While heartbreak can be very painful, I feel something else we don't pay enough attention to is watching your partner fall out of love with you. This, I believe, hurts more than heartbreak.
And the reason I say this is that the moment you notice it, you start hurting, and no matter what you do, no matter how many times you try your best to repair your relationship, no matter how many times you tell them you love them, you just see it in their eyes that they are no longer emotionally present anymore.
I had this friend who was in a five-year relationship. He told me about the time he noticed his partner had left the relationship emotionally. He said there were days he called her on the phone, and after they were done talking and he tried ending the call with the usual “I love you,” she would giggle or do anything but say it back to him.
At first he thought it was nothing, but whenever he tried talking to her about it, she would complain about him complaining, saying that nothing she does for him would make him happy and that he complains too much, when in reality, all he ever wanted was to get her to love him the way she used to.
After some time, he eventually stopped complaining because he was being hopeful that maybe with time, she would start to love him all over again; all he had to do was act right and make her happy. But unfortunately, that never happened. Earlier this year, they had both gotten into an argument, a minor one, he said, but it seemed like she was already looking for a reason to leave.
So she held on to it and never forgave him about it, and that was it; that was how it ended. According to him, their relationship may have physically ended earlier this year, but to him, he knew it ended months ago when he noticed that she was no longer emotionally present in their relationship.