A breakup can feel like the end of many things at once. It’s not just a relationship that is lost. A routine, an expectation, an idea of the future, and, in many cases, a version of oneself that was organized around that bond are also lost. That’s why reducing a breakup to just “getting over it” quickly often does more violence. The pain exists, and denying it doesn’t help. But neither does staying forever within the same narrative of damage. What can transform a breakup is the ability to ask what it leaves behind, what it reveals, and what pattern it invites one to look at with more honesty.
The psychologist Elizabeth Díaz proposes precisely this shift. When faced with the end of a relationship, her first question is not who was entirely to blame or how to erase the pain as quickly as possible, but this: “What learning do you take away from this relationship?” The question seems simple, but it completely changes the place from which a loss is processed. Because it forces one to move, little by little, from pure grievance into less comfortable and much more fertile ground: that of self-recognition.
This does not mean romanticizing suffering or ignoring that many breakups truly hurt. Díaz insists on something important: first, you have to validate what you feel. If a woman needs to cry, shout, isolate herself, or simply stop functioning for a moment, that is also part of the process. Not everything is solved by being analytical from day one. There is an emotional blow that needs to be lived through. The point is not to nullify it, but to observe whether it starts to move with time. The key question is not whether a breakup hurts, but whether that pain lessens or if it remains frozen.
To explain this, Díaz offers a very useful image: thinking of the pain on a scale from zero to ten and monitoring how it evolves. If a breakup feels like a ten today, that is expected. But with the passage of days, weeks, and months, that ten should gradually decrease, even if imperfectly. If it doesn’t move, if after a long time the pain is experienced with the same intensity, if the person remains trapped in the same emotional burden, then it is no longer just a natural grieving process, but a grief that requires more attention.
This nuance matters because a breakup is a loss, and therefore involves an element of mourning. A person is lost, but also the habits that organized daily life: the good morning message, the lunch call, the plans, the company, the shared dreams. The body itself misses that structure. The mind does too. And yet, going through that loss is not just about resisting it. It can also become an opportunity to look at what is being repeated.
This is where one of Elizabeth Díaz’s most powerful contributions appears: if a person feels that, time and again, they end up in similar relationships, with dynamics that change in form but not in substance, then it is advisable to stop asking solely what the other party did wrong and start looking at what personal resonance is participating in that pattern. She states it very clearly when she observes that if a woman has repeatedly experienced infidelity, mistreatment, or destructive bonds, it is worth asking what is happening there, instead of simply concluding that “all men are bad” or that she “is not good for love”.
This step is uncomfortable because it dismantles the position of absolute victim, even without denying the harm the other person may have caused. And precisely for this reason, it can be so transformative. The question ceases to be only “what did they do to me” and expands to “what did I bring to this relationship,” “from what fear did I connect,” and “what did I tolerate because something within me was already accustomed to it”. Ursula Pfeiffer, co-founder of Yuriyana Club, summarizes it very clearly when she says: “The great question is, what did I bring to the relationship and what did I receive from the other person?”
Elizabeth Díaz proposes an even more direct question: “What were you so afraid of in the relationship?” That fear can take many forms. Fear of the other person getting angry. Fear of them leaving. Fear of them cheating. Fear of being alone. Fear of arguing. Fear of not being enough. And the way one responds to that fear ends up molding behaviors: controlling, silencing, pursuing, over-adapting, enduring silences as punishment, tolerating disrespect, or compulsively watching to anticipate abandonment.
The interesting thing is that Díaz does not stop at the current fear. She proposes going further back and asking where it was learned that this was so terrible. In other words, what past experience activates that wound so much. A heartbreak can then become a kind of mirror: it not only shows what happened with the ex-partner but also what remains alive from one’s own history. This does not make anyone guilty of what they lived through, but it does restore agency over what one can work on to avoid repetition.
Another very valuable part of this perspective has to do with the time between one relationship and another. There is no exact number of months that guarantees readiness, but there are distinct signs. For Díaz, an important difference lies in the way the experience is narrated. When a woman is completely installed in the narrative of hatred, damage, and victimization, she has probably not yet reached a sufficient point of peace. In contrast, when she can talk about what she experienced with more calm, recognize what she learned, and notice that she now sets better boundaries, something has already changed. She describes it with a very clear image: moving from the “victim role” to the “victorious role”.
This position does not mean denying what hurt or whitewashing harmful behaviors. It means being able to say: this showed me important things about myself. Now I know how to identify warning signs. Now I take time to get to know a person before committing. Now I better observe how they treat their family, how they handle lying, how they respond at work, what they do in everyday situations like traffic. Now I ask myself if their values align with mine and if that person can truly be a life partner, not just someone to take away the fear of being alone.
This is where another central topic of the article comes in: the social pressure many women feel regarding a partner, age, motherhood, and the supposed “expiration date”. Ursula brings this problem to the table with enormous clarity, pointing out that women have been imposed a deadline to have children, to have a partner, and even to feel desirable. This social fear of “being left alone” often pushes them to start relationships based on the “better than nothing” principle, driven by the urgency of not failing a collective expectation, not from a genuine desire or a conscious evaluation of compatibility.
Elizabeth Díaz invites us to dismantle precisely these inherited beliefs. Not all the ideas a woman repeats about love, partnership, and solitude truly belong to her. Some come from family, others from culture, others from conversations among friends that continue to reinforce the same scrutiny on women’s affective lives. That is why she proposes questioning which beliefs actually work and which do not. Not sticking with them just because “they have always been this way”.
In this process, who one talks to is also very important. Díaz distinguishes between people who help lower that “ten” of pain and people who keep it alive repeatedly. She calls them, respectively, “vitamin people” and toxic people. The difference is in who provides loving support, but also with boundaries, and who feeds the same cycle of rumination, guilt, or resentment. Not all venting helps. Sometimes sharing with certain people worsens the internal state instead of relieving it.
Ultimately, a breakup does not guarantee learning by itself. Learning appears when a woman dares to look beyond the immediate pain and honestly review what fears, beliefs, and habits she brought to the relationship. Not to punish herself, but to choose differently next time. This possibility of turning a wound into consciousness is deeply aligned with the mission of Yuriyana Club: accompanying women toward a more fulfilling emotional, physical, and sexual life through knowledge and enriching connections.
