Grieving A Relationship That Never Was

A relationship that never was can be just as difficult to grieve and get over as any other relationship. It can make you think about the dumper obsessively and force you to experience painful separation anxiety and emotional setbacks.

If your relationship ends during the peak (the infatuation period), the breakup can also shock you, confuse you, and make you crave the relationship’s highs.

In a short-term relationship, the highs comprise the majority of the relationship, so it’s difficult not to miss them. You get addicted to them and feel determined to do anything to experience more of them.

This happens because the relationship hasn’t experienced many problems that you can focus on and blame for the end of the relationship.

You have to consider other factors that ended the relationship. Factors such as your ex’s poor mentality, cheating, emotional unavailability, the grass is greener syndrome, etc.

Technically, I shouldn’t refer to someone you were almost in a relationship with as an ex, but doing so makes things easier, so let’s just stick with it.

It won’t be easy to find rational explanations for the breakup when emotions run high and tell you what a great person your ex is, but know that it will get easier with time.

As you detach, you’ll start to realize that your ex wasn’t as perfect as you’d thought and that something was wrong with the relationship. For some reason, the relationship couldn’t get stronger. It kept encountering obstacles and failed when hormones waned and demanded that work be put into the relationship.

You see, a new relationship doesn’t need much work and commitment. It practically maintains itself. But when a couple gets used to each other and stops feeling validated and empowered, they start to notice each other’s flaws and weaknesses.

They start to think negatively and feel negative emotions. That’s when they express themselves and act in ways that may not be the best for the relationship. 

The truth is that a couple doesn’t reach the end of the infatuation phase at the same time. Someone always gets to the end of the phase quicker. Normally, it’s the person with baggage, stress, doubts, fears, depression, and an unhealthy relationship mentality as that person thinks about his or her problems and feels held back by them.

If his or her problems don’t get resolved soon (and they usually don’t), a person may get overwhelmed and decide that the relationship doesn’t make him or her happy. It can’t make him or her happy when the past interferes with the present. 

So if you’re grieving a relationship that never was, bear in mind that your ex probably wasn’t ready for a new relationship. Your ex was probably still processing the end of the previous relationship or due to poor thinking habits and fears associated negative beliefs with your persona and fell out of love.

Because your ex focused on things that made him or her unhappy, your ex left before the relationship developed love and commitment. He or she pulled away and looked for happiness elsewhere.

You have to understand that love takes many months to develop. You may fall in love with someone (as the saying goes), but that’s not love. It’s called infatuation. Real feelings develop months into the relationship when couples see the positives as well as the negatives in each other.

That’s when they can say or believe that they accept each other fully and that they want to keep working together to reach their common relationship goals.

Some people think that a relationship that never was is easy to get over and forget. They tell brokenhearted people things like, “Forget about him/her, it wasn’t a real relationship, anyway.”

They have no idea that to them, it felt real as they’d developed expectations and envisioned themselves doing couples-like things together.

Their dreams and hopes showed them the relationship had the potential to blossom and that they should keep investing in it.

Little did they know that their love interest at the time started to encounter relationship-damaging thoughts, beliefs, and feelings and that their investment alone wasn’t going to save their relationship.

It couldn’t because their investment and interest in the relationship was never the problem. The problem was their ex and the way their ex perceived them and felt about them.

Since their ex couldn’t match their feelings and investment, their ex quickly detached from them and decided to push them away to pursue his or her own goals. Their ex made that decision alone and didn’t care about what others thought and felt.

You should keep in mind that a relationship takes two like-minded individuals. Both people must want the relationship for similar reasons and to a similar extent. If one person wants it significantly more than the other, there is a power/interest imbalance and a risk of overwhelming the other person.

This is especially true if the other person has unprocessed fears, childhood problems, mental health problems, and an avoidant attachment style.

When a person brings old/unprocessed problems into the present/new relationship, he or she is more likely to take the relationship (new or old) for granted and leave when the relationship requires too much work and isn’t making him or her happy.

Today, we discuss why you’re grieving a relationship that never was and how you can get over it as fast as possible.

Why am I grieving a relationship that never was?

First of all, you’re not grieving the relationship. You’re grieving the connection and the idea of the relationship you could have had if things hadn’t fallen apart. Now that you broke up/things ended, you’re remembering how you felt when the relationship was working and forgetting the fact that the relationship failed and the reasons it failed.

Because the relationship ended on a high, your brain is finding it incredibly hard to rationally understand the situation. It’s constantly telling you that your relationship was great and that you can feel reassured and happy again if you reconnect with your ex and find some common goal to work toward. 

Your brain isn’t telling you that there’s a bigger issue that may or may not be related to you. All it’s telling you is that the relationship seemed manageable to you and that it’d be a shame to lose it and look for someone new to connect with.

In your mind, the relationship seemed authentic and promising. You didn’t see anything wrong with it because you were emotionally ready for it and wanted to see it grow.

Your ex, on the other hand, may not have been ready. For some reason, he or he stopped feeling empowered and lost the drive to feel validated before he or she had a chance to see what the relationship was going to look like in the future.

To see the relationship clearly, he or she needed to stay with you for 6 months or so. Eventually, your ex would have noticed how the relationship deals with stressors and problems. Sadly, the relationship didn’t make it that far.

It ended before it got serious.

Normally, a quick breakup happens when a couple is fundamentally incompatible and doesn’t see a reason to see each other anymore. Other times, it breaks up due to emotional unavailability, trust issues, mental health problems, difficult upbringing, disapproving parents, and returning exes.

You must remember that a quick breakup is a sign of a big problem and that it’s unlikely to go away on its own by talking about it and staying in a relationship. It will probably need a separation, followed by weeks or months of space.

