What's a secondhand heartbreak you've experienced?

When my brother and his partner died of AIDS 6 months apart in the early '90s.

My brother died first. We loved them both, but unfortunately we had no family rights to visit his partner, and worse, his parents were hateful people who kept us from seeing him and being able to comfort him in the last 6 months of his life. He died alone, surrounded by people who despised him, and we didn't even know what city or state they had hidden him in. We only knew that he had passed when we received a formal letter from them stating that they had incinerated all of his and my brother's shared belongings to 'cleanse them of sin'.

My heart never really recovered from that, even though I was not directly involved in any of it. I was only a teenager myself, and I didn't know what I could do about any of it.

This is a bit smaller scale, especially considering the scale of some of the other responses, but its recent and had me really thinking about things. My son is a toddler and he goes to a small, private, in-home daycare. This means his cohort is small and basically a second family.

During March Break, his best buddy in the daycare went on vacation and we noticed that our son was acting up and miserable every day after pick-up. Half way through the week we noticed that his buddy was gone and we asked him if he was sad that his friend wasn't there. He cried, he said yes.

My son missed his friend for the first time and it was honestly heartbreaking. We talked to him about it, his bud came back, and we started scheduling play-dates with them outside of daycare.

My partner's loss of the ability to walk. He's wanted to travel to Europe with me, at some far future date, and flying is basically impossible at this point given the level of chair support he needs. A cruise wouldn't be impossible necessarily but they're often not great, and so much of the world feels closed off to him.

I'm trying to help him tell new stories with the new normal, and not give up hope for improvement without bullshitting him, but some days he's just so sad. And I just want to cry with him

I got divorced and went through my own really bad heartbreak, and during the course of that, a friend of mine invited me to play kickball with some friends of his that had a team. Over the course of that, I became really good friends with a couple who had just gotten married.

I got really close to them, and we went out drinking at least once a week, we went on trips all the time, I crashed at their house all the time, and they jokingly referred to me as their adopted son despite being like six years older than them. I met people that I would have never met otherwise, got exposed to a whole world of queer culture I never knew existed, and just generally had a sort of second renaissance in my life because of them. We hung out all the time and they both gave me good advice with dating while I was getting back into it, met some really horrendous girlfriends I had for brief periods over the years, and got to see me eventually meet a great woman and get engaged.

They separated about a year ago, and it was absolutely crushing. They were always such a great couple, and they always thought of me as "divorced guy", but now they were in that boat too. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone, and it sucks having to split my time between them. They both have new relationships now, and unfortunately I barely see them anymore. It sort of feels like the magic of that era has unfortunately, and what the three of us, and some other friends we had at that time is mostly gone.

I'm still friends with them and I think I'll always cherish their friendship, but I doubt it ever goes back to the way it used to be.

When my friends broke up long ago. It was rather messy, and much of the friend group fractured apart. It left scars on everyone's relationships between each other.

They've since gotten back together and have a son, though neither is meaningfully in my life anymore due to other circumstances.

I still dream about them often.

Friends lost their five year old son to an aggressive brain cancer that saw him go from (mostly) normal to dead in a matter of three weeks. Heartbreak doesn't even begin to describe it.

When my best friend got dumped a few months ago. I feel responsible for what caused the break up. His ex (the three of us used to be close, and he used to confide in us that he was having doubts about his relationship) manipulated me and commandeered my plans in order to get closer to him and sabotage things.

It first started with New Years Eve 2023, when she guilt-tripped me into ditching my original plans to do karaoke and go clubbing instead (I hate nightclubs), all because she wanted to be out with my bestie, who had already made other plans to go out with his girlfriend (said GF didn't actually come out in the end because she was unwell.) They made out. He doesn't remember.

Then she pressured me to come out to celebrate my best friend's birthday. I had already uninvited myself because it clashed with my mum's birthday meal. She fed me this narrative that he was unhappy that she didn't make a huge effort with birthday meals and that she wanted us as friends to make him feel appreciated. I was initially supportive of this, but I think part of this was because I was tipsy during that conversation and hadn't processed that she was trying to throw shade.

But then she used this to rub her feelings for him straight in his girlfriend's face and chastise her for not making an effort with his birthdays. This made her suspicious, she went through his phone, found out via looking at their DMs that they snogged on NYE and all hell broke loose. The ex tried to blame my bestie for "playing around with her feelings" and acted like this was all his fault. She had the audacity to think that his girlfriend would immediately dump him and that they'd have a laugh together, and was genuinely shocked when she confronted her with angry messages.

As for my bestie, he all but ghosted me for the next few months, and then she broke up with him when she ultimately decided she couldn't get over his infidelity. He didn't get back together with his ex because by the time he was dumped, she had already moved on to someone else. I didn't really reconnect with my best friend until after the breakup.

Now, I may be on the spectrum and not understand social cues very well, but I saw how physically affectionate, tactile and touchy-feely she was being around him while we hung out together. Either she acts like a total cocktease and is totally oblivious to it, or she had deliberately sabotaged his relationship, and after corroborating things with my bestie, I'm more inclined to believe the latter.

When I was eight years old, my uncle (my dad's little brother) and my own little brother both had prolonged illnesses and died within a couple months of each other. I was so focused on how sorry I felt for myself, and my parents held themselves together so well for me, that it took over a decade for me to grasp how unfathomably deep their own pain must have been — and must still be.

My parents didn't financially recover until I was well into adulthood, and I spent most of my childhood feeling bitter about that, too. It wasn't until I was older that I made the connection between my brother's intensive medical care (months of ECMO when it was still uncommon technology) and my family slipping into decades of financial strife. They were still getting bills in the mail years and years after he was gone.

They were younger than I am now. I don't know how they did it. They are the two strongest and kindest people I have ever known.

December and January were very difficult for our friend group. I'll share a bit here, the survivors are doing well enough but I think we've all been effected.

In high school one of my close friends and I sort of "fenced" at the top of our class for who was the "smartest kid in our grade". I tended to edge him out in English/History and he was a lot better than me at Math and Science generally speaking. On paper, he was the valedictorian and I was generally more of the party/drinking guy so as we got later into high school he pulled ahead in most of the things you could put on a college application. He applied to Harvard our Junior year and everyone just sort of assumed he would get in: His record was unimpeachable in every imaginable way.

When he got rejected, I think I took it harder than he did. I never had any intention of going there, but it really felt like they were passing judgment on me, vicariously.

From that point on, I started to really dislike that school. The recent news where they told the Trump admin where to shove it is honestly the first positive thought I've had about that institution in like 30 years.

My head canon surrounding the circumstances under which Henry Cavill quit his role as Geralt in The Witcher TV series (a role that he fought hard for and was amazing in), announced his impending return as Superman in the DC films, only to shortly thereafter announce that he would actually not be returning as Superman. Breaks my heart just a little bit more every time I think about it.

Last year at the 2024 olympics a young heptathlon athlete from Germany injured herself five minutes before the first 100 meters hurdles run. She wanted to warm-up before the race, jumped over a few hurdles and suffered an achilles tendon rupture. They moved her out in a wheelchair, she was completely devastated.

Watching this really broke my heart. These young athletes work their asses off, their whole lives are structured around their sport. The Olympics in Paris must have been a shining light, a fantastic event to look forward to in the years before, and then all these years of work and pain and hope are just blasted away by such a fucked up injury minutes before it all starts.

Such a shitty thing to happen.

George Floyd.