Your partner has left the building—physically, emotionally or both. Your world is slipping way, so anxiety takes over. You’re afraid you’ll never again experience what you had with this person. Even if your relationship was dysfunctional, you look at this person as your reason for living, thinking they have some specialness that’s irreplaceable. You create a bigger story about what this abandonment means, and if you don’t have a strong sense of self-worth, their leaving makes you feel worthless. These feelings aren’t rational, but they are incredibly intense and very real.

Abandonment usually starts in childhood, and the really screwed up part is that you’ll continue looking for people to abandon you because it’s what you’re used to. Plus you probably abandoned yourself before your partner did. Instead of connecting with your feelings, you remained in a constant state of reaction. Everything you did was in response to your partner, rather than coming from a place of honoring your needs. Abandonment is not all about the other person. You do it to yourself all the time. So instead of focusing on why they left, connect with those awful pangs of abandonment. Stay present and ask yourself why you feel worthless. How do you show yourself a lack of value? Digging into this is important because if you don’t deal with your feelings around abandonment, you’ll keep looking for people who will leave you.