There's an excellent post put up just a while back about dealing with breakups. OP has covered a lot of stuff there. Here I'm going to share my own methods on how I dealt with the worst period of my life where I was in a horror story of a marriage, I lost my money, my job and old career, my wife (and the support of 3 sets of families), my respect, but also my illusions. This technique is of course, not totally complete as a manual to recovering from tough losses. I'd advise reading the post on breakups first. I put this as a comment there, but felt it would make a post in itself.

In this post I will stress on the importance of daily meditation, being totally true with yourself, not hiding from the pain within and purging it out and getting rid of unrealistic frames of life that aren't true in reality, which is the deepest source of the pain. It is your frame of life and your identity as whatever you call yourself being dismantled that causes the greatest pain.

I have been regularly meditating even before I reached this period. In retrospect that saved my life when I actually had to face a Category 5 Hurricane, as in some way my frame was already solid enough not to go on a destructive path of drugs, alcohol or go mad and start shooting people.

So I recommend is meditation. You should include presence / awareness meditation. There is a word for this and it's metacognition. Diversion in the form of filling yourself with work and other hobbies and even other women or whatever is good when the pain gets too strong to face directly, but sooner or later, you need to face it and let it out, or else deep pain can stay in your system for years. Over time it will drive you into a spiral of emptiness and destructive behaviors where all you do is trying to numb it and try to put a bandaid on a tumor and somehow fill up what you see as a hole in yourself.

If any thoughts or feelings come up, which they will, often violently with a lot of intensity, find a quiet place, meditate and allow your body to purge it out totally. Whatever comes up, let it. Accept it completely. Remain aware and let it all come out and go. Don't try to aim for a particular emotional state at this point, just stay awake.

This will make you sick, could result in numerous "purge fests", but it will be gone. You can't leave residues behind. Oxytocin withdrawal is seriously real. Your body literally needs a reboot. For men, it doesn't hit you right away, but a few days later, it does. And unlike women, it's more prolonged. We men have systems with a lot more inertia and a lot more permanent impact than women. Popular media gives us no sensible tools to handle it except try and cry like women and we're long past the point where we even need to go that way.

I had it hit me like 2 days after my divorce, despite how bad the whole affair was and how much I knew I had to get out. But I went for a drive and then damn, I had a massive eruption of pain, and the worst of it then passed out. I stopped driving, just found a place to park, and let it blow. It took a few more times to eliminate the worst of it. But for about 3 weeks to a month or so, my motivation wasn't the same. I should have actually let it burn all the way. Well eventually I did, and I was back up and running. I did however take up serious gymming and yoga and meditation classes later on to burn out even more. Yes, my case seems mild compared to guys here, but that was because I had already begun to do this when things started going downhill instead of waiting for D-Day.

Get lots of sun, fresh air, walk barefoot on the ground. Drink enough water and Find large open spaces. Being in tune with nature is really helpful.

Lie down and gently tell every body part to gently relax and release from your head to foot. By the time you get half way up, you might fall asleep after some major tension releases. Good. Sleep is healing.

Read a spiritual book - something like Tolle or Adyashanti or Ramana - they tell you how to deal with this phenomenon. Most people turned corner and woke up during their moments of greatest loss and despair. Everyone here did. Find out what a pain body is. Find out how to wake up and catch it and dissolve it. It's the body's own memory that it's trying to purge out whenever you're at rest and just doing little or nothing. Stuff like this hits you at the core of your old delusional frame, that needs to be torn down.

Don't drown your pain in anesthesia of alcohol or drugs. This will numb you for a while, but the actual way out is only through. Acceptance is the path of least resistance. If you feel too tempted, get male buddies. Surround yourself by male company who're further up the road than you are.

DON'T ACT TOUGH / DENY OR TELL STORIES TO YOURSELF -- most people DEER themselves acting tough. It takes real toughness to be totally real with yourself and face reality. Find a man cave or a male buddy to sit quietly with and accept totally what happened. Don't do this when you're not surrounded by safe people, especially not other women. First time it might be horrible. Do it again. And again. Give it sometime and accept everything in this moment alone. Do it again. Face the truth again and again. Soon it becomes a memory and a memory can no longer rule you.

Don't tell yourself that this shouldn't be happening. It is totally happening now, so it is real.

