MORE THAN FRIENDS, LESS THAN A COUPLE

Heartbreak doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t ask if you dated and for how long. Heartbreak doesn’t care for labels. It doesn’t feel any less real just because they weren’t your boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes it hurts, even more, getting over someone you were never with solely because there’s that what if factor that plays into it. When relationships have labels you’re either together or you’re not. You’re either single or with them. But when you’re emotionally invested in someone through lines that are blurry, you hold onto hope that one day it will be something.

It doesn’t matter if you had an almost relationship with him or if you were his official girlfriend. If you cared about him, you cared about him. If you fell in love with him, you fell in love with him. Your heartbreak is valid. What would you call him? An old friend? A guy that you used to talk to everyday? He was more than that.

But then you get hit with a cold reality that this thing you are so emotionally invested in has come to a dead end. The hard part about endings is when there wasn’t a beginning to compare it to. Suddenly you were just emotionally invested in this person with no going back. Then it’s over and you’re just expected to be okay. You’re left having to mourn a relationship that wasn’t actually one but you loved them like it was real.

He might not be your ex-boyfriend. But he’s still an ex. An ex-almost-boyfriend. An ex-one-night-stand. An ex-friend-with-benefits. An ex is someone that you cared about. Someone that you spent time with and laughed with and loved. It hurts when someone leaves, no matter who that person is, no matter what their title was.

Feelings are real and you don’t need a label to justify that. Sometimes the love or what it is you feel is just really unexplainable. You just notice that one minute, you were great friends and the next, you both know there is a shift already and when something happens and it comes crashing down, it’s not a breakup but it feels like one. You are sad. You wake up checking your phone remembering when you used to wake up to their text or chat. Now your phone is a little more silent. You miss them but you also miss the possibility and belief that this could have been something. The pain is a little deeper but you can’t express these things publicly.

You can’t break down because if you do people will try and justify this reaction and say something like, “well you didn’t even date?” You don’t have to date people to fall in love with them. And you don’t have to date people to get hurt by them. When your heart is invested in someone the pain feels exactly the same. But the hardest part is trying to move on when they don’t realize you are hurting; when they don’t even realize how much of an emotional toll they took on you. So you see them online, but you never chat with them, or them with you.

And you’re losing sleep over someone who is probably sleeping with someone else. I know how much it hurts. I know what it’s like to replay everything conversations you’ve had wondering what signs you read wrong. I know what it’s like to spend time with someone that you might not even have had a physical relationship with but emotionally it couldn’t have just been you that felt it. And I know what it’s like to not be able to clearly articulate this pain that consumes you. You got your heart broken by someone who should be easy to get over.

And part of you wants to scream yes. I’m hurt. But you stay silent because something about mourning an ending when there wasn’t actually a beginning makes you look like a fool. But it’s not all on you. This person led you to believe something was there. Had they been completely honest from the start you wouldn’t have fallen so fast but they didn’t. Instead, they knew how you felt maybe they added fuel to the fire. Maybe there wasn’t even a physical relationship there without a label. Maybe they told you everything you wanted to hear to keep you around because your presence boosted their ego.

Regardless of how it applies to you and your situation, someone let you fall for them when they had no intention of catching you. So don’t feel guilty for these pains you feel you have to repress just because there wasn’t some label attached to it. Pull away without an explanation and never allow them to make you feel this way again. You deserve time to heal even if they weren’t yours completely.