This Is What It’s Like To Be Single Again After Ending A Long Relationship

You aren’t sure what to do with all of your free time. You used to complain about how you didn’t have enough hours in the day to get your work done, to catch up with friends, to catch up on sleep, and to see your person.

But now, it feels like you have all the time in the world. Too much time. You don’t know what to do with all of it.

You try your best to keep busy, because if you’re stagnant for too long, your mind wanders. Your memories torture you. You’re reminded of your heartache.

So you call up friends you haven’t heard from in a while. Friends that will probably accuse you of being a bad person for neglecting them when you were in a relationship and wanting to meet up the second that you’re single again.

You don’t want to be annoying, to text them too much and keep begging them to hang out, so you find ways to pass the time alone.

Maybe you drink. Maybe you work overtime. Maybe you never stop stealing snacks from the fridge. Either way, you indulge in something, because you used to indulge in love and now it’s gone. Now you’re lost. You don’t know what to do.

You sign up for dating sites because that seems like a logical step — and they raise your confidence for a minute or two. You get excited as you swipe through faces, see all of your possibilities. All of the choices, all of the futures.

And then you actually start talking to those possibilities and realize you don’t connect the way you hoped you would. No one makes you feel like your ex. No one makes you as happy as your ex.

The more you explore your options, the more you miss what you used to have. You don’t want first dates and first kisses. You want boring nights on the couch in your pajamas, talking about what your wedding would be like.

You wish you could see your ex’s face again, so you do the next best thing. You stalk their social media and look too far into things. Someone good looking liked their status — that’s all they did, they liked it — but you wonder if your ex got butterflies when they saw the name, if that’s the person that’s going to replace you.

Instead of daydreaming about going on a date yourself, you fantasize about your ex going on a date. About them having a first kiss. About them having sex again. About them being blissfully happy while you’re still miserable.

Now you want to talk to them, to see how they’re doing without you, so you write out a text. Maybe you delete it or maybe you press send and immediately regret it. Either way, it feels like a mistake. It feels like you already suck at being single.

You miss your old relationship. You miss having someone to text during your lunch break. You miss having someone to cuddle while you sleep. You miss having someone to miss.

You know you’ll eventually move on and embrace the future, but it feels like that’s going to take a lifetime to happen. It feels like the pain will last forever.