How to help a friend through a breakup

It’s hard to watch a friend struggle with a breakup. They are often devastated and trying to accept a major change.

Although you know you can’t change your friend’s broken relationship, you may want to try to help. It’s difficult to know where and how to begin.

There are many things you can to do make a friend’s relationship end easier and also look after yourself.

Sections

1. How can you help a friend get through a breakup
2. What to avoid when a friendship breaks down
3. How to cope with your friend’s breakup

How to support a friend going through a separation

A person who has been dumped can be particularly vulnerable. You want to be there for them as a friend, but you don’t always know what to do.

You can help your friend by doing the following things.

1. Let your friend know that you are there for them

You can be there for your friend. They must know that even though their relationship has ended, they don’t have to go through life alone.

Depending on who you are, being there for someone may mean something different. It’s more important to be emotionally available and willing to listen than to physically be with someone. It’s more important to keep in touch via text or phone if you are far apart than going out for movie nights or a day.

You friend might be feeling insecure and worried about burdening others after their breakup. You might worry that you’ll leave them. Assure them that there is no time limit on their recovery, and that you are taking care of both yourself and them.

Don’t tell your friend you are stressed out because of their breakup. Your friend should use their resources to help themselves when they are going through heartbreak.

2. You can help your friends by responding to their needs

You can’t help your friend with the emotional fallout of a broken friendship by following a single guide or map. Respond to their needs, rather than what you think they need.

Don’t assume that your friend knows what you need. It’s common for people to say “I don’t know” when you ask “What can I help with right now?” I wish it didn’t hurt as much .”. Reassure the person that it’s okay if they have no answer.

Try offering suggestions such as, em>”Would it help if I came over tonight?”/em>. You can try offering suggestions like Would it help if you came over tonight?

You may find it helpful to think about what you can do to help them meet their emotional needs. Some of the common needs that arise during a separation include:

• Needing to be loved
• Hope is needed to be able to move forward
• Feeling unsafe
• Feeling important is a need
• Feeling attractive is important
• Validation of anger, betrayal and other negative emotions
• You need to learn to trust again
• You need to believe this isn’t a sign that they are “broken” or a “bad person”.

If your friend struggles to feel attractive, for example, you can suggest going clothes shopping with them or accompanying them to the gym. You could help them to feel more secure if they were financially dependent upon their ex.

3. Support with practical tasks

It takes a great deal of energy to cope with the strong emotions that come along with a breakup. This can make it difficult to manage everyday tasks. You may be surprised at how helpful it is to offer to do some of these chores.

In many ways, helping your friend with practical tasks like washing the dishes or bringing food to them is helpful. You’re showing your friend that you’re aware of how hard these tasks can be at the moment. This will help reduce any stigma or shame they may feel.

Second, it makes them feel that they are not alone. It can be a comfort to know that others care and are on their side. Finaly, by doing these essential tasks they can conserve energy and use it for their recovery.

In this case, cleaning and cooking are important because they keep your friend’s body healthy as they cope with their grief. Someone cooking for us is also a personal gesture. You can ask: “Would like to I do some batch-cooking for you?” Or “Would like to you come over to make lunch and then help with some housework?”

You might offer to have your friend stay with you temporarily if they are really struggling. It is particularly helpful if your friend was living with an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend. Being in a new place will help to remove the constant reminder of their relationship, and make it easier for you help them with more practical things.

4. Respect the boundaries of your friends

We can become so absorbed in caring for our friend during a tough time that we forget it is not our responsibility to fix them. We may overstep their limits, and they may not have the resources to handle that.

Even though someone may be in pain and going through a painful breakup, they still have the right to decide how they want to deal with this situation. If they do not want you to bring them food or do their laundry, for example, then that is their choice. Help is only useful if it helps.

You may hear the following “no”s from your friend:

Polite “no”: The other person is trying to be helpful but refuses to help. It may be that they have been socialized not to accept help. It may be that they don’t want to disturb others or cause a scene, so even though they want help they refuse.

Soft “no”: The person rejects an offer to help they don’t really want. They are gentle to avoid appearing rude.

It can be difficult to distinguish between a polite no and a soft no when you are trying to comfort someone who is upset. You can handle both kinds of no the same way.

Respect the refusal. You should never override a person’s refusal, even if they are just being polite.

Second, demonstrate that you do not consider them to be a burden. Your offer of assistance should also be genuine.

You can say, “I would like to assist you in any way that I can.” Please tell me if you think .”

5. Encourage your friend to avoid self-sabotage

When we are already in pain, it’s easy to self-sabotage. When we are in pain, we tend to engage in self-destructive behavior. ^[ 2]

Your friend may be tempted, after a major breakup to poke their emotional wounds. It could be re-reading their ex’s texts, questioning their happy memories of the relationship or creating a fake social media profile to see what they are doing and saying.

You can’t always control what your friends do. You can gently guide them away from things that will only hurt them further. It’s not about making them feel ashamed for wanting to know what their ex-partner is doing. You’re giving them options that won’t cause them as much pain.

Even if they know that the repetition of painful experiences will not help, reassure them that it is normal for them to want to revisit these situations and find answers. Understand what makes them repeat painful events. You can ask them if there is anything you could do to help find a better coping mechanism. If they are re-reading texts late at nights because they missed a goodnight message from their ex try sending a text every evening to remind them that you are there for them.

You can help your friend out by going through social media to mute their ex.