Being broken up with by someone you are in love with is more painful than them dying

r/

When the person you are in love with breaks up with you (when they consciously and deliberately decide not to be in a relationship with you), it hurts more than when the person you are in love with dies (when the relationship ends due to unfortunate circumstances).

In both cases, you loose all contact to that person, only in the first case, it’s a matter of unrequited love (rejection and abandonmet).

Comments

  1. AutoModerator Avatar

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  2. RickyRacer2020 Avatar

    Better to be Chosen than Unchosen.

    Being Unchosen bites.

  3. Ninjachuckz Avatar

    I feel your brother but it’s important for growth, you’ll be a better person afterwards! You can do it!

  4. WiggleSparks Avatar

    My dog dying hurt worse than both of those things.

  5. truthsayer111 Avatar

    I can’t imagine having to deal with knowing another dude is backshotting your former partner

  6. whatsmypassword73 Avatar

    Widow here, you have no idea what this pain is, trust me.

  7. Deep-Recording-4593 Avatar

    It definitely kills ☹️

  8. Stenktenk Avatar

    Heavily disagree. If my girlfriend broke up with me it would hurt like hell, but I would probably eventually get over it (maybe in a few years), but if my girlfriend were to die then there is a good possibility that I would want to go with her.

  9. Tortietude0 Avatar

    Self-centered people think this way

  10. Interesting_Pea_5382 Avatar

    It is painful on both counts! I physically lost (30 years ago) and I also lost emotionally to a guy (40 years ago) who was treated like a rock star and I decided not to compete anymore and it was extremely painful for me
    I think there is a sadder pain with emotional because they are still able to revisit and reopen the wound

  11. kay_good913 Avatar

    My first husband died and I don’t know that I agree… even if you end in the worst of worst of worst terms, there is always a tiny piece of you that knows, whether realistic or not, you could potentially get back together one day. When they die, that’s it. Done. Never again. It is completely finite. Knowing that you will never even see their face again hurts so bad…

  12. kungfudidgeridoo Avatar

    Spoken by someone who has never dealt with the death of a loved one before. Very childish opinion.

  13. Fantastic_Witness_71 Avatar

    This just sounds like you don’t love anyone

  14. Rex-Bannon Avatar

    Yeah, for you. Thinking like this is probably why they broke up with you.

  15. Just-a-random-Aspie Avatar

    Tbh they both hurt equally for me

  16. CallMeSisyphus Avatar

    I’m a widow. I’ve been through breakups, and breakups do not even come close to the pain of my husband dying.

    Someday, you may find yourself in my shoes, and you’ll realize what a profoundly terrible thing you’ve said here. For your sake, I hope that day never comes, because I wouldn’t wish this hell on anyone.

  17. Sheerluck42 Avatar

    It’s also not usually your fault if the person dies. But it always feels like your fault to get broken up with.

  18. Mammoth_Teeth Avatar

    You’ve clearly never lost someone important to you. 

  19. JesusIsJericho Avatar

    As someone who has gone through both? No.

    Take a lap

  20. aBeverage0fSorts Avatar

    No; maybe ACCOUNTABILITY is hurting you lmao but it ain’t them. What you do for them to break up with you?

  21. Samael13 Avatar

    If you’d rather your ex be dead than broken up with you, they were right to break up with you. You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Being dumped sucks, but I’m glad to know my exes are alive and doing well with their lives. Having someone you love die is so much worse. I only hope you forget you ever posted this by the time it happens to you.

  22. TheEpicSquish Avatar

    ….uh. No.
    It’ll be sad and upsetting but I’ll move on eventually. If things were amicable I can still chat and see them.

    If they’re dead???? All of that gone. it’s over. Complete they’re gone and you’ll never get them back or talk or hear how they are or even know if they’re around. And that pain hurts much much more.

  23. kitty7855427 Avatar

    I see you’ve never had to break up with someone you’re in love with

  24. MortemPerPectus Avatar

    Yeah… no. I don’t even need much in the way of life experience to say for sure that having someone die is a lot worse than them just leaving. One is forever and unwanted by most of the time both participants, the other comes with reasons and doesn’t necessarily mean forever.

  25. theblackgoldofthesun Avatar

    Ngl, as someone who’s lost people very dear to me through both death and rejection. I am wholly offended. Losing someone because they chose not to be with you is an offense to the ego. Losing someone because they died literally warps your sense of reality.

