Four Kinds of Heartbreak, and Why Each One Keeps You Stuck Differently
Matthew Hussey
Matthew Hussey argues that heartbreak isn't one uniform experience. The video identifies four kinds, each capable of producing some of the worst pain of a person's life: heartbreak over someone you never really dated, the "one-day" heartbreak of an on-and-off relationship, the end of a serious long-term relationship, and the breakup you didn't see coming. Hussey's claim is that each type has its own challenges, and that understanding which one you're in is what lets you come out the other side "faster and stronger."
The Person You Never Dated
The first type is heartbreak over someone you fell for but never really had. Maybe you dated for a few weeks before they pulled away. Maybe it was a coworker you grew close to who didn't want more when you tried to advance things. Hussey says this can be one of the most painful heartbreaks, even though it isn't the person you spent years with.
The key point is that we don't really know this person. We know them well enough to have fallen for them, "a little bit, or maybe a lot," but we don't know their flaws, who they'd be in a relationship, or who they are in an argument. What we have is an idealized version.
Hussey explains the intensity of the pain through what the person represented: hope. They seemed like an answer to loneliness in the present, to the anxiety that "I'm never going to meet anyone," and to a lifelong yearning for love. In a dating landscape that can feel depressing, someone who shows up as hope is someone we cling to. When they leave, it feels like losing not just a person but "the answer to the great problem of our life." They got us dreaming again, and then it went away as quickly as it arrived.
The danger, Hussey says, is making the heartbreak about that specific person. The pain has "far less to do with the person" than with believing we'd found the answer and ending up disappointed and back where we started. Hussey stresses that the feelings are real and that you can be truly heartbroken by someone like this. But rationally, we didn't know them well enough to know they were right for us. We only knew the version that existed "before real life actually tested the relationship." So the framing shouldn't be "I lost the one." This person never proved themselves to be the one. Hussey tells viewers to forget the idea of "the one that got away" and to see this person instead as "a normal stepping stone on the path to meeting the right person."
The One-Day Heartbreak
The second type comes from an on-and-off relationship: you get together, break up, get back together, break up again, and over time it becomes "your own personal will-they-won't-they story." Hussey calls these situations "one-day wagers." The belief is that one day this person will become what you've always wanted. The stake is your time, emotions, energy, intimacy, "every part of me," given in the hope that they'll eventually become generous instead of selfish, want kids when they currently say they don't, or commit seriously instead of stringing you along.
Hussey calls this "the greatest gamble you can make for your life because it wastes years." Hussey gives two reasons it's so hard to get over.
The first is the romantic story we build around it. We reinforce how special the person and relationship are by talking about it with friends, dissecting it, and reading meaning into each reunion. Instead of concluding "we keep breaking up, so we must be wrong for each other," we tell ourselves "we keep finding our way back together no matter what." In Hussey's words, "We wind up mistaking inconsistency for destiny."
The second is that we never fully grieve. Because the person always came back, we never let ourselves mourn, so every ending "felt like an ellipsis instead of a period." When it finally ends for good, we have to admit the story we've been telling isn't real, at least not as we imagined it, and letting go of that story can feel like letting go of part of ourselves.
Hussey offers several responses. First, anger can be productive. It can "break the spell of the sadness." Feeling angry that this person was never serious about you or never gave you what you wanted, instead of just hurt, can create the emotional distance needed to walk away. Second, let go of the fantasy. This wasn't a relationship that never got a chance. "It was a relationship that had every possible chance and still didn't happen. It had too many chances."
Third, Hussey reframes the self-blame people feel over the time they lost. Staying so long was a symptom of something deeper: a feeling that we weren't worthy of more, or that this person was the answer to all our problems even though they weren't showing up for us. Recognizing that underlying wound does two things. It shows the situation was never really about them, since we had "nominated them" for a role driven by the wound, which makes them less important. It also allows self-compassion. Instead of "I can't believe I gave this person this much of my life," Hussey suggests telling yourself that you're like everyone else who finds it hard to heal the deeper wounds governing their behavior, and that in this case the behavior just happened to involve another person.
