Immediately after my breakup, I thought I was fine. Actually, it was more than that: I thought I was thriving. My life in the weeks following our split was a constant stream of to-do lists, 6am exercise classes and Saturday nights out – a balance of productivity and fun that pre-breakup me used to dream of. Friends and family even said I seemed to be coping “exceptionally well”. In short, I was in the midst of a post-breakup glow-up.

Then, one night, three months after the split, when I was lying in bed enjoying my nightly TikTok scroll, I saw a video of a cute dog. And for the first time since the breakup, I felt the urge to contact my ex and share this adorable clip. It must have only been a few seconds before I realised I didn’t have that right anymore; but the switch in my mind felt shattering.

In the moment, I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like the the floodgates had suddenly opened and my heart had finally started breaking in two. For the next week, I was as devastated as I was exhausted, crying over old photographs of us that part of me wanted to burn. When I spoke to my therapist a few days later, she called it: I was experiencing “delayed grief”. 

Now, there’s nothing surprising about experiencing grief after a breakup. “Grief is almost always present around loss,” says Ali Ross, a psychotherapist and spokesperson for the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). “A breakup is a form of loss – loss of a future with that person; loss of the unique personhood that person brought out in you and you in them.”