or do you think that’s intentional that we’re meant to see Jordan and Heer as flawed, selfish people whose choices hurt others?

I’m curious whether your perspective on the movie changed as you got older or after having different life experiences. Has anyone else rewatched *Rockstar* and found themselves sympathizing with the husband more than they did the first time?

Would love to hear different interpretations.

I rewatched Rockstar recently, and this time I found myself looking at it very differently.

I know it’s a fictional story, and I understand that the film is trying to portray obsession, longing, and a love that consumes people. I also genuinely love the movie. But after experiencing infidelity in my own life, I couldn’t stop thinking about Heer’s husband.

One thing I rarely see discussed is how little the film seems to care about his perspective. The audience is encouraged to root for Jordan and Heer, while the husband is mostly treated as an obstacle rather than a person whose marriage is being repeatedly violated.

Do you think the film romanticises infidelity in the name of obsession and “true love”? Or do you think that’s intentional that we’re meant to see Jordan and Heer as flawed, selfish people whose choices hurt others?

I’m curious whether your perspective on the movie changed as you got older or as you had different life experiences. Has anyone else rewatched Rockstar and found themselves sympathising more with the husband than the first time?

Would love to hear different interpretations.

Please be respectful. I am here for 10 days