5 Things You Should Never Say to a Girl Going through a Breakup

When one of our close friends is going through a breakup, we naturally want to be there for her. And, of course, every girl needs her friends’ support when she’s going through heartbreak as well. However, sometimes a well meaning friend can unintentionally say the wrong thing and just make a heartbroken girl feel a lot worse about the whole situation. If one of your friends is currently going through a breakup, here are a few things you should try to avoid saying to her.

1.”It’s about time! He was a jerk anyways.”

Great, so you always thought her ex was a jerk–you’re just now telling her this? If you really thought he was a jerk from the start, you could have spoken up sooner about why you thought so and possibly saved her some heartache. Not only that, now you’ve made your friend feel bad for ever liking him in the first place. Obviously, everyone else could see how bad he was for her, so she must have been blind to not see it too. Additionally, a breakup does not automatically cancel out the feelings that were involved. Your friend probably still cares about him, and hearing him bashed is just going to hurt her too.

2. “He’ll come crawling back, just you wait.”

There are many reasons why you don’t want to say this to someone who is still raw from a fresh breakup, chief of which is that she may be hoping that you’re right. If she is the one who got dumped, chances are she is still struggling to accept it and is retaining hope that it might not really be over. The truth is, though, he probably won’t be coming crawling back, and you’re just giving your friend false hope. On the other hand, if she’s the one who broke up with him, having him come beg her to take him back is probably the last thing she wants to happen.

3. “Being single is the worst, isn’t it?”

You may just be trying to relate to her and show compassion; after all, you’re single too, so you know how hard it can be. But what you’re really doing is rubbing it in. She’s barely even began to accept the fact that she is no longer in a relationship, and you’re already telling her how awful it is to be alone. The last thing she needs right now is to be made to feel even worse about her new single status, and that’s precisely what saying this will do to her. By saying this, you’re also making it sound like it’s impossible to bounce back–like being single is the end of the road, and she’s going to be stuck there for a while–not something that the heartbroken want to hear.

4. “Everything happens for a reason.”

This has never made sense to me. People say this whenever something bad happens, whether it’s a breakup or losing someone in death. When you say this, you’re trying to make sense of something that, at least right now, just doesn’t make sense. A heartbroken girl doesn’t want to hear how fate or destiny or some greater picture that’s out of her control led to this moment where she’s alone and upset. Telling her that it happened for a reason is actually dismissive of her feelings. It’s like you’re saying that she shouldn’t be upset because, well, it must have happened for a reason. Whether there’s really reason behind it or not, it still hurts.

5. “You’ll get over him and find someone new soon enough.”

When a wound is still fresh, we don’t want to think about how it’s going to feel in a day or a week or a month when it’s started to heal–we just want to wallow in our misery and cry about the pain for a while. Yes, she’s going to get over him, hopefully sooner than later, but she needs to know that it’s okay to move on at her own pace. She may not be ready to think about being with anyone other than him yet. Especially if it was a long relationship that she just got out of, the idea of “getting over him” is so strange and foreign and it’s likely something she isn’t quite capable of conceptualizing right now.

When it comes to supporting your friends as they go through a breakup, sometimes it’s better just to not say anything. Usually, you’ll find that a listening ear is much more valuable to them than a cliche piece of advice that they’ve probably heard over and over already.