What Hurts More Than A Heartbreak?

The potential relationship is the worst torture in love.

We’ve all been there. First, you meet a person, maybe through a friend in common or a dating app. Next, you start chatting and get to know each other. If things go well, you go on a date.

So far, everything looks fine.

Your chemistry is so strong you can almost touch it. Your conversation happens naturally, and you have a lot of common interests. Overall, you feel comfortable around each other.

At this point, there is no serious commitment. You are not in a serious relationship; you’re still feeling the territory.

And yet, you’re starting to develop real feelings.

You can’t help it. Whenever they text, it’s like those annoying butterflies on your stomach throw a party. You really want to impress them, so you plan ahead what you’ll wear. You are entirely invested in this — not yet — relationship.

Then, without warning, it stops.

Suddenly, they take much longer to reply to your texts — and when they reply, it doesn’t leave room for a conversation. Their agenda is full, and they are always too busy to see you. It’s hard to put it into words, but you just feel they are more distant.

That’s the potential relationship. It’s a relationship that ended before it ever happened.

It’s not a breakup: you were never in a relationship in the first place. However, it hurts just as bad, and it is equally difficult to overcome. Next thing you know, you’re grieving for a relationship that never happened.

Here’s why potential relationships are just as harmful as breakups:

It leaves room to fantasize.

Breakups hurt like hell. They always represent the end of a chapter in your life — and, although it makes room for the next chapter, it’s like leaving a part of yourself behind.

But breakups tend to give you peace of mind.

If there was a breakup, it means you have experienced your love story. Although the story ended, at least you know the ending. You can rest assured that you did your best in the relationship. There’s no room for questioning.

In potential relationships is, you never got the chance to experience the love story. So it leaves room to create it yourself.

When the relationship ends before it gets official, you can fantasize about it forever. You can create countless scenarios in your head: spending Christmas together, going on vacation, or meeting their parents. You name it. The relationship can be anything you want it to be. The sky is the limit.

Our fantasy is a very tempting trap. It’s like creating the perfect relationship. And overcoming a perfect relationship — although not real — is much harder than overcoming a real relationship.

It hurts your ego.

Relationships fail for multiple reasons — different values, expectations for life, or the feelings slowly fade away. Sometimes it simply doesn’t work. The potential relationship typically doesn’t work for one reason: the other person wasn’t interested enough in you.

Think with me: you were already invested in this person. If it were up to you, you’d be in a serious relationship. So the decision not to do it was theirs. This decision doesn’t say anything about you as a person. It doesn’t determine your value. It simply means your crush thought you were not a good fit for them.

Yet, it’s a rejection without even trying.

It’s a way of saying, “I like you, but not enough to be in a serious relationship with you.” It hurts your ego directly. And, although rejections are a natural part of the dating life, nobody likes to have a hurt ego.

You’ll never know what went wrong.

In a breakup, the person is considerate enough to give you a reason for the end — whether it’s true or not. After all, a serious relationship requires this type of explanation.

But the potential relationship owes you nothing. And they are not wrong: you were not seriously committed. So why give you a detailed explanation of their decision-making?

The problem with not having a concrete reason for the end is that you have plenty of room to guess.

You can blame everything and everyone. What’s worse: this process takes forever. It’s almost a detective’s job — you go through the dates, the texts, looking for the guilty one, the mistake that ended your relationship.

Not having a reason for the end is torture.

But the truth is: knowing the reason wouldn’t change the outcome. At best, it’d make you feel better to have something to blame - or improve for the next relationship. So the best you can do in these scenarios is to not obsess with the end and just let it go.

Final thoughts.

Potential relationships happen all the time. And yet, it’s tricky not to get attached to our crush. So it’s natural that, when they end, they hurt really bad.

Recovering from these almost-relationships is challenging because they are full of mystery. We leave with more questions than answers: what went wrong? Was it me? What would’ve happened if it had worked out? But in the end, there is not much to do. Prepare your breakup kit — Netflix, ice cream, and wine — and get ready for the next dating adventure.