Psychology Today | 20.08.2026 03:24
For most people, moving on after a central part of their lives ends may be sad, but it isn’t usually devastating. The end of a relationship, a job, or a home can be challenging; you don’t know what’s next or how your life will reconfigure. Some people, however, particularly those who’ve suffered difficult early losses, may fear that their lives won’t reconfigure. For them, endings of any sort can seem ominous. I know. I have that person. Ending a seven-year live-in love relationship in my thirties left me with the confusing combination of relief, as if landing on the far shore of a river I wasn’t sure I could swim across, and dread that I’d landed in a place so foreign I’d be lost forever.
