.jpeg)
The Break-Up Diet
Welcome to The Break Up Diet—your weekly dose of self-improvement, glow-ups, and everything breakups (yes, not just the romantic ones). Hosted by Yasmin and Ilma, we’re your no-BS besties here to guide you through every type of breakup—whether it’s from a person, a toxic cycle, or even your old self.
We’re flipping the breakup narrative.
No more heartbreak—just transformation. No more setbacks—only glow-ups. Breakups are the ultimate opportunity to level up, and we’re here to help you do exactly that. Whether it's navigating friendships, situationships, or even kicking bad habits (we see you, vaping!), we’ve got the raw, real talk to help you rebuild and thrive.
Grab your seat, darlings—this is where the best version of YOU begins.
Accounts:
TikTok- @thebreakupdiet
Instagram- @the_breakup_diet
The Break-Up Diet
We Broke Up on Our One-Year Anniversary… and I Still Had to Live in His House with Ava Belle
What does heartbreak look like when it spans continents? Wedding industry veteran Ava takes us on a journey through her "global heartbreak" experiences across London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Australia, revealing how each relationship ending taught her something valuable about love and herself.
From crying for two months straight after an early breakup to developing healthier coping mechanisms as she matured, Ava's evolution offers a roadmap for anyone navigating relationship grief. "Now my life is busier," she explains. "It's like you've got two days, girl, you need to cry this out and then get back into all the positive things." Yet she emphasizes the importance of truly feeling your emotions rather than masking them with distractions.
Particularly fascinating is Ava's perspective on long-distance love, having attempted seven international relationships. She shares the raw reality of breaking up on a one-year anniversary while living in her partner's home abroad, unable to speak the local language, then cohabitating with him for another month afterward. These situations create unique challenges that test emotional resilience in profound ways.
At the heart of Ava's experiences lies a powerful shift from creating fantasy relationships to seeking authentic connections. In her twenties, she constructed idealized versions of partners, experiencing "the feeling of losing something that never existed" when these relationships ended. Through self-reflection and growth, she learned to build connections based on mutual respect and genuine admiration.
Whether you're healing from heartbreak or simply curious about relationship dynamics, this conversation offers practical wisdom about processing grief, breaking unhealthy patterns, and remaining open to love despite past disappointments. As Ava beautifully puts it, "Grief is pain because it's love that has nowhere to go."
Instagram:
@the_breakup_diet
TikTok:
@thebreakupdiet
Email: thebreakupdietpodcast@gmail.com
Welcome Ava, to the Breakup Diet.
AVA:Thank you so much for having me here today. I'm excited to chat all things breakup with you guys. So let's hear a bit more about Ava to start with. I have worked in the wedding industry for gosh too many years to mention probably over 15 doing weddings all over the world and working with brides.
YAZ:We have to insert some photos so you can see.
AVA:Yeah and oh gosh, fashion, photographic work, commercial studio work a bit of everything really.
YAZ:You've done a lot of stuff overseas as well as in Australia, right?
AVA:Yeah, yeah, I was based out of London for the best part of nine years, and then I did a stint in Amsterdam and then based out of Paris for the best part of three years.
YAZ:Whilst travelling, I'm guessing you've had lots of heartbreaks.
AVA:Oh yeah, yeah, more than my first year Definitely a lot in London and in Australia. Gosh, I've had global heartbreak, global heartbreak.
YAZ:Buckle up bitches, it's going to get bumpy. This is the Breakup Diet. Buckle up bitches, it's gonna get bumpy. This is the breakup diet. Have you ever, like, thought that a heartbreak in a specific country was worse than the other? Like are the italian men worse are the parisian men? Are the london men?
AVA:god, that's a hard question. Never thought about it from that angle. Who are the worst to break up with? I think you know international romances have all got their different. You know positives, pros and cons, but I would say that the universal thing about heartbreak is that no matter who it is.
