Stop using the lack of a label to invalidate your feelings.
If you spoke every day, were physically intimate, made plans, shared emotional support or behaved like partners, your brain formed expectations and attachment around repeated experiences. The absence of a formal label does not switch that off.
You can acknowledge that it mattered to you without rewriting it as a committed relationship that never existed. Both truths can sit together.
Grieve what happened and what you hoped would happen separately.
Situationship heartbreak often contains a large future-loss component: the relationship you thought it might become. Write down what actually existed and what you were waiting for. That distinction reduces the tendency to remember potential as if it had already become reality.
You are not only losing a person. You may be losing a possibility you spent months mentally investing in.
Judge the connection by consistent behaviour, not its best moments.
Mixed signals are powerful because the good moments feel like evidence that the relationship is nearly becoming what you want. Look at the whole pattern: consistency, willingness to define things, reliability, respect, availability and whether your needs could be discussed without the connection disappearing.
Attachment frameworks can help you understand your own responses, but they should not be used to diagnose the other person from a distance.
Create a boundary that matches what you actually need.
If friendship, casual contact or repeated check-ins keep restarting hope, you are allowed to reduce or stop contact. Boundaries are not punishment for somebody refusing commitment. They are a way to stop participating in a situation that no longer works for you.
A boundaries-focused book is relevant when the difficult part is maintaining that line rather than understanding the breakup itself.
Do not let 'maybe' become the relationship after the relationship.
The connection can continue mentally long after contact ends because there was never a clear final shape. You may keep thinking that timing could change, they could become ready or one conversation could restart everything.
Return to the question you can answer: does the connection available now meet what you need now? Your recovery should not depend on a hypothetical future version of somebody.
Put real reciprocity back into your social life.
Ambiguous relationships can consume enormous emotional attention while providing inconsistent security. Rebuild around interactions where people actually show up: friendships, family, groups, hobbies, gaming, community or professional support where appropriate.
Lifted Spirits is useful here because it is explicitly not dating. You can expand your social world without turning every new connection into another romantic possibility.