#relationship grief

[angeloncewas]

no lighthouse has ever loved the shore

the black dog, taylor swift // quora // my writing // swallowtail, brenna twohy // all my love, noah kahan // selections from this post on r/arthistory // wikipedia

[underthemexicansun]

some people love you genuinely and still cannot stay.

[love-ardour-anarchism]

sometimes i come to wonder as i am looking in the mirror with all my clothes or stripped there bare sometimes i come to wonder

if your dream girl is really half a boy if all my butchness is what you'd desire if you would love me for my manesque charm if you'd still love the hair on all of me if you'd still kiss the stubble there above my lips

or if you'd fall right out of love with all my non-conformity with all the blurring lines that make up all of me with all the ways that I so blend the womanhood I keep the masculinitiy that I've been seeking all my life

i wonder if you'd love me if i never was the same if i was never one or then the other if girls were prettier than me and boys had more of that same charm if i was always knock-off copies and not a man but shaped unlike the goddesses of old

i wonder if you'd love me if i never kept my shape if i would always wander or if you'd find a better man a sweeter wife an image there bereft a statue more sublime than you could cut from all my unshaped marble

just like they did who called me "wife" for half a decade long and then just left to find all that i lacked

and i know its no good to think of it that way but some days like right now i'm more enough the stereotype

[wetdogvibes]

Does everyone feel this way right now or just me?

Lyrics: But You Just Woke Me Up- This is Lorelei

[help-my-relationship]

My ex (21M) and I (21F) want to rekindle our relationship. I initially broke things off because we had been fighting very bad for 1 year (we had been together 6 years) and he once grabbed me by the t-shirt and shook me while yelling in an argument. Our bedroom was also almost dead and I guess I made a kind of rash decision to break up. I'm so anxious and I don't know how to best proceed. I know the stigma against on-off couples but before hitting this rocky period we had a solid relationship, no toxic behaviour.

Hey, there, anon! I hear what you're saying. 1 bad year of a relationship feels like a drop in the bucket compared to 5 great ones. It's extremely difficult to have gone through that half a decade and feel like it's just blown up out of nowhere, especially when you don't understand what has caused these issues. It can feel like it should be easy to fix because it was so good before. Why can't you just go back to that?

Now, I have very little of the story here, so I'm going to have to make some guesses and assumptions. It's okay if you read through what I say and disagree with it. I am going to be making some sweeping statements. I'd like to gently explore this idea with you that this was simply a rocky period and that breaking up was rash.

Let's start with the fact that the majority of your time together, and the majority of when things were good, was when you were children together. It's common for relationships to fall apart when you reach the next stage, such as when you become adults, when you graduate college and are ready to move onto the next step of your life, when there's career opportunities, etc. And a lot changes for us when we go from being legal minors to adults. We discover a lot about ourselves in this time, as we have more room and space to actually flex our independence and autonomy and discover who we really want to be.

At 21, you've had two potentially big life stages here of graduating high school/becoming legal adults and graduating college if you went that route. Even if the relationship had stayed stable and good, this alone could have been enough of a change to end up with you two being incompatible and moving your separate ways.

But there is also this underlying unhealthiness for the past year. While I understand one year is not a long period of time compared to the total time of the relationship, let's be honest. A year...is a good portion of time. This wasn't a month of out of character behavior. It wasn't a couple of months. It was 12 months where your relationship was devolving. Where there was constant fighting. Where things continually escalated until physical violence occurred (and yes, shaking you is physical violence). Although looking back on things, it may seem rather abrupt, this didn't come out of nowhere. It had an entire year to build and keep getting worse.

That's an entire year where there was 365 days of chances to de-escalate things. To stop and talk things through. To get help. To work things out.

But that didn't happen. The fighting continued, and it got worse. That's not just a rocky period. That's a pattern of behavior. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter that you had 5 good years. Your relationship ultimately became unhealthy until it escalated to physical violence and you were forced to end things.

You stuck around for a year. Honey, that's not rash. That's giving your relationship a solid chunk of time to improve. You gave it your best until there was nothing left to give.

I don't know what caused this change in your relationship. I don't know what the fights were about. I don't know what feelings the fights might have even been hiding. I do know that once a relationship becomes physical, by far, the most likely thing to happen is that the violence continues escalating and getting worse.

You have a lot of attachment to this relationship because it's nostalgic and because it was so long. But dear, that doesn't mean you were rash. You were unhappy for a year and kept trying through it. Whatever things broke in your relationship? They really broke. You are allowed to cherish those great memories while admitting that the relationship was no longer working and it was only getting worse.

Right now, you're in a lot of big feelings because you've really just broken up. That's no time at all to process anything that happened or process your feelings! It's going to feel big right now. It's going to be overwhelming.

It will get better.

You are only 21. You still have so much life in front of you. So many new experiences you'll happen upon. So many more people to meet. This is just one small chapter of your life. Things feel overwhelming and sad now. You feel lost and hurting and confused. This is not the end of good relationships for you, though. There is opportunity in your life, and that doesn't come from your ex. That comes from you. You will build more good things, including relationships. It will be different from this relationship, but no less special or enjoyable or fun or loving. There are any millions of people out there you might connect with and build more exciting and/or more stable chapters with.

So talk to your friends. Spend time on your hobbies. Give yourself time to be sad and grieve and cry and let it out. But just remember that this is not the end of the world. Spend time with people you enjoy the company of and things you enjoy doing. Take it slow and take care of yourself. Just give it some time and the negative feelings and the doubt will pass. This is part of grieving. It sucks, but going back to a violent and unhappy relationship isn't going to change that: it's only going to stall that. The only way through it is to sit in the feelings for a bit, then to get back out and remember that you still have a life to live. Your heart will make room for new people and new love and new experiences. <3

Please feel free to message me as much as you need or want to vent or think.

[alixghf]

Untitled.

(Written 2022 revised 2025)

The spark we once had,

Which warmed my very soul.

Has faded to embers,

Nothing left but that bitter loneliness.

You’re just out of reach,

But that’s alright.

Because from the start—I knew,

It wouldn’t last.

For this love—was never enough,

For the three of us.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⋯ ❦ ⋯

another poem from 2022, the revisions are quite drastic for some of these lol, I really do hope they come off well still

a poem about being second choice, but loving too much to care

[rottvnmilk]

[positivewritesxo]

grieving someone who is still alive is so painful, it’s like your head knows they are still here in arms length but you can not get too them. You can not reach out or hold them anymore.