YAZ:You're giving me a very diplomatic answer. It hurts, you know it hurts.
AVA:So no, I don't think there's any difference like between nationalities and how they break up.
YAZ:I was hoping you're gonna say London.
AVA:I was gonna say. I was gonna say the Londoners of you know they're not, they're not the most communicative and that was probably one of my yeah, we'll get there, we'll talk about so London men are trash as well, no joking and how come you thought that you would like to come on the breakup diet.
AVA:Um, I just thought, with my many years of dating and attempting to find, you know, a sustainable, forever love, I've done a lot of things that have not worked and I thought, you know, if I can't learn from them, um, I'm going to at least share the things I've learned not to do so.
YAZ:I.
AVA:I love talking about relationships. I'm very interested in the relationship and interpersonal space and it's something that I find entertaining in my own life. Um, and I just thought it was exciting to come and chat with you. I got excited when I saw that you started a podcast. I was like I want to come and talk to you.
YAZ:Yeah, I got excited when I saw that you started a podcast, I was like I want to come and talk to you. Yeah, yeah, I'm so happy to have you on.
AVA:Do you think that, like, every breakup gets easier, or Look, they say that the first heartbreak is the worst, and I can agree with that in some regard, like it definitely hurt the most because it's the most shocking. You don't know what's coming. And then, in my own experience, I think that, like, breakups remain difficult, they never get any easier. But I will say this you or I I got more resilient and I got better at it and I got more skills under my tool belt and I kind of learned how to deal with that heartbreak better and probably I feel like lots of people, when they break up with somebody they're scared they're not going to find somebody else.
YAZ:But if you've already had like a few, you know that you do find somebody else.
AVA:That's never a worry for me anymore. I always know that there will be other options. I'm a believer in love. I think that it is infinite and forever, and I don't think that it has an age limit and I think that love you know, is always going to be available. You just have to be willing to put yourself out there and how do you know?
YAZ:so you have a breakup. How do you know when you're ready to then go out again and actually be social? Like what? For you personally, what is a good time frame of being like okay, I've rotted in bed and I or I, you know, I'm crying at sad songs?
AVA:Well, I don't think that there's any one timeframe. I think every breakup is unique. Sometimes it's a very quick process and it's like, oh, I'm over, that, I am willing to move on. Usually I feel the person that ended it, because you've, you know, gone through it ahead of time and you know it's coming. And it's a quick exit out. Sometimes, when you don't see it coming, you know there's times when it's taken me a year to get back to that place where I felt ready to put myself out there again in an emotionally deep way and like risk being in love again. It's hard.
YAZ:It is just hard. I was hoping you were going to have a good answer. Yeah, like it's a two week period.
AVA:You do this well I mean I think I've limited myself now. In my younger years, when I went through really tragic breakups that just broke me, I had the luxury of time and space and I would wallow in it and I would give myself like two months to just cry it out like there was one breakup. I literally cried over two months and I think that's ridiculous. And now my life is busier and I've got so much going on. It's like you've got two days, girl, you need to cry this out and then you need to just get back into all the positive things. And I know how to kind of shift out of it quickly. And you know, sometimes it takes a little longer than that, but a little longer than that. But I've tried to fast track that process by doing all the things that are going to help.
YAZ:Would you say. The best thing to do then would just be busy straight away after.
AVA:No, definitely not. I don't think so, not for me. I think that there is a definite process that has to happen and that you can't hide from it. You can get busy and delay it, but at some point you need to deal with those feelings that are going to come up and you need to process them, and that can be alongside really positive things or that can be alongside really toxic things. And I think that allowing yourself to go through that process of the grieving, of the letting go of this future that you foresaw with somebody, of allowing yourself to let go of the you know attachment to what you thought something was going to be, what its future possible potential, was.
