Why There's No Recovery Calculator Here

There used to be a calculator on this page. You answered ten questions about your breakup and it gave you back a range of months: roughly how long this was going to take. I built it, I'd already rebuilt it once to make it more honest, and in the end I took it down.

So if a number is what you came for, this page doesn't have one. What it has is why, and what I'd offer in its place.

What you might have been hoping it would tell you

People rarely look for a breakup calculator out of interest in the arithmetic. More often it's one of these.

An answer that's about you. The general advice is written for everyone, and your situation may not feel like everyone's. A form that asks about your circumstances looks like it might finally take them into account.

Whether you're behind. You're some way into this and still not right, and you'd like someone to tell you whether that's normal or whether something has gone wrong.

An edge on it. Not knowing when it eases is a large part of what makes it hard to bear. A date, even a rough one, would give the worst weeks a shape.

All three are fair things to want. The calculator was built to give them to you, and it couldn't. Not because of how it was worded, but because of what it was.

Why it's gone

The form added your answers up into a score, and the score put you in one of four bands, each with a range of months on it. Under the result it said the range was a rough guide "drawn from what's common."

There was nothing under that phrase. No study, no data set, no survey of the people who used it. I chose the bands, and I chose where the lines between them fell. The honest name for the result is my guess, printed as yours.

That would be reason enough. But even a real figure, taken from real research, would have had two problems.

The first is what a form can see. It can count the visible shape of a breakup: how long, how it ended, what's still tangled together. It can't see what the relationship was to you. Grief goes by what was lost, and a lot of what's lost doesn't show on a form. A short relationship can take a long time to get over if it carried a future you'd already started living in. A long one can end with more relief in it than anyone would guess. No set of tick-boxes holds that, which is why no form can tell you how long yours will take.

The second is what a number does once you have it. An average is true about people in general and tells you nothing about one person. But a number worked out from your own answers doesn't feel like an average. It feels like a verdict. If it's shorter than where you are, you're behind a deadline nobody actually set. If it's longer, you've been handed months you might feel you're supposed to spend feeling this way.

The result also said, in smaller print, that it wasn't a measurement of you. I meant that when I wrote it. But a range worked out from your answers, under a heading that called it your recovery timeline, is a measurement of you whatever the small print says. The disclaimer was there to make the number feel safe to hand out, and it wasn't.

I took down a no-contact calculator on this site for much the same reason, and that page explains it.

What I can tell you without a number

First, one thing. If they controlled you, belittled you, frightened you, or made you responsible for their temper, read this page differently. Coming out of that isn't the same job as getting over a breakup, and taking a long time over it isn't a sign you're doing it badly. What you know about how they treated you isn't a mood, and a kind memory doesn't cancel it. Missing them isn't a sign to go back. Talk to a domestic abuse service, where you can go through it with someone who knows the pattern. Your safety comes first.

On it being about you. It is about you, and that's exactly why nobody can calculate it. The thing you wanted the form to take into account is the thing a form can't hold. The general answers miss you for the same reason the specific one would have: nothing written in advance knows what this was.

On being behind. There's no schedule to be behind. Still feeling it months on is not, on its own, a sign that anything has gone wrong. Neither is a bad week after a run of good ones: that's how this tends to move, not a slide back to the start. The better question isn't how long it's been. It's whether it's moving. Not fast, not on time, just moving. There's more on telling grief that's moving from grief that's going round in circles on how long it takes to get over a breakup.

On wanting an edge. I can't give you the date, and I'd be wary of anyone who offered one. What you can have is something in the weeks besides the waiting: the parts of your life that never ran through them, and anything you let slide while you were together. That's the rebuilding, and it's yours to do at whatever pace you can manage. I can't promise it makes any of this shorter. It does mean the time is spent on you rather than on the wait. When you're ready for what comes after, that's Start Fresh.

If you're not okay

Still hurting months later is ordinary, whoever ended it. But if it has stopped feeling like grief and turned into something that isn't lifting (you're not sleeping, not eating, can't work, can't see any version of yourself on the other side), that's past what a web page can help with. Take it to a doctor or a therapist, and tell someone close to you what's going on.

If you're thinking about hurting yourself, don't wait to see whether it lifts. Contact a crisis line or emergency services now. Find A Helpline lists free, confidential services by country.

One thing to watch for

Taking the calculator down doesn't stop anyone doing the sum. You may find yourself running it anyway, in your head, in either direction. We weren't even together that long. I should be over this by now. And now you're behind a deadline you set yourself. Or: it was most of my adult life. This is going to take years. And now there's a stretch of your life written off before you've lived it.

Either way it's the same form, with you filling it in and marking it. There's no sum here to get right. The question that's yours is smaller: is this moving? You can answer that today, without a number, and nobody else can answer it for you.