Feeling Lost After The Breakup

If you’re feeling lost after a breakup, you’re not alone. Many if not most dumpees feel lost, disoriented, and numb and wonder what the point of their life is. They stress and obsess over their ex because everything they do or don’t do reminds them of their ex and gives or kills hope.

Due to the shock and pain caused by the breakup, they feel stuck in the past and suffer in the present. They can’t avoid dealing with the breakup and the effects the separation has on them. Separation anxiety constantly reminds them that they need their ex to function and be happy and that a life without their ex is not a fulfilling life at all.

As a dumpee, you need to understand that it’s normal to feel lost, anxious, sad, and depressed after the breakup. You’d put time, energy, and love into the relationship, developed a bond and expectations, got attached, and thought the relationship would survive anything.

You had a positive view of the relationship and hoped your ex felt the same way about you. But because you learned that he or she didn’t, your hopes and plans quickly went up in a blaze and hurt you immensely.

You realized that your ex thought and felt differently about you and that you needed to forget the future you had envisioned. The only way you could do that was to ignore your ex’s promises and accept the breakup and the new reality.

Sadly, the breakup hindered you from accomplishing the goals you had set. It forced you to set new goals and find a new purpose in life. Because you weren’t emotionally ready for new goals and purpose the moment occurred, it immediately made you feel lost, confused, and alone.

You didn’t know which direction to go because the path you were always on was the one with your ex on it. Suddenly, that path became unavailable to you and forced you to take a different path. A path that you didn’t want.

Coincidentally, it made you feel stuck.

You couldn’t move forward and you couldn’t move backward (get back with your ex). You simply froze in place and remained in it as doing so felt the safest.

And this is where you’re at now. You’re not ready to move forward because you haven’t processed the past and gotten rid of the desire for your ex’s love and validation. You lack the happy hormones given to you by your ex and wish you could re-experience those hormones.

So if you’re feeling lost after the breakup, know that it’s normal to feel lost because you’re going through the dumpee stages of a breakup. You’re learning about the dynamics of your breakup and slowly accepting the new reality.

When you’ve fully accepted the end of the relationship and your new life, you’ll stop living in the past and look forward to new experiences. That’s when you’ll probably feel relieved, in control of your life, and be ready for a new romantic relationship.

In today’s article, we explain what it means if you’re feeling lost after the breakup. We also give you some tips on how you can handle such feelings better and how long you can expect them to last.

Why are you feeling lost after the breakup?

One of the reasons you’re feeling lost after the breakup is that you lack plans and things to look forward to. Before the breakup, you saw yourself staying with your ex and achieving certain goals with your ex.

Now that you’ve broken up, those goals are gone.

They haven’t been replaced with new ones yet because you haven’t dealt with the breakup and found better things to look forward to. You’re still dealing with shock or denial and wish you could go back in time and prevent the breakup.

By preventing it, you wouldn’t have to suffer so much and find new goals.

People need healthy goals in their lives. They need both short-term and long-term goals because goals give their lives meaning and excitement. Goals don’t need to be anything prizeworthy. They can be something as simple as traveling, having kids, finding a fulfilling job, buying a house, settling down, enjoying retirement, having grandkids, etc.

In the relationship, you had both relationship and personal goals. Your relationship goals were destroyed or delayed due to your ex’s decision to break up. If those goals were super important to you (which would be understandable), you are now forced to think and worry about them.

You wish they didn’t come to an end or that they will still come true with the person of your choice.

Breakups take months and months to get over. The stronger the emotional reliance on the dumper, the longer the dumpee needs to stop thinking of the dumper as a savior and find his or her strength and purpose.

This means that codependence causes the most intense feelings of shock, anxiety, grief, nostalgia, and disorientation. It makes dumpees question their worth as people and partners and obliterates their self-esteem.

If their self-esteem was low even before the breakup, if they have abandonment issues, or if they’re depressed, they suffer even more because the breakup yanks the plateau of security from underneath their feet and makes them fend for themselves.

It puts them in survival mode and forces them to find their own strength and purpose.

If you were emotionally, financially, or in any way, shape, or form dependent on your ex, it will take you longer to recover because you’ll need to sever the unhealthy attachment to your ex and tie a sense of security to yourself.

You’ll basically need to find a way to knock your ex off the pedestal. And you’ll be able to do that by identifying and reducing your reliance on your ex. Although the majority of dumpees see their ex as a divine being for a while, non-codependent dumpees stop doing that easier and quicker.

They need a month or two to fully understand why the breakup happened and what they need to work on. On the other hand, codependent dumpees and dumpees who can’t stop blaming themselves typically need longer. 

They need more time to understand why their ex isn’t a reliable person anymore and learn to fall back in love with themselves. It’s different for every dumpee, of course, but codependents usually need half a year or so to be more independent and self-reliable.

That doesn’t mean they’re over their ex in 6 months but that they improve the codependent aspects of their life and feel confident about at least some parts of their life. Parts such as their looks, finances, and ability to take care of themselves and their kids.

When it comes to getting over their ex, they need over a year (often two) as that’s how long it takes them to understand their worth, improve themselves, and create a self-fulfilling life.

Things such as breakup mistakes and breadcrumbs from the dumper tend to delay dumpees’ healing because they trigger a painful setback.

They make them feel more hurt, depressed, confused, and even lost. 

So if you’re feeling lost after the breakup, know that you’re feeling this way because you had relationship goals and expectations of your ex. Whether those goals and expectations were healthy or unhealthy, the world came crashing down on you when your ex left you and forced you to accept the new reality.