YAZ:Do you think, like you know how you say, that you have to let go of, like the idea you know of what your future might be? Do you think for you that's one of the hardest things with a breakup going through a breakup like letting go of the actual idea or the future that you might have made up, you know, or thought, or what is it for you personally that you find most of the time that is the actual hard thing about the breakup? Is it just the like familiarity?
YAZ:I find that word so hard to say of that person you know, like a text, like, and then when that's gone, or is it?
AVA:different breakups, different things that have been hard to let go of.
AVA:I think that in my younger years I was in relationships and I would build a fantasy around somebody and build an idea of who they were and what they could be, and create this sort of narrative in my mind and then place myself in it and try to fit into that, and then it would all implode and I would be just gut-wrenchingly disappointed and it was like this feeling of losing something that never existed in the first place and that was hard to reconcile with.
AVA:As I've gotten older and I've actually discovered another kind of relationship, you know, this sort of like a genuine, deep, heartfelt, connected love based on mutual respect and and a and a admiration of somebody for who they really are. When that didn't work out, that was like the hardest, most painful thing in the world, because it was real and it was gone and there was nothing I could do about it. And I also loved this person so much that I wouldn't want them to be inauthentic to their own journey in, like trying to be with me when they weren't ready and they weren't there yet. So it was like this, like I had to become a bigger person, you know, and it was like a pain that was beautiful and necessary and comfortable in a way which I'd never experienced before. It was really different, have you?
YAZ:always like had this nice thought you know process when you're you've gone through a breakup. That's such a nice way you put it. I would be. I think it's like for me anyway, I think the different stages of like the first when you first break up, you're sad, then you might be angry, then you might be, look back on it and be like, oh no, it's good.
AVA:I guess it depends on the circumstances of the relationship and and the person that you're with. And I think again, like earlier relationships where someone didn't treat me well or they weren't able to come and be their honest, authentic self, you know, those breakups they're really, they're hard because it's like there is all this anger and resentment and it's the feeling of betrayal when you truly love somebody and you let them go because it's just doesn't serve either of you. It comes from such a different place and I think now I won't go into relationships unless that's the dynamic and that's the difference is like growing through being attached to something that's of my own making and being just in complete surrender and allowance of like what it actually is nice to know that you've gone through a few breakups, that you're still very positive and, you know, still out there looking for love.
YAZ:Do you think that like is that hard? Do you find that hard or that's just your nature? Because lots of people would just be like I hate men.
AVA:Ie Ilma who's normally on here is like men suck.
YAZ:I'm not dating for two years.
AVA:I went through that phase in my 20s where I felt like it was them and you know I wasn't getting what I wanted, and then they weren't showing up in the way that I needed.
AVA:And then I took a really deep, like long, hard, look in the mirror and went well, what am I doing to accept this behavior, invite this behavior? It was really rough to look at myself and go, well, there's an ownership in that. Like what I'm getting as a response is what I'm putting out there in the world. And I was deeply insecure and I was searching for someone to fix me and complete me and make me feel loved. And until I kind of really sat with it and, oh, went deep, this is going deep. Until I went deep with it and actually like really got comfy with all of my stuff and removed my shame and like got comfortable with what I had gone through in my life and got to the point where I felt like, oh, I actually have so much love to give and so much to offer this growth did you have it when you were in a relationship, just by like, or when, only when you were out?
YAZ:because some people I could imagine like it might have started off that they wanted to get the guy or something, and then, in in the relationship, they've grown and kind of been like, oh my gosh, I am good enough, it's not to do with the guy.
AVA:Or was this something you did like a self-reflection with, like therapy, or guess maybe working in my line of work, because I see the evidence of these relationships where you know all their closest friends and family travel from across the world to celebrate their love and and I see those couples, I know they exist and it's like I want that and I'm not getting that.
