Although you had officially been together for only three months, you are desperate, as if empty, since he left. Like a rejected teenager, your pain seems limitless. But how can we explain this outpouring of emotions? Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist, enlightens us.
No, grieving a short relationship isn’t any easier
You could say that a breakup after a short relationship is easier to digest.
“Fewer memories, fewer habits built, fewer years shared… And overall, in terms of love, this is often true. But the fact remains that some very brief stories can hurt a lot.” recognizes Amélie Boukhobza.
First, because these relationships are often driven by a very strong idealization phase. As in almost all relationship beginnings.
“Everything is possible. We plan, we imagine what happens next. We invent a future… So when the relationship suddenly ends, it’s not just the story that is interrupted. It’s everything that could have existed. The failure – or the new failure – of something possible. And in these very brief stories, we sometimes leave less a real person… than a fantasy still intact.”
specifies the psychologist.
“When a relationship ends early, it can remain stuck in a form of ideal”
Another point: in a long relationship, we have generally had time to see the other as they really are. With its qualities, but also its limits, its faults, and sometimes everything that we can no longer stand.
“Separation can of course be very painful, but also more understandable. It is part of a story that has had time to unfold. Conversely, when a relationship ends early, it can remain frozen in a form of ideal,” warns the expert. Nothing has actually tarnished the image of the other. We didn’t have time to be disappointed, or even really to be confronted with the reality of everyday life (the famous socks next to the dirty laundry bin, the unfilled toothpaste…). From then on, the separation becomes difficult to grasp…
“We don’t always understand because at first glance, everything seemed to be going well. The lights were green. It’s a hope that is crumbling. The end of a promise…”,
she emphasizes.
The mind remains clinging to what could have been, more than to what actually was. And it is precisely this gap that makes the pain so acute, sometimes even destabilizing: we are not just mourning a story, but an entire horizon that is disappearing.
“And as the story is short, there are few elements to understand. Nature abhors a vacuum. The void is then easily filled with hypotheses… often against oneself. There is a narcissistic issue here. The temptation is great to bring the answer back to oneself: I was not enough…” relates Amélie Boukhobza.
An inevitable drop in hormones
Finally, there is also something very biological. The beginnings of a relationship strongly activate the reward circuits in the brain: dopamine, excitement, anticipation… sometimes even a form of euphoria.
“The state of love is close to a state of quasi-obsession. As a result, when everything suddenly stops, the fall can be brutal. But deep down, this type of breakup often affects the state of love more… than deep love itself.” concludes the psychologist.
In short, if the pain seems so intense, it is because it combines the intensity of the beginnings, the frustration of an unfinished story and the aftershock of an overload of emotions. What we lose is not just a person, but an impulse, a projection, a version of oneself carried by the encounter.
Understanding these mechanisms then makes it possible to restore a little meaning where everything seems confusing. No, this suffering is neither excessive nor irrational: it is the reflection of an outburst (emotional, psychological and chemical, etc.) which suddenly stops. Over time, this dizziness subsides, giving way to a more accurate perception of the relationship as it was… and not as we had dreamed of it.