This new reality doesn’t include your ex and the future you’d envisioned. It includes only you, which is half of the life you wanted. The other half (your ex) is missing.

It probably hurts to think or know that your ex isn’t having a hard time moving on. Your ex is likely much more social and active on social media than before. This makes you think your ex is happy and busy because he or she got rid of the burden (you).

What you’re forgetting is that your ex associated negative things with you and began feeling relieved the moment he or she broke up with you. The breakup essentially empowered your ex and gave your ex the motivation to explore new things and say yes to new opportunities.

Since the breakup feels good, your ex is much more likely to do impulsive things. Your ex isn’t thinking things through because your ex thinks life is too short to stand still and do nothing. He or she would rather move forward with life and meet new people.

Unlike you, your ex doesn’t feel stuck. He or she has the momentum to keep moving toward new and exciting things.

That’s one of the effects the breakup has on dumpers. It helps them enjoy life and distracts them from working on themselves and making sure their next relationship doesn’t fail for the same reasons. 

Self-distraction is a benefit in the short term and a hindrance in the long term. I haven’t seen many dumpers who made a lot of changes and improvements. Most of them focused on having fun and left the self-improvement to their ex.

This is why dumpees grow and dumpers don’t. They may tell themselves “I won’t tolerate people like my ex again,” but that doesn’t improve their relationship skills and flaws in general. It just makes them less tolerant of certain behaviors. 

So if you’re wondering why you’re feeling lost after the breakup, bear in mind that it could have something to do with how your ex is treating you and behaving after the breakup.

If your ex is dating someone else, saying mean things about you, ignoring you, and showing no regard for your health and well-being, your ex is partly responsible for the way you feel.

Your ex may not admit it, but that’s how it is.

Since your validation and happiness depend on your ex, you get hurt every time your ex does something that disrespects you and shows you that he or she isn’t coming back. You take your ex’s behavior personally and feel lost and unloved.

You can expect such feelings to last for as long as you ignore the rules of no contact, feel attached to your ex, and think highly of your ex.

You’re also feeling lost after the breakup because you got used to being with your ex and built daily routines. Now that these routines are gone, you feel empty and different. You feel like a part of your life is missing and that you need to regain it to feel better.

The breakup essentially made you lose your identity and forced you to find a new one. But because you can’t figure out who you are and who you want to be, you feel incomplete as an individual.

There are only two ways you can feel complete.

1. Get back together with your ex and obtain your purpose and identity with his or her help.
2. Or engage in hobbies and productive activities that interest you, learn to rely on yourself, and get over your ex.

Both solutions work. But if you want to get the most out of your breakup and stand on your own two feet, I suggest you work on your internal happiness (happiness without your ex). When you’re happy with just yourself, you’ll know exactly who you are and what you’re capable of.

That’s when you’ll stop feeling lost and stop caring about what your ex is thinking, feeling, and doing.

With that said, here’s why you’re feeling lost after the breakup.

How to stop feeling lost after the breakup? 

Believe it or not, the breakup is a great opportunity for you to improve your flaws and find yourself. You’ll never get a better opportunity to reflect on your mistakes and behavior and make changes to them.

If pain, rejection, and uncertainty don’t motivate you to be the best version of yourself, nothing will. Not even a death in the family.

To not feel lost anymore, you have to tell yourself that your ex’s post-breakup life doesn’t concern you and that you must find a drive to invest in yourself. You have to feel this drive by understanding that your ex is going through the breakup stages for the dumper and that he or she will appear unrecognizable for a while.

Your ex will go out more, do new things, meet new people, and be someone you aren’t used to. That won’t mean your ex has grown but quite the opposite. It will mean your ex is focusing on instant gratification and that you shouldn’t be envying your ex.

Whenever you get anxious because your ex is happy while you’re suffering, remind yourself that your ex feels relieved after the breakup and that it’s normal. Your ex can’t be depressed after the breakup unless his or her reason for leaving was depression or something similar.

You should expect your ex to look happy and busy while you feel lost, anxious, and unloved. It’s how breakups work. Dumpees suffer while dumpers drink/party and explore their new lives.

Dumpees and dumpers usually swap places when dumpers get in trouble and realize their life didn’t get any better. That’s when dumpees are often already healed and don’t want anything to do with dumpers anymore.

Anyway, you have to remember that a breakup isn’t a competition. You’ll never win the happiness race in the short run because your ex is on cloud nine and can’t be beaten. You can beat him or her only in the long run.

But by the time you do, you probably won’t need his or her validation anymore and won’t care. You’ll find your purpose and source of happiness elsewhere.

To stop feeling lost after the breakup, spend a few hours a day with your friends and family. Be social and lean on them for support. They’ll be the support system you need to do your daily tasks and see that life gets better.

Feel free to seek professional help as well. A mental help expert could get to the root cause of your pain and confusion and help you navigate through the breakup. You might learn important things about yourself and the reasons you said or did certain things.

Don’t underestimate the power of therapy and the things you can do yourself to feel less lost. Many dumpees find exercising and journaling extremely helpful. They learn that they feel much better when they exercise their body and mind.

Although relaxation techniques don’t heal them right away, they do help them in the moment when anxiety and confusion hit.

The breakup will take some time to recover from because you’ll need to replace your ex with healthier habits and routines. Make sure to persevere through ups and downs and remain patient. One day, you’ll realize that you haven’t felt lost in a while and that you found happiness in other things and people.

Are you feeling lost after the breakup? Why do you feel that way? Share your reasons for feeling lost or hurt in the comments below.

And if you’d like to talk privately, sign up for private coaching and get in touch.