AVA:So what do I need to do? And it's kind of like been this evolving journey along many years of figuring out myself and and getting to a place where that um meets where I am now and it's I don't think it's, it's something that has happened within relationships and there's been growth. And then a lot happens outside of the relationships and so I don't fear breakups anymore. It's like it's part of the process and it's, and sometimes it's this really beautiful thing because it's this time where you get to honor and cherish and like this sadness of letting go. There's always sadness and pain because we all have grief, but grief is pain because it's love that has nowhere to go. You know, and I thought that was really like when I heard that, I was like, oh, you know, it's okay, it's like nothing to be afraid of, it's actually just part of it.
YAZ:Have you ever broken up with somebody?
AVA:Yes, Is that really hard? I think it's always easier to be the breakup-er than the breakup-ee, so to like break up with someone than to get dumped.
YAZ:No, I think I'd prefer to get dumped.
AVA:No doesn't it? No, really.
YAZ:You'd rather be dumped.
AVA:Yeah, you know you're avoiding the conflict.
YAZ:You don't want to hurt anybody, yeah.
AVA:Oh, I hate being dumped. It sucks. No, I would feel so bad.
YAZ:And then I would overthink it and be like did I made the right decision? I would overthink it to the max, to the point of even if, like I knew that I made the right decision, I would probably still in my head be like did I make the?
AVA:right decision. I guess you're always second guess yourself, and that's normal.
YAZ:But a breakup, no, no. Okay, if you break up with somebody that is like a really good person, but they're just not right for you, I think that would be ridiculously hard yeah, yeah, look I'll.
AVA:I'll be honest. I, I blew it with someone when I was 19. He was really, really great and I was just not. I, I wasn't ready to meet him where he was at and I, I ruined it.
YAZ:I mean 19, that's.
AVA:I know I was so young, but he met someone like two weeks after. I kind of said I think we should probably date other people. And then he was with someone and they're still together 22 years later. So wow, he was. He was a keeper and I let him go and I blew it. It's like you know the one that got away. It was like that was probably my worst fail in and and I.
AVA:I look at it like it was a fail, but it was also a really big learning, and I also look at the life that they had together and it was never going to be something that I could offer him and she was right for him and I wasn't. So it's like, on the one hand, it was like I was close, but at the other hand, it's like it wouldn't, like I wasn't, I wasn't meant to be, you know.
YAZ:So you were just like not feeling it, and so, while you had the no, I was feeling it, it was long distance and um.
AVA:Long distance is hard. Yeah, it's hard.
YAZ:I've attempted seven long distance relationships attempted that was the key word, attempted or like long, long distance, like different countries five international to intercity, so like byron, sydney, yeah did it just not work because of the distance no, okay, no, because like I moved countries, they moved countries. There was a lot of moving was it easier then when you did break up with the long distance, because they weren't, just like, you know, around the corner.
AVA:They weren't just like no, because, like, you're living in their house in another country and you've got to, like, pack up all your stuff and, like one of them, I was in another country, I didn't speak the language, I was living in his house. We broke up on our one-year anniversary.
YAZ:That's brutal. You couldn't wait, like you guys couldn't wait one day.
AVA:It was just like it was organic. It was like we went to dinner and we came home and we just realized it was like this moment of assessment. We realized that our timelines were just completely off. And then, you know, I think I already had my ticket back to Australia at that point and so I knew that I was coming home to do some work, so I just like had to live with him for a month once we'd broken up and it was like that's so awkward it was.
AVA:It was, it was awkward but in all honesty, it gave us the opportunity to like wind it down and to like walk ourselves out of it yeah, it was really heartbreaking for both of us, but it felt good that we had that time to like reflect, reflect and say all the things we wanted to say and like kind of celebrate the love that we did have and like say our goodbyes where were we?
YAZ:so we were at your next international breakup Right From a long distance relationship.
AVA:This was probably my first long distance international breakup and it was my first significant relationship of my 20s. Is that true, gosh? I've got to think back. It's too many. That makes me sound terrible, but you know, when you're traveling I will say this think back. It's too many that makes me sound terrible, but you know, when you're traveling I will say this I traveled and lived out of a suitcase for 13 years and I moved countries every like three to six months on average, and so that definitely-.