If angry thoughts of revenge and suicide and all that come, they're thoughts, not real. Let them come and go. They will go away when they realize you're focusing on the thinker rather than entertaining them.

Also this - if your identity tied to that relationship feels like dying, LET IT DIE COMPLETELY. Don't die halfway, die all the way. Don't take it out on the body or worse, other people -- only the ego, the emotions, the thoughts needs to die. Life doesn't stop, only an identity does. Get this message in while you're still calm right now. You might feel like dying, but actually only the thing you call as "you" wants to die. Just let that one die. You'll become a fresh piece of life when it's all over.

If you feel empty, dive into the emptiness for a while till you're comfortable being totally empty but alive. It's like losing your internet for a while these days, only worse, but stay in the void for a while and then hey, once you at at ease in stillness, there's no emptiness and you feel so much lighter. Be undefined for a while, like a naked guy without a defined role. Yeah, there's a nothing box built inside your brain for a reason. Now is the time to use it.

Real stoicism isn't putting up a face alone, real stoicism is being totally awake and aware when your mind and body are in a storm. You must be careful never to lie to yourself or feel shame because the pain did a number over you.

I like the journal method in the other post. Pour out the pain on the paper, and when you feel light, burn it up. Seriously, burn it to ashes. Then throw the ashes somewhere else.

What all the meditation does is that it takes all the pain and turns it into physical exhaustion. Once you're drained out, then you'll start recovering. During this period, don't strain yourself and reduce activity if you can. Take a break from whatever you're doing. You need an inner cleansing and a body reset. You can't have much energy being diverted during this time.

Eat a healthy diet that isn't too heavy on the stomach. Sleep a bit more.

When this is done, get back to the gym, lift, run, re-energize the body and get your T levels up again. A breakup, a painful loss literally sends your T crashing down for a while, so we need to restore hormonal balance. That will bring you back on form.

It is possible that deeper residues of pain may remain even when you think it's all gone. It can show up in more subtle ways. In my case, I kept finding myself thinking about it for too long, advising my cousins, getting obsessed over female behavior, focusing a lot on how bad women are, reading too much RP over and over as I didn't want to get hurt again, trying to find an outlet through writing, or even trying to act as though I was above it when I wasn't. That's less obvious, but it becomes clear with deepening understanding. Somewhere, a woman was still living in my head. I had to purge more out. Even now, I feel an urge to comment on just about any post here that is compulsive and I realize that there's still a bit more to release.

Remember, before this woman or whoever came into your life, when you were a child, you could laugh and be happy and live without any of these things. As a teenager, you were attracted to virtually every girl you saw, not just one. Every day, try to spend some time stripping yourself down and realizing that yeah, you can be, even without the things that define your identity. Then start having fun.

If a break up threatens to break up what you think is you, break up completely and realize you're more than just an identity as her boyfriend, crush, husband, whatever. Die consciously, so that you can live consciously once more.

Moments of loss, and moments of gain, are both places where we need to be more aware. Ultimately all that comes also goes, and we need to get used to it. If one can use these moments to stay more conscious, one's own mental and emotional muscles get a lot stronger and wiser. Find the Shiva within as TWOTSM says.

PS : It is possible and expected you will break up a lot more down the road. Every time, it gets a lot easier. Once you see how big the world and life is beyond your tiny mind story, an abundance mentality will develop and losses can be shrugged off easily. You might even find yourself having fun making parody jokes about them, as absurd as it may seem right now. You might even make jokes about how many times someone used a phrase on you -- "We need to talk?" Umm...26?? "You sexist selfish patriarchal creep!" -- 139. "It's over" - Oh, 12.

As for me, since then, I've found a new career, a new set of skills, earned more money now than before, have everything I need. I'm doing all my old hobbies once more. I lift, I meditate, my dark moods and a shit load of opinions and judgements are gone. I've gotten far more creative and perceptive, my social skills with women are through the roof now, I am fully comfortable being sexual and I no longer have a need to fill myself up to hide my own inner hole, and I am at ease in so many situations I never used to be. In a way my needs have gone down as much of it wasn't "needs" or neediness. Sometime back I felt a switch flipped in my mind and I just get stuff now what this is about. Still a long way to go, and more experience to gain.