The Serious Relationship Heartbreak
The third type is the end of a committed relationship that has been a huge part of your life, "if not your life." It might end after a few years or after decades, after spending half your life with someone. Here you're grieving not just a person but an entire life: shared history, routines, traditions, dreams, and the future you expected.
Hussey focuses on what happens after the initial support fades. At first everyone shows up, because it's obvious something profound has happened. But as with losing a family member, people eventually get on with their lives. You keep showing up for work, friends, family, and responsibilities while still heartbroken, at a time when everyone else seems to think you've moved on. Hussey describes this as fracturing yourself, living one life for everybody else and another privately. The exhaustion of wearing that mask is profound and, Hussey says, often leads to burnout and depression. The world feels "unfairly normal" during what may be the greatest loss of your life. Hussey quotes Skeeter Davis's song to capture this: "Why do the birds go on singing? Why do the stars glow above? Don't they know it's the end of the world? It ended when I lost your love."
The first step, Hussey says, is accepting there's no quick fix. This isn't a pain you eliminate but one you move through gradually. Time doesn't erase it, but it changes its intensity. Early on, the goal isn't to make the pain go away but to stop fighting it and surrender to it.
Hussey draws on a moment from The Lord of the Rings. Frodo resists his situation, saying, "I wish none of this had ever happened." Gandalf answers, "So do all who see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to you." Hussey encourages viewers to see their pain as part of the human experience, experiencing "on an extreme level" what it is to be human.
The video then plays a clip of comedian Pete Holmes describing a practice of answering setbacks with "Yes, thank you," as though the event were what you wanted. Holmes says it "short circuits your brain," almost instantly in Holmes's experience. A delayed flight becomes a moment for a clean breath, noticing the sun through the window, and remembering that people once died in covered wagons on a journey that now takes four hours. Holmes calls it one of the most powerful things in their life, and Hussey agrees it has been really helpful.
Hussey's message of hope for this type is that you can gradually build a new life alongside the old one. New memories, traditions, and experiences slowly loosen the grip of old associations. Hussey's example is places tied to an ex. The first visit is all about the ex. Then you go with a friend and create new associations. By the third or fourth visit, the place may no longer feel like it belongs to your ex. You've reclaimed it. Hussey says the same applies to life as a whole. We may believe our best experiences are behind us and that the world without our ex is nothing, but "the world beyond your ex is just as big, if not bigger." Hussey urges viewers to stay hopeful and curious about what hasn't happened yet, not just heartbroken about what has.
The One You Didn't See Coming
The fourth type is the sudden breakup. Someone you thought was happy, and whom you were happy with, tells you they haven't been happy for a long time. Or you're on the receiving end of what Hussey calls "the avoidant discard," where someone changes overnight and discards you.
Here, Hussey says, we're not just grieving but struggling to understand what has happened. Reality feels shattered, as if we'd been living in one reality while they lived in another. Hussey voices the flood of questions that follows: Will they come back? Will they change their mind? Should I wait? If they don't return, do I need a new apartment, a new city, to sell the house? Do I tell friends and family yet, when I don't even know if it's real and don't want to publicly end the relationship? The sheer number of unknowns, with no time to process them, creates panic, extreme anxiety, and emotional paralysis.
Adding to the loneliness, the other person often becomes unrecognizable. Yesterday they were your best friend, confidant, and the person your life was mapped out with. Today they seem like "a perfect stranger, cold, emotionless," as if their memory had been erased. Hussey says this can make us feel we could never again trust what we see, hear, or feel in a relationship, and that our future has evaporated overnight.