  26. constancejph Avatar

    Just trying to find an unpopular opinion aren’t you op?

  27. sunshinecrashed Avatar

    something tells me you haven’t experienced the latter…

  28. FamiliarRadio9275 Avatar

    Are you basing this from experience? If so, I can’t entirely disagree as this is how you feel. 

    However, breaking up is a severed relationship with at least one person loosing that emotion or some back stabbing incident. If they die, the love had an unexpected drop off and you would never be able to see them again. 

    I feel like due to wagering situations, in general, you’re wrong.

  29. Jerico_Hellden Avatar

    You get over being broken up with when you find someone else. You never get over it if they die. You might move on but they were and “now” always will be your true love and you’ll have to settle for your second love.

  30. KhadgarIsaDreadlord Avatar

    This is hands down the most narcisistic out of touch take I have ever read on reddit. That’s impressive, good job. Upvoted.

  31. snakpakkid Avatar

    I disagree. I see the other person as their own person apart from me. Because while it devastatingly hurts, it only hurts me when we can no longer be together.
    Them dying it’s so endlessly heartbreaking. They no longer exist, their dreams, their memories, their hopes and wants and their whole life that was ahead of them has ended and heartbreak is left in its place, not just for me but for their family, friends and those that they created bonds with in their lives. They don’t ever get to love and built a family even if it’s not with me. Thinking of a world where they no longer exist even if it’s not with me by their side really really hurts to think about. But that’s just how I feel about it.

  32. AccomplishedPea8024 Avatar

    Probably untrue tbh

    But – to give you credit, a breakup if rough enough does actually stoke the grief process

    The main reason for this, is that you feel invalidated on an egoistic level – which is real and valid and just kinda how it works

  33. No_Meringue_8736 Avatar

    This is either a shit post or you’re 12 and have never dealt with grief. Coming from someone who’s lost multiple family members (one of them being a parent) and friends (one of them being someone I was in love with but we never got together), I would much rather think those people were out there okay, living their lives and that we just didn’t talk anymore than think of the fact that they’re gone and the ways they left this world. 

  34. AncomBunker47 Avatar

    Unpopular and correct. Either when you have a relationship or don’t with them, you feel used, discarded like trash, played when they refuse or break up. When they die, you get really sad but that person is forever remembered by you in a good light, you can look back and say that person loved me (regardless if they actually did).
    It’s not like getting rejected will be your growth always, at some point it’s just doom. Love becomes a poison you can’t enjoy and have to make do with hookups and small affairs with whoever agrees to it with you.

  35. basedaudiosolutions Avatar

    Disagree. They’re equivalent to each other because you go through the same stages of grief with a breakup that you go through with the death of a loved one. Maybe that’s just my experience, though.

  36. comegetthesenuggets Avatar

    Thanks for letting us know you’ve never experienced the death of a partner

  37. XxMarlucaxX Avatar
  38. Late-Inspector-1664 Avatar

    “Not yours woman sounds better than dead woman”- quote from my favorite writer and I strongly agree with that

  39. Student-bored8 Avatar

    Don’t agree at all lol
    Recently broke up with someone I love. It really hurts but it’s not the same level as them dying.
    If your loved one just died then they wouldn’t have an opportunity to also be happy. This is a really selfish way to think because I want my ex to be happy without me. I mean I love her. I want her to be happy and find that even without me in it.
    Plus you get closure when you break up. When someone dies it very much feels like you don’t have that closure.

  40. oppositegeneva Avatar

    Have you ever experienced significant loss before?

    Wholeheartedly disagree, good unpopular opinion.

  41. Junior-Order-5815 Avatar

    I think it depends on the people. In a sense you are mourning the loss of the future life you were expecting together, and that does feel like dying. But its also the sign of a disordered relatio ship, if not an outright abusive one.

  42. ZakWhatTheFak Avatar

    This just isn’t true. If someone leaves you, that means they don’t care about you anymore. Sure, you could ask yourself what if I did this and what if I did that, but at the end of the day, they don’t want you anymore and it’s over. If your significant other dies, especially when things are good between you two, you literally got your story cut short by cruel fate. Thats where the endless obsession of what life could’ve been like with them stems from. Unlike being broken up with, where someone actively decides to discard you, someone dying means they wanted to be with you, but it was taken away from you.

