The pain and emotions felt after a breakup are irrelevant of how long you are with that person--you could be with them a year, a few months, a decade -- but how you feel is dependent on the person. You don't feel a certain way because of how long you're with someone, or whether they were your first relationship, or second relationship, third, or whatever. You feel how you feel depending on how close you were, how much you loved them and how much of a friend they were. Facts like how many people came before or how long the relationship lasted hardly contribute to anything except initial fallout.

If you breakup with someone you loved with every fibre of your being, obviously it's going to be a lot to deal with and maybe a bit messy at first. The only thing you can do is accept your feelings, accept what passed and work on getting yourself into a place where you're happy. Relationships don't mean sacrificing a piece of yourself, and when you lose a relationship, you don't lose a part of yourself that you need to find again when you're single, rather - the breakup should serve as a reminder as to what you felt needed to change in order to move forward. Accept the role you can play in working on the issues that caused you to breakup. Accept how you feel. Afterwards, it's obviously going to take a long time to let go of those feelings---months, years, however long. That's because it was real. No amount of nights out or alcohol or girls or guys will change that. But remember that each experience is subjective and there's not just a 'this is how I feel because of a breakup' - it's more, 'this is how I feel because of breaking up with that person'. No matter how much time passes, exes do not become concepts of people, they will always be a person, and your time spent with them will always be real. It is impossible to find comfort in convincing oneself that the way they feel is wrong. Most importantly, having feelings for someone isn't necessarily a bad thing. To say, 'we're broken up, so these feelings are wrong' is only going to make the situation worse because it'll cause confusion, and - perhaps - a harmful reaction. Love is love. If you share love with someone, completely and fully as you have with no other person, there's no denying that. It might be a little misguided to try and order every single feeling, because sometimes - it doesn't all make total sense, Time and perspective help with that. But to get over someone, for instance, is to accept the facts - first off. Even if one of those facts is still having feelings for them; stigmatising ones own feelings only serves to do more harm than good. If something is right, it will find a way. But we have to let those things find their own way.