Hussey's first prescription is to slow down. The other person's process has moved at "incomprehensible speed," but that doesn't mean you have to move fast. Hussey suggests committing not to do anything that will make life harder: not racing to move on, not begging them back, and not doing things that harm your view of yourself, such as a hookup, which "we know... are just going to make us feel worse about ourselves."
Hussey also suggests telling yourself, "I am not responsible for the way that this person has left." Hussey adds that the manner of the exit is itself a clear sign of one way this person is a bad partner. In a healthy relationship people communicate, and the day of the breakup isn't the first time you hear about everything they were unhappy with. Hussey reminds viewers that this won't always be the headline of their life. Right now there will be practicalities and uncertainty to deal with, and surrendering to that, going slowly, and taking life "one day, sometimes even one hour at a time" is what gets you through.
Acute Versus Chronic Heartbreak
Near the end, Hussey acknowledges that someone in the middle of this kind of shock may not yet be able to process practical advice at all, and says there's much more to say about each scenario than the video covers. The video was cut down from what could have been an hour-long version.
Hussey distinguishes acute heartbreak, which has just happened and is at its most extreme, from chronic heartbreak, the struggle to move on from a person or situation many months or years later. Hussey warns that if we don't do the right things, acute heartbreak turns into chronic heartbreak, and says preventing that transition is a central aim of the upcoming work with the audience.
Hussey closes with a direct message to viewers in pain: stay strong, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and "take life 15 minutes at a time if you have to."
There are four kinds of heartbreak, which all have the ability to create some of the worst pain of your life. The first is the heartbreak of the person that you fell for, but never dated, or at the very least it never got serious with. Then there's what I call the one-day heartbreak, which is when it ends with someone that you have been on and off with for an extended period of time, but deep down you saw yourself ending up with them. The third is the serious relationship heartbreak, which is the result of a genuine, committed, and often very long-term relationship ending. Lastly, there's the one you didn't see coming. This is a very specific brand of heartbreak that can be devastating in ways we must understand if we are to survive it.
In this video, you will come to understand the version of heartbreak you're in, the unique challenges of that kind of heartbreak, and what you must know about your version if you are to come out the other side of it faster and stronger than ever. So, let's jump in.
Our first kind of heartbreak is the person you never dated. One of the most painful heartbreaks isn't always the person you spent years with. Sometimes it's the person you never really got to have. Maybe you dated for a few weeks before they pulled away. Maybe it was someone you work with who you became close to, but then when you tried to advance it, they didn't want anything more.
We don't really know this person. I get that we know them well enough to have fallen for them a little bit, or maybe a lot, but we don't know everything about them. We don't know their flaws. We don't know who they would be in a relationship. We don't necessarily know who they are in an argument. What we have in front of us is an idealized person.
That person came along and represented something that we were probably starving for, which is hope. An answer to our problem, the problem of loneliness, the problem of anxiety that I'm never going to meet anyone, the yearning that we have felt for so much of our lives to want to find love. And in a dating landscape that can feel depressing a lot of the time, when someone shows up as hope, we cling on to it. And when we lose it, it feels like we're not just losing a person, we're losing the answer to the great problem of our life, the problem of feeling lonely in the present and anxious about our future.
When this person showed up, it got us hopeful again. It got us dreaming again. It got us imagining that our love life might actually happen in the way that we had always imagined. And then it goes away as quickly as it arrived. The danger is we make the tremendous heartbreak that we feel as a result about that person. The heartbreak we feel has far less to do with the person than it has to do with the fact that we thought we had found the answer, and once again, we have found ourselves disappointed and back where we started.
We need to put the relationship in its proper place. I know the feelings are real. I get that. They are. You can be truly heartbroken by a person like this. But we have to remember on a rational level that we did not know them well enough to know they were actually right for us. We only know the version of them that existed before real life actually tested the relationship. So it's not, "I lost the one," it's that this person never even proved themselves to be the one. So forget the one that got away. This is not the one that got away. This person is a normal stepping stone on the path to meeting the right person.