  43. TourNormal2084 Avatar
  44. TheDawn323 Avatar

    Dying can be painless, your logic is iron tight.

  45. strangelyahuman Avatar

    Thinking about my bf breaking up with me hurts my heart and makes my chest sink. The thought of him passing away alone is enough to make me tear up and cause anxiety. I would never wish his life to just be over if he chose to not be with me

  46. kordnishcr Avatar

    To me, this is like saying a normal midlife crisis is worse than being falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

  47. deensuk Avatar

    I just know there’s a very insecure girl behind this post

  48. KaiLiLady Avatar

    Have you ever had a partner die, OP?

  49. Blueberrycake_ Avatar

    I’m glad I don’t have this mentality.

  50. whiskey_tang0_hotel Avatar

    Spoken like someone who’s never had a loved one die. 

    My dad misses my mom every single day. It’s been 6 years and our whole family still hurts from losing her. It left a huge void in all of our lives. 

    If you got broken up with by someone who you love, was it really love? People who love you wouldn’t ever hurt you deliberately. 

  51. chatham739 Avatar

    I have been widowed twice and divorced once. Yours is a really dumb comparison. It’s as bad as people who compare childbirth with getting kicked in the testicles. Each person’s pain and relationships are different. In my case, my losing my third husband to cancer after an 18 year battle has destroyed my mental and physical health.

  52. ldblackston Avatar

    It really does hurt 🥹

  53. BaconBombThief Avatar

    You been through both?

  54. NSA_van_3 Avatar

    Have you been in love with a person who then died?

  55. AlwaysATortoise Avatar

    If you love someone and would find it less painful to see them dead rather than just not want you, maybe you shouldn’t be talking about love.

  56. StrawbraryLiberry Avatar

    I think it’s fair that you feel this way. Different people seem to experience rejection or abandonment feelings at different intensities and in different contexts.

    For me, I can respect when someone turns me down or breaks up with me. It’s not fun and takes some adjustment, but, unrequited love is a normal fact of life. It happens. I like wishing the other person well & I usually stay supportive after breakups.

    Grief on the other hand is the worst mental pain I have personally felt. I have lost people I loved, and found a guy I had been in love with dead. And it was one of the hardest feelings I’ve ever experienced. It tore me apart and almost 10 years later I’m a completely different person, and I’m still not really okay since.

    I watched a relative grieve her husband after his sudden death too. I can only imagine how horrible it feels when you shared a whole life and had kids with someone, and now they’re just gone. Gone on Christmas. Gone on your birthday. Gone on your anniversary. Gone on pizza night.

    That shit is horrible.

    In both scenarios they are gone, but I think it feels worse that their essence is not out there anymore, anywhere.

  57. AdSerious8957 Avatar

    This person must be experiencing a lot of pain after a breakup to post this. It is so hard, however once you get over the first months/year, sometimes you can be comforted by wishing the person who broke your heart all of the best… despite that your paths won’t cross again. I can’t imagine how awful it would be if they died.

  58. Hakazumi Avatar

    > double-checks the sub I’m in

    goddammit, take the upvote and leave

  59. sydthebeesknees Avatar

    this is not an unpopular opinion, it is callous ignorance

  60. natsugrayerza Avatar

    71 comments and we’re all disagreeing so there should be more upvotes! That’s how we get to see actual unpopular opinions here. If you don’t upvote opinions because you don’t like them, we’ll only see popular opinions.

  61. ChaoticAmoebae Avatar

    If you truly believe that I don’t think you have loved a person so much as you loved the idea of them.

  62. Moselypup Avatar

    I know the feeling. It was during the pandemic. We truly loved each other but the entire world shut down. I ended up in Los Angeles and she was stranded in Norway. We tried to keep the romance alive. We would cook together via facetime…watch movies…talk for hours. But long distance can kill romances. I so dearly wanted to hold on to her but she was letting go. She even told me she met someone else. I told her i didn’t care. I would be kn the background. I was still in love but she slowly started to move on. One day she told me she told that decided to chose the other guy over me. She told me to never wait for love the way i did. In many ways she did me a favor. Being in love makes you do irrational things. Hell, i was even googling how to get on a fishing trawler to travel to norway from the US during the lockdown. LOL. I never spoke to her again but one day her IG profile showed up on my recommended friends list and the guy ahead of me chose looks like me. And they have a kid. Anyways im drunk. Heres to the big what ifs in life. It only took a pandemic from stopping me from finding love LOL

  63. cupofteaf Avatar

    Upvoting this cause this is a crazyyyyy take LOL

  64. Ok-Reflection2211 Avatar

    I think this is a good unpopular opinion. Knowing you’ve been rejected hurts but losing someone and never even having the option of seeing them again hurts way more . I strongly disagree.

