Coping With Heartbreak During Covid-19

By Chelsey Jaipersaud | Published by March 05, 2021

They say nice guys always finish last…Nice guys are the ones who are always there to boost your confidence. Nice guys don’t get the pretty girl or the popular girl or the one with the bubbly personality.

They forgot to mention that nice girls finish last too. 

Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to meet a guy who will give you his number rather than his Snapchat, the same he uses to send to 10 other girls a “you’re so beautiful”. 

Maybe he won’t give you one of those adorable pet names in order to avoid getting your name confused with the other options on his list. 

Maybe he won’t send you a picture of him and another girl smiling all close and cozy after ignoring you for a week and maybe you won’t have to cry yourself asleep wondering why you weren’t good enough for the boy who made you smile every time his name popped up on your screen. 

And maybe you are more vulnerable to this kind of situation in the age of Covid. Heartbreak comes in all forms within the lives of young adults, but with the Covid-19 pandemic, there is the added weight of extra stressors including anxiety, depression, health problems and an increased use of harmful substances. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a healthy way to cope with everything is by connecting with others. Human beings crave connections and social interaction, which is probably why people might have even tried to look for a relationship this past year.

“I think the desire for closeness is so much stronger for people now,”said  Kean student Morgan Dietz, who is majoring in Psychology.  

Dietz understands the reason behind wanting to find a relationship during Covid because people have been stripped of relationships, but she wouldn’t advise anyone trying to date right now. 

“I just don’t think it’s worth it.” Dietz said. 

People often fall into the “talking stage” where they spend months getting to know a person and growing attached to them, only to have one of the two completely stop talking without any explanation. This is otherwise known as ghosting. 

Some people take it more personally than others, especially if it was their first real connection with someone. They might feel disrespected and frustrated after sharing so much of themselves. They might often wonder what they did wrong and feel a need for closure. 

According to Psychology Today, one of the most insidious aspects of ghosting is that it doesn’t just cause you to question the validity of the relationship you had, it causes you to question yourself. 

 “I don’t want to sound harsh at all but I don’t know that anyone is necessarily entitled to closure,” Kean Psychology professor Becky Diaz said. 

Diaz further explained that closure for one person may be sitting down and doing an autopsy of the relationship and everything that went wrong. For another person that can feel stifling and overbearing she said. 

It is ok to not understand someone’s choices and still respect them. That being said, sometimes it feels cruel and unjust to have someone just up and quit on you. It may even be a constant recurrence for that person and knowing that it was done to you just makes it even more difficult to deal with. 

“All humans have an inner critic and I think that someone blaming themselves can lead to that inner critic getting louder and causing real harm to the person’s self love and compassion,” Diaz said. 

Anyone who is in a similar situation or struggling to find themselves after feeling lost due to an unfortunate situation should recognize that their feelings are valid and how one feels does matter.

“Your worth remains the same whether someone else acknowledges it or not,” Diaz said.

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