I could say it was a Friday. I could say, a few years ago. I could add vagueness to my story to remove myself from the sharpness of its pain. But the truth is, I know the date, the time, the weather, the exact space I was parked in. All of it. I know the song that came on the radio when I slid back into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition. I know what we were both wearing, and what we’d said.

At the time, I couldn’t have explained how it felt, other than lonely. It wasn’t heartbreak in the way most people understand it. It was disorientation, as if I’d left the essence of myself somewhere in that little house and didn’t know how to leave without it.

That was the last time I saw her, and and the last I ever will. I had tried to stop going back. I failed 11 times. Eleven times I resolved to block and delete, to never reach out again, to ignore her when she did. And each time I slid back into the same agonisingly comfortable position. Not enough, almost chosen, waiting. I sat in my car on her street afterwards, and that was the beginning of the twelfth attempt.

We call it chemistry. Most of the time it’s recognition. The person who feels like home is fine, as long as home was perfect in the first place. It rarely was. What worked wasn’t superhuman willpower. I didn’t suddenly find any. But I knew I had to break contact with her, no contact whatsoever.

Detaching from an unhealthy relationship rarely begins with a revelation, or an epiphany at an Instagram sunlit kitchen counter. It comes from becoming sick and tired of the melancholy version of yourself. Because losing yourself in obsession over another person means spending an enormous amount of time with a version of you that isn’t very appealing. I spent so long with that guy I couldn’t stand his company any more. So it wasn’t falling out of love with her. It was never love, and you can’t detach from a fantasy. It was falling out of love with the pathetic, melancholy version of me. My nervous system was on fire, and looking away from the flames wasn’t working. To put it out I had to cut off the oxygen.

No contact is not ghosting. Ghosting is disappearing to avoid a conversation you owe someone. No contact is what’s left after that conversation has happened 40 times and gone nowhere. It is the last resort of someone who has tried everything else. And it isn’t just ignoring texts and white-knuckling your way through something that already hurts. It’s deliberately removing everything that keeps you hooked into the pattern. The person, the photos, the gifts, the memories your phone insists on showing you. Think of it as A&E. You are not fixing anything in there. You are trying to stop the bleeding. And it is really bloody hard.

Two years later, I woke up, had the idea of making a video about what I’d been going through, went for a walk like I do most mornings, and posted that video to social media.

I wish there was more to it. But procrastination and overthinking steal uniqueness from us constantly, and social media is immediate, urgent even. That’s the whole reason it happened. I didn’t give myself time to think better of it.

I had about 40 followers when I posted it. Within a few hours, thousands of people had watched it and seen themselves in it. Twelve months later there were 400,000 of them, across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, and roughly nine in 10 are women. Nobody was more surprised than me.

So I kept making videos about heartbreak and how to move on from it, and to help heartbroken people make sense of what they’re going through. I’m not a therapist. I never wanted to be and I’ve never pretended to be. I went to therapy, and I understood the why. But as a practical northern man, I wanted to know what I was supposed to actually do about it.

Advice on social arrives uninvited in the middle of the night. It’s intimate, it feels personal, and I think you can tell when it’s authentic. I’ve been in the middle of that night. A man saying this lands differently. Not because I’m a man – I’m quite proud not to be a normal one – but because I’m emotionally practical. I’m not offering comfort, I’m suggesting action.

Algorithms become echo chambers very quickly, and finding people to agree with you is easy. What women don’t see enough of is a man who says it’s allowed to stop, proves it can be done, and then shows them how.

How? It ranges from a six-second trick to pull your brain back into the room, through to 30 days of practical work with me, over a dozen experts and a somatic practitioner, which is the version that actually moves the needle.

Time isn’t a healer. Work is. And I’m the embodiment of the work.

Harry Hardisty writes about relationships, heartbreak and midlife at @dadhugsforyoursoul & dadhugsforyoursoul.com His first book is out next year.