If your ex thinks you’re compatible, can’t deal with personal issues while separated, or finds you responsible for the breakup, your ex won’t return anytime soon.

He or she will continue to stay away from you and probably find someone else to be with.

I know you don’t want to hear that, but you need to. You need to understand that the relationship ended and that it may not get another chance. The relationship could stay broken even if you or your ex fix the issues that broke you up.

Some things are out of your control. Breakups and reconciliations are two of such things. You have to accept that they depend on the person who makes decisions. That person is the dumper. He or she is in charge and will return in charge until power shifts.

If a person wants to leave, you can’t stop that person from leaving. You can beg and plead, but that will only make things worse. It will put more pressure on the dumper and make you less desirable in his or her eyes.

Every breakup mistake will push your ex further away and make the grieving process more difficult.

So if you’re grieving a relationship that never was, remember that your relationship was as authentic as any other relationship. You thought it was moving in the right direction and had high hopes for it. Those hopes got shattered when your ex left you out of the blue and showed you that he or she didn’t feel the same way about you.

This affected your self-esteem and made you realize how important your ex was to you. It made you see that your happiness, validation, and future depended on your ex and that you needed your ex to realize your romantic value and come back.

One thing you must understand is that you’re going through the same stages as any other dumpee. You’re starting in denial, depression, and anger and slowly working toward acceptance and recovery.

Healing is a long process. The time it takes to fully heal depends on your coping mechanism, ability to distract yourself, self-esteem, support, breakup mistakes, rules of no contact you follow (or don’t follow), your ex’s breadcrumbing, the length and intensity of the relationship, your experience with breakups, your upbringing, and much more.

The grieving process differs for every individual. Some dumpees recover quicker than others, but in general, a short-term relationship or an unofficial relationship that lasts 3 – 6 months takes at least a few months to process.

Don’t expect to be instantly over someone who rejected you and moved on just because you weren’t officially together.

The stronger your feelings and need for validation were and the longer you were infatuated, the longer your grieving will take. That’s expected because you developed high expectations, got attached, and became emotionally dependent on positive results. 

If you merely had a crush and didn’t even date, it probably won’t even take a few months to grieve and let go.

Not unless you’ve had a crush for years and can’t distance yourself from him or her. If you work together, live together, or do anything that forces you to see each other and interact, your healing will take longer compared to others in similar situations. 

So bear in mind that a lack of physical distance and boundaries could be one of the reasons you’re grieving a relationship that never was. The lack of space could be the culprit you’re getting reminded of the relationship you could be in if things worked out the way you’d envisioned.

If you don’t step away and focus on yourself, you will be forced to think about your ex and/or engage in frequent communication that feeds your obsession with your ex and hinders your healing.

Always remember that you won’t be able to grieve peacefully if the person who’s supposed to be gone keeps reappearing in your life and confusing you with his or her behavior or presence.

To grieve a relationship that never was, you need to leave your old life behind and give yourself time to heal. That’s the best way to recover from heartbreak.

With that said, here’s why you’re grieving a relationship that never was.

How to grieve a relationship that never was?

If you want to grieve and be done with someone you had a crush on, you need to first get closure. Figure out why the relationship ended or why it never started. Understanding why the person in question didn’t want a relationship or what went wrong will help you accept and grieve the end of the relationship and motivate you to move on.

Ask yourself, “Why was I interested in this person but he/she wasn’t interested in me? How come I stayed hopeful for so long and didn’t get space sooner?”

If this was your first potential relationship, you probably expected to be with this person despite seeing various red flags and being warned about him or her by others. You wanted what your heart wanted, so you stayed attached and hopeful until the very end.

The end then shattered your dreams and forced you to suffer. It made you take the failure personally and affected your perception of yourself.

Instead of blaming yourself, remember that something was wrong with the relationship from the beginning and that the relationship couldn’t grow into something better because the conditions for a healthy relationship weren’t met.

They were unmet or half-met, so the relationship stayed as it was until it fell apart and ended for good. You must now give yourself time to grieve. Understand that it’s okay to grieve a relationship that never was and that many others find themselves in a similar situation.

Many people develop feelings for someone they like and get their hearts broken when that person rejects them, moves away, or starts dating someone else.

Regardless of what happened, remember that it will take some time to grieve and let go of the relationship you wanted to have. It will get easier when you learn that your feelings for this person are real but that you can’t continue to hold on to them.

If you stay attached, you’ll stay obsessed with your ex and put your life on hold for him or her.

To get yourself back, you must want to get yourself back. You must come to terms with the end of the relationship and persevere. Do this long enough and you’ll process the pain and stop seeing yourself with your ex.

When you feel sad and down, allow yourself to grieve. Tell yourself that you had expectations and that it’s okay to feel the way you do. You’re not weak for grieving a relationship that never was. On the contrary, you’re brave for being vulnerable and wanting to give the relationship a try.

Many people don’t do that because they’re scared of something going wrong and getting broken up with. Such people close themselves off emotionally and hurt those who find them attractive.

You can talk to a mental health expert or friends if you need to vent. Open up to anyone who takes you seriously and wants to help. Just don’t ask your ex for help because you’ll make your ex feel uncomfortable and have even more questions.

No matter how silly your crush seems, remember that you feel how you feel because you got attached and that it’s not the end of your dating life. The next time you find someone you like, you’ll know what warning signs to look out for and how to through the grieving stages in the quickest and healthiest way possible.

Are you grieving a relationship that never was? How close did you get to being in a relationship with this person? Share your story below and we’ll get back to you.

And if you want help with grieving or the relationship itself, go to our coaching page and learn more about the services we provide.

Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.