AVA:That makes it hard that makes it hard to sustain a relationship. So I kind of like by nature, was just a free spirit on the go and then, like I'd meet someone and I'd be leaving their country, you know, or I wouldn't actually live there, and that's how I ended up in so many kind of like international long-distance situations and then, like, have a connection with someone and then the only way to like see if it's actually going to work is that you've got to go all in how do you bring up that discussion?
YAZ:because that's quite intense, intense, like that's scary.
AVA:I was so young and fancy, free and just so free spirited that it was just like I just fall in love with someone. They would like fall head over heels in love with me. No-transcript, think about it was like I gave up my whole work, my friends, my business, I was relying on him financially and like I just gave up so much to be there and it just didn't like work out. And on the flip side of that, um, I think we were talking about my the English Australia thing. I was living in England and met someone and whereabouts in London, in London, yeah, he lived in Oxford and so he was like traveling down the weekends and we were together probably six months and, um, it was all going really well.
AVA:He was much younger than me and he broke up with me like really harshly, like what happened, oh he came down to the house and, just like I was making dinner, he's like no, stop, don't cut the stop cutting the tomato. I was like I was like cutting tomatoes. He's like. He's like this is what you remember, I was like I stopped cutting the tomatoes and I was like, looked up, he was like I still had the knife in my hand.
AVA:I'm in the kitchen I'm cutting up salad. He'd walked in like he'd driven two hours from Oxford. He'd walked in and gone upstairs, put his bag in my room, walked back downstairs and said I'm, I'm breaking up with you and I was just like, oh okay, that's kind of out of the blue, you know.
YAZ:I was like why did you drive?
AVA:you could have just done that over the phone. He's like and then he's just like he's like yeah, I, I just I can't, I can't do this anymore. And just broke up with me very abruptly. I think we discussed it for about three or four minutes and then he and he went upstairs, picked up his bag and then, like, drove home. I was like okay, and I just said to him like I think you're having an emotional reaction. I don't think you really want to break up with me. I think you should go home and just like cool down and I'm here when you're ready to talk. But I was heartbroken and I just sat and waited and cried for the next three days waiting to hear from him. And then he wrote me an email, like a long-ass email, like I'm really sorry, and I, you know, explained himself. He's like I don't actually want to break up with you. I love you, blah, blah, blah. And then we got back together.
YAZ:Do you think it's good getting no?
AVA:I just like that relationship ended that moment, Like I lost all trust in him that moment, because when it gets hard he just ran and I was like I never, like we never recovered from that.
YAZ:So do you think if somebody, for example, gets cheated on and they find out and they know, do you think that they should get like they can?
AVA:It's hard. It depends I mean, I'm definitely of the school from esther perel's thinking that, like affairs, can you can overcome affairs. It depends on the strength of the relationship and the reason the affair happened and I don't and what your deal breakers are and how your communication is and what the relationship was before. Like, the relationship that you had is going to be over, but that that is overcomable, depending on so many factors, if you both want to. Yeah, if you both want to. I don't think that it has to be the end, but you know when trust is broken and the foundations of the relationship are broken, for me personally that's a deal breaker because if I can't trust someone and communicate with them, I haven't been able to come back after infidelity because it's just. Would it matter?
YAZ:for you, the circumstances, how much, like what level of infidelity? Because like what is your line like if you're out at a bar, if he's like buying other girls drinks, or if he, if he's chatting up, flirting but nothing happens, is that a deal breaker for you personally?
AVA:so this is interesting and this has gotten interesting as I've gotten older and I've negotiated the terms of relationships really differently and negotiated the expectations. So I was in a relationship earlier this year with someone who we negotiated the terms as monogamish, meaning that we were open-ish, you're able to communicate and you have a foundation of trust that anything within a relationship that you decide you know free, willingly, with your partner is fine.
