That's a hard one, and this is entirely how I would (based on my own perceptions in life) try to deal with a break up.
I don't think breaks ups are something you can fully mitigate the bad feelings of - relationships are about all that matter in life, whether with friends or lovers or family. So I wouldn't expect myself to feel better over night or repress feelings of sadness or loss, or beat myself up for giving in to bad feelings occasionally. You're human and you have feelings. The only thing you have any control over is how you evaluate and react to those feelings. The feelings don't define you, but your actions do.
Here are some key things I'd try to remind myself of though:
- Loss of relationships is guaranteed in life. Every day we should be cognizant of that. The people we love are going to be gone one day, by choice or otherwise. If we can reasonably expect to lose everyone, including ourselves, we should learn to be grateful for the time we have and avoid taking away from that by dwelling on what we can't control. We can aim to extend relationships by keeping up our health and investing in meaningful relations, but beyond that, what we have is fortune while what we lose is often inescapable. You may have many breakups in your life. More interestingly though, you may have many loves. That's much better to focus on. How do you get there, instead of dwelling on what was lost?
- Love fluctuates dramatically, even in most successful relationships. Even if no one was at fault (you did nothing wrong, the person you broke up with did nothing wrong), it's entirely natural for people to change over time. This is a good thing, even if it feels bad at times. If your relationship didn't have what it took to endure then put your energy into figuring out why and what could be done to make the next one more resilient. Good relationships require a lot of honesty and growth, and this is a great opportunity to practice honesty with yourself and use what you learn to develop your understanding of yourself and your relationships.
- What you've lost is, generally speaking, likely to come back. If love tends to be transient in our lives, especially for the earlier portion of our lives, we should regard individual relationships specially (because relationships really are special) but avoid trapping ourselves with the notion that a single relationships is integral to our being. These relationships will come and go. We can build strong and meaningful relations with countless people, even outside of romantic relationships. Hold all relationships highly, but don't let one rule over you. It was never going to last forever, right?
- On that note, the best relationships in life can't easily be "broken up", so to speak. They don't need an element of romance to be fulfilling or rewarding. Maybe this can be a reminder to seek out or focus on friendships which have endured and continue to deserve attention and energy. True friendship is exceedingly rare in many peoples lives and worth all the energy you put into it.
- Finally, something I try to remind myself often is to be at ease with being alone. I have a family but there was a long time when I didn't, and the best thing I practised was to be happy with being alone. Of course there are times when you simply won't like being alone - you want to be around someone, you want intimacy, you want to be loved or to love someone. That's fine. The key is to allow those feelings to occur and pass through as you refocus and realign your attention to the things you can control and improve. Take action on those things and benefit from enriching your life so future you can bounce back from this stumble.
This is exactly what you need to do in order to recover what you lost in the first place.
Some key things I found helpful were:
- Asking myself why I was lonely. What was it in my mind telling me I needed to be with someone? Was it something meaningful, or something egotistical? Was it boredom? Was it curable through spending time with friends instead of seeking a partner? Over time I've found the feeling varies, the cause varies, and it's important to pin-point it.
- Focusing on what's important in my life. There are a lot of rewarding things in life beyond a romantic relationship. Many of these things are immediately accessible. For me it's woodworking, playing guitar, or free diving. And of course friends as mentioned. This is made a lot tougher due to the pandemic of course, but you almost certainly have things in your life that are rewarding and deserving of your attention.
- Making sure I take care of myself and don't allow feeling bad about a lost relationship (or anything else) to turn into a downward spiral. Continue exercising, continue reading, talking to friends and family - once you allow negative thoughts and feelings to affect your routine and self care, you risk compounding negativity until you no longer act rationally and are overwhelmed by inadvertent self-loathing. These bad feelings can become you, and nipping that at the bud is genuinely very important.
Anyway, I'm rambling - I hope you're okay and that some of this resonates to some degree. These things are extremely personal and everyone will handle it slightly differently. What's useful to one person is useless to another. Regardless, if you're feeling down, hang in there and remember that this too will pass.