The second kind of heartbreak is what I call the one-day heartbreak. You get together, you break up, you come back together, you break up again, and over time it kind of gets turned into your own personal will-they-won't-they story. I call these situations, by the way, one-day wagers. One day this person will turn out to be what I've always wanted them to be. And the wager I make is my time, my emotions, my energy, my intimacy, every part of me I'm going to give you in the hope that one day you'll have the qualities I want you to have. You'll be generous, not selfish. You'll want kids instead of what you're saying now, which is you don't. You'll commit on a serious level instead of just stringing me along. One day you'll become that.
And the one-day wager is the greatest gamble you can make for your life because it wastes years. Because that's how these things stay alive. We have this romantic idea that we hold onto of how important this relationship is, how special this person is, and we keep reinforcing that story by talking about it with friends and dissecting it over time and looking at those moments that they come back as some kind of symbol or meaning. It's not, "Well, we keep breaking up, so we must be wrong for each other." It's, "We keep finding our way back together no matter what." We wind up mistaking inconsistency for destiny.
The second reason they're hard is that we never fully grieve that person. Every time that person disappeared and reappeared, we learned that they always reappear, so we never really let ourselves grieve. So, every ending with this person over time has felt like an ellipsis instead of a period. When it does finally end, we have to admit that this story we've been telling ourselves is not real, at least in the way that we imagined it. And parting ways with that story can feel like parting ways with a part of ourselves.
So, what do we do about heartbreak here? On one hand, it can actually be productive to get angry. Anger can actually help break the spell of the sadness. Sometimes anger is a good antidote to heartbreak. If we feel angry at the time spent with this person because we're like, "You were never serious about me or you never actually gave me what I wanted and I'm finally angry about that instead of hurt," that actually can help create the emotional distance we need to walk away.
The second is let go of the fantasy. This wasn't a relationship that never got a chance. It was a relationship that had every possible chance and still didn't happen. It had too many chances. I always think that when we're beating ourselves up for how much time we spent in a situation like this, we have to remember that that was a symptom. It was a symptom of something deeper in us, that we felt we weren't worthy of more, that we felt this person was the answer to all of our problems even though they weren't even showing up for us. There's a wound that we are operating from in continuing to give this person so much power in our lives.
And when we realize that, it does two things. The first is it makes us realize it was never really about them. That we had nominated them in this role in our lives that was far more to do with that wound than anything else. So, it suddenly makes them less important, but the second thing it does is it allows us to give compassion to ourselves. To realize that this wasn't an easy thing for me to change.
So, rather than seeing it like, "I've wasted so much time. I can't believe I gave this person this much of my life. I can't believe I stayed around for so long hoping that that would turn into something," tell yourself, "I'm like everyone else on Earth who finds it really hard to heal the deeper wounds that are governing all of my behaviors in life. This behavior, in this particular case, just happens to involve another person."
Whatever form of heartbreak you are experiencing right now, please know I have had my own version of the place that you are in right now, and so have thousands of people I have sat with in some of the darkest moments of their lives. I see you, you are not alone, and I am so deeply sorry that you are going through this in your life right now.
And sometimes when life feels that dark that no light can possibly find its way to us, someone reaches into that darkness at exactly the moment we need it the most. And when someone does that, those moments don't just help us heal, they restore our faith in people and sometimes in life itself.
I'd love to offer you one of those moments right now, because starting on July the 20th, I am doing something that I have never done before. I'm setting aside an entire week of my life to be with anyone in this community who is currently going through heartbreak. I know that the summer is the time when a lot of other people are talking about finding love and getting excited about their summer plans, but when you're in that darkness, that's not where you're at. You just want to feel better.
So, for five consecutive days, I am going to go live in a process I am calling 5 Days to Mend. And this is designed to be a complete experience where each day builds on the last day, taking you from that dark, raw place you're in to a place of greater peace and strength and hope and happiness by the end of the five days. I'm going to be answering questions. I'm going to be working with you. I'm going to be sitting with you and holding space for the pain that you're going through.