  65. iRAfflicted Avatar

    What hurts is seeing your spouse hit themselves in the face, bruise themselves by the action, then call the cops on you. Having taken a picture and now you’re on probation or convicted because of lies.

  66. Capital_Drawer_3203 Avatar

    No it is not. In the case of death you lose someone who loved you. In the case of broking up you lose someone who doesn’t give a fck about you

  67. Alinea86 Avatar

    You don’t carry the pain of a break up your whole life. You do carry the pain of someone dying forever though

  68. TravelingSong Avatar

    I used to feel this way. I went through an excruciatingly painful divorce, which included betrayal from multiple people. I remember wishing he’d died. I felt it would have been a lot easier than living through the pain of that loss. 

    Later, I married someone wonderful, someone who is kind and giving and who I love in a big, unselfish way. When you love someone good—when it’s real love, you don’t wish them dead. You may even value their life over your own. I realize now that my first marriage wasn’t real love. I was reacting to pain and betrayal, not out of love. 

    I have a lot of health issues now and I have, sincerely, told my husband that I would understand if he wanted to be with someone healthier. I feel bad for holding him back—I want him to live a happy and fulfilled life. But he loves me so much that leaving me wouldn’t make him happy. And I love him enough to let him go, if that’s what he wanted. 

    It’s a whole different level of love than the selfish, hurtful kind I lived through before. I would never, ever want him to die for any reason, even if he couldn’t be with me anymore. I love him too much. 

  69. SenorDiabro Avatar

    It’s definitely an unpopular opinion given how stupid it is lol

  70. smol_n_fluffy Avatar

    Not an unpopular opinion, just ignorant and naive.

  71. MirrorOfSerpents Avatar

    Unless you’ve had the love of your life die & you’ve been divorced then no. You can’t say what is more painful if you haven’t experienced it.

  72. elphiekopi Avatar

    Um, no. That is a very selfish love. You love them and need them to love you. You are more hurt that they are happy without you than if they cease to exist?

    That’s possession, not love.

  73. Inevitable_Series_97 Avatar

    I think that only works when you view the person you are in a romantic relationship with as an object. If I care for someone, I would rather them seek happiness than die.

  74. discofucker Avatar

    damn i wonder why they broke up with you

  75. AwkwarsLunchladyHugs Avatar

    As a widow, I can tell you that you are wrong.

  76. EastLeastCoast Avatar

    Well, updoot for actually being unpopular, I guess.

  77. NightDreamer73 Avatar

    It would destroy me if my husband died. I’m a romantic, so I’d be terrified that my one true love, my soulmate, was forever wrenched away from me. With a break up, I’d have the comfort that they must NOT have been “the one” if they chose to leave me

  78. SadlyUnderrated Avatar

    This feels like the kind of thing Joe Goldberg would say.

    News flash. If you’d rather your ex be dead than be with someone else, that’s not real love.

  79. SoundTight952 Avatar

    Tell me you’re a narcissist without telling me you’re a narcissist, and I don’t believe in throwing psychological terms around like candy from a Mardi gras float.

  80. Coocooforshit Avatar

    r/im14andthisisdeep

  81. LD_Bright_ Avatar

    I haven’t lost a partner or experienced a break up yet. Knock on wood. Beyond the fact that I instinctively believe losing someone you love permanently is immediately way worse, to put it into more objective terms & focusing yourself and not the partner you loose: in one case you’re losing someone who actively loves you back. In the other you lose someone who chooses not to be with you.

  82. Lapidot-Wav Avatar

    Why do you have to make pain competitive? Both people in their respective hypotheticals should feel like their pain is valid and be given the grace to work their way through it. As a kid I used to believe that a parent abandoning you is more painful than a parent dying but when I matured I realized we all have our pain and have to work through it, it doesn’t need to be a race or a ranking