Being dumped for someone else is a double punch: not only do you feel abandoned but also replaced. It’s a biological imperative to guard your mate – and now he or she is with someone else and you’re stuck with the harrowing, awful, alone feeling of knowing that the person you love is loving another. Being left for someone else can also bring feelings of great shame: you may feel inadequate or unable to “keep” your partner. You may feel expendable. And, whatever the characteristics of the new man or woman in your ex-partner’s life, you feel less special, less interesting, less attractive. The experience can feel like it has emotionally leveled you.

There are a number of ways you can be left for another, and while all are wrenching, some are more so than others. The following is a list of a few of the scenarios:

1. Underhandedness

Your partner was cheating for some time. He or she needed you as a safety net and hung onto the relationship until deciding it was worth it to leave. Or, maybe he or she didn’t plan to leave, but after cheating, it has come to that. Either way, in addition to feeling blindsided and betrayed, you feel used.

2. With Honesty

Your partner was up front about meeting someone new. He or she admitted to not being happy in the relationship and believes this new person will bring happiness. It’s a clean break (no one cheated), but despite your partner’s honesty, your betrayal and distrust now run deep. The fact that your now ex-partner had the opportunity to process this transition with you was likely more helpful to him or her than to you. While processing the experience can make you more aware of your anger with the outcome, your partner’s honesty can leave you feeling as if your anger is less justified. But here’s the thing: your feelings are your feelings and they don’t require justification.

3. Fighting

You can’t make it through the day without fighting. Is it your partner’s way of readying to leave the relationship? Or maybe you see fighting as a natural part of your relationship, but you think the relationship is strong enough to withstand the conflict. It’s likely a confusing mesh of feelings and experiences. Even with incessant fighting, you can still be blindsided and dismayed when your partner actually leaves for someone else. You can see the signs of decline more clearly in retrospect. But still the end is infuriating, hurts like hell and just feels wrong.

4. The Someone Else is Your Friend

When you’re dumped for someone you know or someone you’re close to, the experience adds another, complicated layer: that of a betrayal on top of a betrayal. You trusted your partner. You trusted your friend. Now, especially if there’s been cheating before the end of the relationship, you question who you can trust. This experience can significantly alter your comfort in the world. No matter your levels of anger with your partner and your friend, it’s an incredibly uncomfortable, bewildering, ugly scenario. You have to fight hard to earn back your ability to trust again.

5. Your Own Distance

Maybe you know your relationship has problems and maybe you even have one foot out the door. Still, when your partner beats you to the punch, it’s devastating. You wanted the relationship to end, but you also had doubts and weren’t ready for it to end. Since you were unable to control the way it ended, your feelings became even more convoluted. You may have had good reasons for not ending the relationship sooner: maybe you were scared of being alone or you just weren’t ready. You’ve been on the outside looking in at the problems in the relationship, but now you are confronted with the painful experience of being left for someone else. To confuse matters further, your partner’s distance can in turn draw you closer. It’s a see-saw effect, and like all the other scenarios, it is painful, uncomfortable, and disorganizing.

Whatever the reasons, ending your relationship because your partner is now with someone else is utterly devastating and can evoke a tremendous amount of anger, shame and self-blame. The complex doubts that accompany the betrayal can make it very difficult (but not impossible) to trust in future relationships. Add to that the horrific, sleepless nights spent envisioning your ex with another. Feelings of shame and self-blame have a way of making you feel so demeaned and unimportant – as if you’ve “failed” to hold onto your partner.

However, within all these emotionally wrenching scenarios, there may also be some positive lessons you can take away. First, being left for someone else may close the window of hope that can otherwise leave you desperately trying to reestablish connection and keep you holding on. In this specific kind of breakup there’s not as much room to reach out to your former partner to try to patch things up, and there is likely less incentive to cyber-stalk when you know there is someone else, unless you are in an extremely self-punishing space. Rather, as terribly nauseating as the whole experience is, when your partner has moved on, it can speed up the process that helps you move on.

Second, you may be able to recognize that because this is how things turned out with you and your partner, it’s better for you that your relationship is over. It makes room for you to be open to trusting again when the opportunity arises. You can harness your anger and indignation, which can be very empowering. The extremeness of the reason for the breakup can help you bring more certainty and resolve into your next relationship, and, again, help you hold onto or rediscover your capacity to trust.

And finally, after losing your partner to another, you’ve weathered one of the worst relationship-related experiences life can offer. When you come out on the other side of this experience (which you have no choice but to do – eventually), you now have in your repertoire the capacity to withstand a relationship challenge of this magnitude. Your strength has been reinforced. Having survived your worst fears can encourage a more resilient perspective in future relationships.