I’ll give you some background but I’ll probably get paranoid and delete it later.
After the 2.5 year relationship I remained single for 7 years. He also had a kid who I bonded with and have never seen since, so I don’t know if I could date someone with a kid again because that’s the only part that hurt.
The brief relationship, we knew each other for 9 months as we worked together (dumb idea, I know) prior to dating for 4. Every time we had a difficult conversation he’d drive back home to his parents house. That was the first relationship where I would actually speak calmly rather than swearing and increasing my volume due to frustration. I also used statement such as “I feel” instead of “you did” or “you said”. I should add that I quit my job after 2 weeks when another opportunity arose because I felt uncomfortable working in the same place, plus I hated that job anyway.
We hid our relationship from the colleagues we previously shared so he never changed his Facebook to acknowledge our relationship, that’s not a big deal, but less than two weeks after he broke up with me, he blocked me. I asked a friend to look on his Facebook. She sent a screenshot that he was in a relationship.
Two girlfriends invited me on a road trip for New Years. I didn’t want to go but knew I should.
In mid-March I looked on his Facebook through a burner account and also his girlfriends. I didn’t look because I wanted him, but because I predicted they would break up in March and part of me wanted him to be miserable. I noticed a post on her page that they were expecting a baby. Our relationships likely overlapped. Finding out they were expecting a baby hurt like hell.
I forced myself to go on a date in mid-April with a guy from Tinder who I seemed to have good banter with (an INTJ. I am actually INFJ). Even for the first two to three weeks of meeting the INTJ I probably wasn’t completely over the brief relationship.
So I guess maybe from late Nov 2018 to early May 2019 I grieved. That doesn’t mean it will take you that long though.
I continue to see the INTJ but he has made it clear we are only friends. It’s going to hurt like hell when it wraps up as I quite like him. I have been practicing secure attachment on/with him without verbalising this as it sounds nuts. I’ve forced myself to go on a few dates recently to help me deal with the pre-emptive loss of this ‘just friends’ relationship, though annoyingly I find I compare them to him, so I’m working on not doing that. It’d probably be more helpful if he didn’t contact me every day as I’ve read it’s the patterns of behaviour that we miss more so than the person, which is somewhat true.
Sorry for the over-sharing. I hope it’s helpful in some capacity.
Have you looked into the stages of grief?