And unfortunately, many of us have also lost said person, making them “the one that got away.” These separations leave a noticeable hole in our lives and our hearts, triggering deep grief and even panic. 

Getting over someone you believed was “the one” is no easy feat. For some time following the split, you might experience denial, anger, depression, and even fear that you’ve lost your one chance at true love. But I promise you: that’s not the case.

Here are three tips for getting over the person you thought was your soulmate.

1. Challenge the Idea of ‘The One’

Growing up, I believed there was only one person created specifically for me. I’d read countless romance novels that only fueled that sentiment, hoping one day, I would meet my person and settle down for a peaceful, fulfilling life with them.

But over the years—and after experiencing different forms of heartbreak—my perspective has shifted. Call me jaded, but I don’t buy into the myth of “the one” anymore. Personally, I believe there are many people with whom we can fall in love, form a healthy attachment, and build a beautiful future.

Love might be a feeling, but it’s also a choice. And if someone chooses to betray or walk away from you, they probably aren’t meant to stay in your life. That doesn’t make them the villain, nor does it make you unworthy, and nor does it invalidate the bond you two shared. It merely means they were your person for a season—”the one” to show you how deeply you can love someone, but not “the one” to move forward with.

2. Understand that Love Does Not Equal Ownership

As I mentioned earlier, someone can be “the one” for a season. Long-term commitment is not the end-all, be-all. Life is ever-changing; relationships ebb and flow. Even if you believe the notion that “the one” is the person you will commit to spending your life with, understand that nothing is ever permanent or guaranteed—sometimes not even marriage. People divorce, spouses get sick, dynamics shift…

Of course, this isn’t to say marriage shouldn’t be your goal—I personally hope to get married and start a family one day. Marriage is a beautiful commitment, one that should be respected and taken seriously. But even a lawful union does not equate ownership over another person. Your spouse is still an individual, just as you are.

3. Know You Won’t Miss Out on What’s Meant for You

I remember going through a gut-wrenching heartbreak in my mid-20s, grieving someone I thought for sure would be the father of my kids someday. After nearly six years of dating, we’d talked of getting engaged, tying the knot, checking off all the boxes society has ingrained in us.

But ultimately, we realized we were growing apart more than together. We were still so young, and we had much growing to do individually. 

After the breakup, I thought for sure I would never find someone like him again. And I was right. 

No two people—no two partners—are the same. We all bring out different sides of each other, and I truly believe that certain people come into our lives when we need them, whether to teach us valuable lessons or to show us the kind of love we deserve.

I might not have met someone like my ex, but I have met new types of people. New friends, new partners, new connections that helped me grow in ways I wouldn’t have—couldn’t have—with him. And I’m sure he can say the same about me.

Does that take away from the relationship we once had? Of course, not. If anything, it’s a testament to how genuine our bond was at the time. 

Respect and express gratitude for the love you shared with your ex while acknowledging that your relationship didn’t work out for a reason. Trust what’s around the corner, and believe you will never miss out on what’s truly meant for you.

The post 3 Tips for Getting Over the Person You Thought Was ‘The One’ appeared first on VICE.

A month ago, the 21-year-old from the north Indian city of Dehradun opened a small cafe, and now, knocking back cups of special masala chai during conversations with his customers is a regular occurrence in his life. What’s drawing new visitors to the cafe isn’t necessarily his jovial personality though, it’s the bizarre name: “Dil Tuta Aashiq” (“Heartbroken Lover” in Hindi). As weird as the name might be, it sums up precisely why Batra decided to set up the cafe—to bond with people over heartbreak.

A couple of years ago, Batra was in a serious relationship when his then girlfriend told him they couldn’t be together anymore because her parents didn’t approve of her seeing someone—a classic Indian cockblock. The breakup hit him hard and he spent months, including the lockdown, holed up in his room, unable to do anything except play mobile games like PUBG. It felt like his life had come to a standstill. But eventually, he realised that time was moving as always, it was him who was stuck in a limbo. He wanted to do something to help people who were going through similar ordeals. So, he took the plunge and invested all his savings into setting up his cafe.

“Dil Tuta Aashiq is not a business, it kind of acts as a support group for young people nursing broken hearts. Heartbreak is a universal struggle for the youth, and people often conflate it with illnesses like depression and trivialise them,” he told VICE. “I want young people to know they’re not alone, and that their lives can still go on.”