There is no fee to attend this thing. I wanted it to be completely open, completely free for every single person in my community who needs it. So, whoever you are, come. Invite your friends. Invite your family. Whoever you know needs this. Join us. Go to MendWeek.com and sign up. It'll take you just a couple of seconds. I believe that sometimes life brings us exactly what we need at exactly the moment we need it. Maybe this is that moment for you.
The third kind of heartbreak is the serious relationship heartbreak. This is the committed relationship that has been a huge part of your life, if not your life, and it ends. It might have been after a few years. It might have been after decades, after spending half your life with this person.
And of course, when you lose someone like this, you're not just grieving a person, you're grieving an entire life. Years of shared history, routines, traditions, dreams, plus the future you thought you were going to have with this person. And in the beginning, everyone shows up for you because it's obvious to them that this is a profound thing that has happened in your life, that you deserve all of the love and the sympathy and the support in the world.
But, just like when we lose a family member and people initially show up and then get on with their lives, so too do people get on with their lives after we have been heartbroken, even in the longest relationship of our lives. So, we find ourselves showing up for work, friends, family, responsibilities we have, all the while still being heartbroken at a time when everyone else feels like we've moved on. Life has moved on.
We fracture ourselves, living one life for everybody else and another life privately. And the exhaustion that comes from putting on that mask is profound, and often leads to burnout and depression. It's like the world feels unfairly normal while you're still going through one of the greatest losses, maybe the greatest loss of your life. It's like the old song by Skeeter Davis, "Why do the birds go on singing? Why do the stars glow above? Don't they know it's the end of the world? It ended when I lost your love."
Look, in this situation, the solution is firstly to accept that there is no quick fix. This isn't a pain that you eliminate. It's a pain that you gradually move through over time. And time doesn't erase it, but it starts to change the intensity of it. In the beginning, it's not about making the pain go away. It's about not fighting that pain. Instead, surrendering to that pain.
There is a great moment in Lord of the Rings that has stuck with me forever where Frodo is resisting his story. He's resisting the pain. He says, "I wish none of this had ever happened." And Gandalf says to him, "So do all who see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to you." Recognize that this is all part of the human experience. You are living it. You are on an extreme level experiencing what it is to be human.
There's also something Pete Holmes says that I think is useful for this. I want you to hear this.
It just short-circuits your brain if you say, "Yes, thank you." And I mean almost instantly, in my experience. Flight is delayed. Yes, thank you. It's so weird. That's why it works, as if it's what you wanted. And then you realize you're in an airport. You realize you'll be an hour later. It can just be a clean breath and a recognition that you're alive. And maybe you see the sun coming through the window. And maybe you remember that people used to die in covered wagons on the journey you're about to take in four hours. That's been one of the most powerful things in my life.
For sure. I'm glad you brought it up because it's been really, really helpful.
A message of hope I want to give you is that we can gradually create a new life alongside the old one. So, we have all of this pain and this ball of emotion around all of these things that remind us of that person, but the world is bigger than them. And over time we will make new memories. We will have new traditions. We will have new experiences that slowly loosen the grip of the old ones.
Even places that are inextricably connected to your ex. You may visit them the first time and it's just all your ex there, the associations. But then you go again with a friend and it creates some new ones. And then you go a third time and maybe by the third or fourth time it doesn't feel like it belongs to your ex anymore. It's like you've reclaimed it. It's yours again. And that's true of your life, too.
We may have this idea that our best experiences are behind us, that the world was our ex, and the world without our ex is nothing. But actually, the world beyond your ex is just as big, if not bigger, than your world with them. What has happened is deeply painful. But don't convince yourself that that means that all of your best experiences are behind you. It is essential to remain hopeful and to remain curious about the things that haven't happened in your life yet, not just heartbroken about the things that have happened.
