The first 72 hours

I remember standing at the kitchen sink the morning after, rinsing a coffee cup that didn't need rinsing, looking out at the same garden I'd looked at a thousand times before. Everything was where I'd left it. None of it belonged to me anymore.

The first 72 hours after the conversation ("we need to talk", "I want a separation", "I'm not happy") are the hours you will replay for years. Most men spend them doing the wrong things. Sending texts they regret. Booking lawyers they don't need yet. Telling people they shouldn't have told. Moving out of the house in a panic at 11pm. Drinking a bottle of something that doesn't help.

This is not a plan for the next twelve months. It is a plan for the next three days.

Hour zero to twenty-four: do almost nothing

You will want to act. Don't.

The first instinct is to fix it, because that is what you have done your whole life with every other problem. This one does not respond to fixing on day one. Anything you say in the first 24 hours, she has already half-decided about. Anything you do, she will read as confirmation of the decision she just made.

The job in the first day is to stay in the room (literally and figuratively) without making it worse.

• Drink water. More than you think.
• Eat something with protein in it, even if you can't taste it.
• Cancel one thing you were meant to do tomorrow, not all of it.
• Tell ZERO people outside the house. Not your mum. Not your best mate. Not yet.
• Sleep in the spare room or on the couch if she asks. Don't argue the geography.

The reason for radio silence on telling people is simple. You will say it once and you cannot unsay it. If she changes her mind in 48 hours (sometimes they do, often they don't, and you cannot bank on it), you will have already detonated something in your wider network that takes a year to rebuild.

Hour twenty-four to forty-eight: write things down

Get a notebook. A real one, paper. Not the Notes app on your phone, because the Notes app on your phone syncs to the iPad on the kitchen bench and you do not want her reading your half-finished sentences about her.

In the notebook, write:

• The exact words she used. As close as you can remember.
• What you said back.
• Any specific things she mentioned (a person, a date, a moment, a complaint).
• What you don't yet know but need to find out.
• Questions you want to ask her when you can both speak again.

This is not for evidence. This is so that in three weeks, when you are trying to remember whether she said "I want a separation" or "I want a divorce", you have the actual words and not the version your brain has rewritten while you weren't looking.

Memory is sand. Write it down while it's wet.

Hour forty-eight to seventy-two: the small decisions only

By day three you will be able to think about something for more than four minutes at a time. Use that to make small, reversible decisions. Not big ones.

Small and reversible looks like:

• Asking her if she wants to sleep in separate rooms while you both work it out.
• Suggesting one shared rule (no decisions in front of the kids, no big talks after 9pm).
• Confirming the next 48 hours of logistics (school pickup, who's cooking, whose turn for the dog).
• Telling work you've got a "family thing" and need to flex this week. Nothing more.

Big and irreversible looks like:

• Moving out.
• Hiring a lawyer and signing a retainer.
• Posting anything on social media.
• Calling her parents.
• Telling the kids.
• Touching the joint account in any unusual way.

None of those need to happen in the first 72 hours. Most of them will be wrong if you do them now.

The five mistakes men make on day one

I have watched friends make every one of these. I made three of them myself.

• Begging. It does not bring her back. It confirms her decision and lowers your standing for every conversation that follows.
• Threatening. Even softly. Even "you'll regret this". She will write it down and it will appear in a lawyer's letter in six weeks.
• The grand gesture. Flowers, a holiday booking, a promise to change. She has thought about this for months. Three roses on a Tuesday won't reverse that.
• Telling the kids before you've agreed how. This is the one that takes years to clean up.
• The all-night text thread. Nothing that is sent at 2am from the spare room ever reads well in the morning.

What to actually feel

You will feel like you are dying. You are not.

You will feel like everyone can see it on your face. They cannot.

You will feel like nothing will ever be normal again. Not in the shape it was. But normal returns. Different shape, same weight.

The 72-hour rule is this: do less, write more, tell no one, sleep where you're asked to sleep. Then on day four, you start the actual work.

Go slow. Stay quiet. Don't decide anything yet.

Further watching

• Psychologist Explains How To Get Over A Breakup & Heartbreak — Dr. Maika Steinborn (09:14)
• Andrew Huberman's Advice On Relationships & Break Ups — Brain Mindset (08:46)