His idea was met with friction from his father, who’s a property dealer and didn’t want Batra’s frivolous ideas to tarnish his reputation in a culture where young people are judged for dating, and heartbreak isn’t openly talked about.

“Initially, he’d taunt me every day. My printing guy called him up once because I was getting ‘Dil Tuta Aashiq’ printed on a large banner. But when one day his client’s family suggested my cafe for a meeting, saying they really liked it, he realised maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be,” said Batra, who’s running the cafe with help from his little brother.

While the cafe sees customers of all ages, the majority of visitors are young people with stories similar to Batra’s. He thinks it’s the name that draws them in.

“Earlier today, a couple of guys came by. They wanted to know the story behind the name. When I told them, one of them pointed to the other and said, ‘This is going to be him in a couple months.’ Instinctively, I asked him if his girlfriend was getting married to someone else. Turned out, my hunch was right,” said Batra.

Touched by his concern, the customer gave him a hug and shared his story with him.

“I spoke to him for a bit, and he instantly felt better. He took my number and I’m sure he’s going to come back regularly just to talk to me and surround himself with positive vibes,” said Batra, whose sole aim was to have strangers confide in him with stories they can’t possibly share with people around them. “You can’t always tell your family or friends you’re heartbroken. They might laugh or take it lightly. But when you meet a stranger with a similar story, the shared pain of heartbreak helps you trust them instantly,” he said.

In only a month of opening its door to customers, the cafe has evolved into a hotspot for jilted young lovers to come and bond over their broken hearts. Many come and sip on a cup of chai in the memory of their past lovers, even requesting music that helped them first get over their exes. “Dil Tuta Aashiq is no longer just a cafe, it has turned into a vibe that people relate to if they have experienced heartbreak in the past or are going through it right now,” said Batra.

Ironically though, the cafe has also become a popular date spot, especially for teenagers who visit for the reasonably priced food and in hopes of not having to endure the same heartbroken fate as most of the regulars. They make it a point to tell Batra they’re not going to end up like this. 

Is it weird for him to see young love blossoming in the very space he built in homage to heartbreak?

“I just laugh it off, I’ve had time to deal with it now. I just say, ‘god bless you’ to them,” he replied.

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But apparently, the irony isn’t lost on the couples visiting the cafe either, and it has led to some comical situations. A few days ago, a young couple visited the cafe. It was the girlfriend’s birthday, and she asked her boyfriend why he brought her to a place with a name like that.

He cheekily replied, “This is where I’m going to end up if we ever part ways, so I thought I might as well check it out.”

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The post This Indian Cafe Wants To Help You Get Over Your Ex appeared first on VICE.

Most people who’ve experienced particularly brutal break-ups are familiar with a certain equation, thrown around by friends “just trying to be helpful” or found by you on the 2:00 AM Google search “when will breakup make me not want to die.” And the equation is this: Getting over a person takes half the time you were together. So if you dated Jeremiah for eight months, and he just ended things because he “can’t be a good boyfriend right now,” it should, theoretically, take you four months to get over his noncommittal ass.

x/2 = y. (In this equation, x is the amount of time, in months, you dated, and y is the amount of time, in months, it will take for you to stop baiting him on your Instagram story.)

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Obviously, the process of getting over someone isn’t as simple or reductive as that equation suggests. But it makes sense why people cling to it.

“The equation is mostly just a way for people to feel like their pain has a finite time stamp – especially if you have strong feelings for someone you dated for a short amount of time and want to know that you won’t be sad for too long, because you’re ‘supposed’ to feel better by now,” says one female friend I spoke with about this story. “We never have the same exact feelings of romantic attraction for two people, so how could be possibly quantify an end date to us being hurt?”

I’ve certainly clung to that equation as a metric—mentally ticking each day in chalk on the prison cell that is my brain, waiting to reach the month count that’s half the time I dated the person. (I’ve never dated someone for several years; leave me alone about it!)

And I find that, yes, halfway through the amount of time we dated, the hard feelings lessen, but I need longer. Unless I don’t, and I’m over it almost right away because I was never that into it. See, it’s almost unquantifiable. Almost.