The fourth kind of heartbreak that is uniquely devastating is the one you didn't see coming. Maybe someone you thought was happy and who you were happy with suddenly tells you they haven't been happy for a long time. And it floors you to find this out. Maybe you even are on the other end of the avoidant discard where somebody just changes overnight and discards you.
And when this happens, we're not just grieving. We are struggling to comprehend what the hell has happened in our life. Our reality feels shattered. We didn't see it coming. We feel like we've been living some other reality while this person has been living their reality. We don't even know how to begin to process what they are telling us.
We start racing through questions in our mind like, are they going to come back? Are they going to change their mind? Should I wait around for them? How is this even happening? And if they don't come back, what does that mean? Am I finding a new apartment? Am I moving to a different city? Do I have to sell my house? Am I going to tell my friends and family yet? It becomes this embarrassing thing. How do I talk to people about it? What do I even say to people about this? Should I tell people about it now because I don't even know if it's real and I don't want to publicly end this relationship, but this person seems to have actually left.
The sheer amount of unknowns and overwhelm and the daunting nature of all these things that you haven't even had a moment to process creates panic. It can create extreme anxiety and emotional paralysis. And to add to that feeling of loneliness we feel in our emotional paralysis, there's the fact that often in these situations the other person becomes unrecognizable.
They become someone who was yesterday our best friend, our confidant, the person we could rely on, the person we loved, the person that our whole life was mapped out with, and today they are
Like a perfect stranger, cold, emotionless. It's like their memory has been erased. It can make us feel like we could never trust what we see or hear or feel in a relationship again. Our future evaporates overnight.
In this situation we have to do a number of things. The first is just slow down. At a time when everything feels sped up, certainly their process is at lightning speed, incomprehensible speed, we have to slow down.
Okay, something has happened with them that I don't understand. There has been such a lack of communication along the way that this has just dropped a bomb on my life unexpectedly. But that doesn't mean I have to move fast now. I am not going to do anything right now that will make life harder for me.
I'm not going to race to try and move on or beg for them back or do anything that would harm my view of myself because there's a temptation to just go and hook up or do something or whatever, and we know those things are just going to make us feel worse about ourselves. Instead, we can slow down and say, "I am not responsible for the way that this person has left."
And by the way, the way that they have left, in some ways, is a very clear indication of one way that this person is a bad partner to be with. Because in a healthy relationship, someone does communicate. The day of the breakup isn't the first time you hear about all of the ways that they were unhappy.
And know that this won't always be the headline of your life. This is a headline right now. But in reality, you will move on from this. But right now, as a bomb has hit your life, there are going to be all sorts of things that you're going to need to address. Practicalities, uncertainty about what it all means. Surrendering to that, going slow, and taking life one day, sometimes even one hour at a time, is what is going to get you through.
By the way, if this has happened to you, there's a good chance that you're going through so much shock and so much pain and grief and disorientation right now that you haven't even begun to process this, let alone be able to hear any practical advice about what to do next.
In fact, there is so much more I want to say about each one of these scenarios that I haven't been able to say in this video. We have already cut this video down from the 1-hour video it could have been to the 15 or so minutes that this video actually is.
But that is exactly why I'm taking five whole days to spend with anyone in this audience who is heartbroken right now, whether you are in acute heartbreak, in other words, it just happened and it's at the most extreme levels of pain right now, or whether you're in chronic heartbreak, which is the kind of heartbreak we experience when we're struggling to move on from someone or a situation even many months or many years after it has happened.
If we don't do the right things, acute heartbreak turns into chronic heartbreak, by the way, which is one of the things I want to save so many of you from on 5 Days to Mend. So, you'll know if this is right for you. You can sign up at MendWeek.com. I'll leave a link below.
Until then, I'm so sorry you're going through this. Stay strong. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Take life 15 minutes at a time if you have to, and I'll be with you really, really soon.
Article published · Updated