BREAKUPS are rough. 

We want to believe that we’re going to be with the people we’re dating forever. The sad truth is, only a handful make it till the end. 

A breakup is a natural part of life and a risk you must take any time you enter a relationship but knowing ahead that it might come doesn’t make it hurt any less.

After a breakup, it’s normal to want to get back with your partner. It’s what’s familiar to you, and you’ve grown comfortable in this space, no matter how chaotic the relationship may have been. 

A year or two ago, I was staying in a house I’d lived in all my life. I grew up here. I made memories here. I had drawings etched onto the tables, and marker scribbles under layers of paint. My room was painted a color I’d chosen, and there were posters on the wall covering the holes I’d made. That place was my home, one I thought I’d live in forever. 

During the pandemic, we were forced to leave that home, with absolutely zero say in the matter. To me, that is what breaking up feels like—like having the rug pulled out from under you while you are expected to get up in two seconds flat. 

If you’re going through a breakup or thinking of breaking up with your partner, know that at the end of the day, only you can make that decision. All I can offer is advice to help push you in the right direction.

1. A good support system is a must.

I know that it’s inevitable to want to go back, to lie down in your bed even if the house were burning, simply because it’s your bed and you can’t imagine finding a mattress that knows the curves of your body as well as this one, no matter how charred it might be. 

But if you keep going back to something that you know will hurt you, you will only realize years later just how much of yourself you have lost. You have singed your hair off, nerves exposed so that even the slightest of brushes to your skin engulf you in pain. 

You can’t keep returning to what you know will hurt you because nothing will change. No matter how hard it may be, you must get through the hard parts, even if it feels as if no good will come from all this suffering.

This is why having a support system – your closest friends, family members, literally anyone – is an important step toward letting go. If you keep all your problems to yourself, or if you prefer to deal with the breakup on your own rather than opening up to others about your problems, there will be no one to hold you accountable for the promises that you make: that you’re finally going to leave, that you’re finally going to do what is right for you.

You might think that telling yourself you’re going to do it is enough. But you’re also the one who decided to stay despite all the ways your partner has wronged you. Do you really believe that relying only on yourself is going to work? 

In my experience, telling others (even just one person) helped me to let go. It’s what led me to realize just how much I’d tolerated, how much I’d lost myself along the way. 

Tell your friends. Tell them everything if you must. Make sure that they’re going to eliminate any chance of you going back. Keeping it all to yourself is only going to drive you crazy.

2. Praying for their downfall isn’t the way to cope. 

In any breakup, especially one that ended badly, you’re going to find yourself wishing ill of your partner: that they never find anyone else, or that they’re just as miserable as you are. 

If you hear news about them thriving or finding love while you’re still moving on, it’s going to hurt. It would make you feel like you’re going insane. It would make you want them to suffer even more.

At the same time, you might find yourself posting on social media just to show them that you’re doing so much better now that they’re out of your life. That “kaya ko ‘to” mindset – “kaya ko ‘to kahit wala ka.”

It’s understandable to feel hurt and to want them to feel the same. But focusing solely on that or looking at your breakup as a game where someone loses and another wins, is only going to make it harder to move on. 

As a wise friend once told me, the karma that they will receive will be the void they will spend the rest of their life filling, given that you are no longer in it. There’s nothing you can do that the universe won’t do for you when the time comes. 

There’s no shame in craving for the satisfaction of seeing them in pain or even in them groveling, begging to take you back, but know that constantly praying for them to fail – for them to be in pain – will only drain you more. 

It may be a while before you finally make peace with this fact, that no matter the promises they made, you will still find yourself looking for them in everything. There is so much more to life than measuring your progress or by validating yourself solely through the pain that another person feels. 

If I were to give advice on dealing with this, it would be to block them from everything. If you truly wish to move on, you won’t allow them to weasel their way in again, no matter how tempting it might be.

3. The progress you make is yours and yours alone.

There will always be good days and bad days when dealing with breakup or just about any problem.

You might find yourself thinking that you’ve finally moved on, only to view heir Instagram story days later. 

You might see a TikTok on your FYP and feel the urge to send it to them because you know they’d laugh upon watching it. 

You might feel an ache in your chest as you go through your Recently Deleted, staring at photos of the two of you that you claimed you’d thrown to the bin as soon as you broke up.

In these moments, you might think, “Damn it. I was doing so well. Now I have to start all over again,” but that is not the case. In dealing with something as painful as this, progress isn’t linear. You don’t have to be okay all the time. 

It’s easy to tell someone going through a breakup that the situation will improve or that they’re better off cutting this person out of their lives or that they’ve already caused so much hurt that it’s best to get out while you still can.

Love doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t come with a switch that you can just turn off when it all starts to feel like too much. 

As painful this piece of advice is, all you can do is allow yourself to feel it: all the good, all the bad. One day – whether it takes days or weeks or months or years from now – it will all start to fade, bit by bit, as long as you remember to take everything one day at a time.

You are human. You are in pain. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with you, I promise you.