“I feel like this equation is roughly a good guideline but definitely not hard and fast,” another friend told me. “I once got out of an eight-month relationship that I felt totally fine about within a few days, and similarly I’d say it took years for me to get over a guy I never truly called my boyfriend but fell deeply in love with over an intense six months before he moved out of the country.”

Some studies have attempted to identify the exact length of time it takes to recover. A 2007 study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology put forth the magic number at three months. The participants were 155 undergraduates who had gone through breakups in the past six months, and 71 percent of people started to feel much better at the 11-week mark. (They had been in relationships of different lengths of time, and a blend of dumpers and dumpees.) A 2009 study found that divorcees take, on average, 17 months and 26 days to get over their splits.

But every breakup is different because every relationship is different and everyone is fucked up and fucked over in different ways. So not only can there not be one number that applies to all relationships, no matter the quality or length, but there can’t be an equation that exclusively factors in length of the relationship and not, say, how well they integrated into your friend group, or if they got you into a show that hurts to watch now because it reminds you of them. Because with an upsettingly vast new array of ways to be romantically engaged with someone—as fuck buddies, as boyfriends or girlfriends, as several-night stands, as married partners, as back-burners, as two-off hook-ups—we must identify what, exactly, it is that gives us the feelings that turn us into depressed monster people until they go away.

Every breakup is different because every relationship is different and everyone is fucked up and fucked over in different ways.

I tried to come up with a new break-up equation, as simple as I could make it. Even though we’ve already established, in several long-winded ways, that a formula could never calculate or project emotional progress, sometimes we need to fix our eyes on a date when things won’t suck so much. Because when you’re in the middle of getting over someone, you feel like the pain is endless; like your dreams will always be poisoned by reunion fantasies; like you’ll think of him every time you see a 5’10 man on the L train. You need an expiration date, even an unscientific one made up by a horny sex blogger, to remind yourself that it will be over, eventually.

There are a few key variables, however, that you’ll probably object to me leaving out, like: Whether or not you’re the dumper or dumpee, or whether or not you decided to stay friends after, or whether or not the breakup was abrupt. I didn’t include these because, in my experiences and those of people I’ve talked to, they can affect the getting-over process in opposite ways, so statistically, they may cancel each other out. (For example: The easiest breakup for me to get over was the one where I was dumped; for my friend, being on the receiving end of a dump made her relationship excruciatingly hard to let go of.) If you made the choice to continue sleeping with your ex, no judgement at all — just make sure to tear up the entire formula, throw it in a trash fire and walk straight into the sea, because nothing can help you now.

Okay, here’s the formula I came up with: x/2 + j + l – t + k/2 + r = y.

x = Amount of time in months you dated. Remember: It doesn’t matter if you were in a defined relationship or not.

y = Amount of time in months it will take for you to get over them.

j = x/3 If you can’t quite wrap your mind around why the breakup happened, and you’re left feeling Clare-Danes-Trying-To-Piece-Together-a-Terror-Plot confused, and you think you were really, really good together, you have to add more time to the getting-over process because the denial/confusion period will take longer. That’s what j is. And j equals roughly a third of the amount of time, in months, you dated. Also, j comes into play if you were cheated on. But if the breakup completely checks out to you, j=0.

l = 4 Are you soft? Do things upset you a lot of the time? Add four months. If not, l=0.

t = x/3 If, at any point post-breakup, you get romantically involved with someone else, and the sex is alright and they’re sort of nice to you, take a chunk off. If you’re not dabbling in rebounds, t=0. (One man I spoke to for this piece told me, “New sex is probably the fastest way to recover from lingering feelings, especially if you can convince yourself that new person is better than old person. Relationships often take the form of a psychosexual battle and nothing helps putting someone in the rearview like convincing yourself that you’ve ‘won’ the experience.”)

k = The amount of times you check his social media per day

r=3 If you feel conflicted between blocking them or letting them watch your Instagram stories for validation that they still are interested in you, add three months. If not, r=0.

I applied this formula to my past relationships, one of which I’m still not “super over,” and it was spot on. Maybe it’s helpful for you. Hopefully, it’s useless, and you’ve never been hurt.

The post The New Breakup Equation: How Long It Will Take to Get Over Your Ex appeared first on VICE.