YAZ:Also, like all the breakups. Like you can say, like that everyone is probably probably being so different that, like you can put similarities into all of them. But like, absolutely, have you had anything that's been like a similarity that you've had more than once and you've been like why do I have that?
AVA:oh, my bad patterns. Um, yeah, of course, I definitely got into a bad pattern loop in my 20s and I was like why am I reliving this same breakup over and, over and over again? Um, I think we keep getting our karmic lessons until we are willing and ready to face them.
YAZ:How did you do that, though? Just being self-aware? And how were you like oh okay, I'm sick of this cycle, I must have something to work on.
AVA:Basically, yeah, it just was not working for me. I think it was when I was 30, I went to London and something really sort of a flip a switch flipped for me that I was no longer dating for entertainment. But I didn't then know how to access more, I didn't know how to get a better result from dating. I was sort of doing the same thing, getting the same result and just being frustrated until I met a dating coach in London. Oh, you went to a dating coach. Well, I found him on Tinder and rather he found me and then like approached me to be a client and I was like a test client.
YAZ:What I know. It's crazy.
AVA:So he's on Tinder scouting. He was very cheeky. He was on Tinder and he was scouting and, like I matched with him. He was very good looking and then we started chatting. He's like actually I have an ulterior motive, I'm a dating coach and would you like to have like a free three month kind of coaching session? I'm trying to get my business off the ground. You seem really interesting. He was legit and he was lovely and insightful and I started working with him. He kind of coached me through what I was doing. That was, getting me the results that I didn't want, and things really changed from that point. It wasn't just getting kind of like three weeks in and then having these guys ghost me, you know which was kind of my experience up to that point.
YAZ:Gosh, getting ghosted is hard, it sucks and it's like, yeah, you just want to know why. But it's like, yeah, you just want to know why.
AVA:but it's also not good sometimes you don't want to know why sometimes too, and it doesn't help. No, I mean, there was one guy that ghosted me. He was on paper perfect kind of guy and we'd had three or four dates. It was going well. We hadn't slept together. I was holding off because I wanted to, like you know, get to know him, take things a bit slower. Then he just completely disappeared and I was like what's going on, why? And then I see him in the supermarket kissing some other girl. A couple of days later I was like, oh okay.
AVA:That's you know just well I don't know, I just like okay, he's. Obviously it was closure for me because he was, you knew there was a reason.
YAZ:There was a reason.
AVA:And it was like, oh, and I could actually, you know, just sit with that. And it felt like, okay, I've at least got some sort of resolution. I'm not just wondering what the hell happened.
YAZ:If you don't get closure, like from a situation like that, what are you doing for yourself to get closure, to let that situation go?
AVA:Situations like that. Now I think I just I would probably send like one message of reaching out for resolution and if that resolution didn't come, I would see that more as something to do with them than me, me 10 years ago. If that happened, I would like ruminate and get obsessed and feel like take it on and feel like I'd done something wrong and like get really depressed and analyze it and feel like there was something wrong with me.
AVA:Now I'm just like no, no, no, no, it's a them problem a lot of the time, Like they're.
YAZ:You know what I mean. Sometimes it's not right for them and then, but it's not because you're not a great person or whatever that was a really big thing.
AVA:that shifted for me was like if someone doesn't like me, it might have nothing to do with me, like they've got so many factors going on in their life, who knows what's going on for them, and I stopped taking it as rejection or as personally. I just allowed myself to kind of let people leave have you stayed friends with an ex?
YAZ:yes, do you think that's healthy? Yeah, it depends on the circumstances of the breakup. If they were like a serious, serious boyfriend, oh okay, have I stayed. A situation shifts a bit differently yeah, I went on a few dates and like okay this isn't for us.
AVA:And then we've gone back to the friend zone. I mean the father of my child, because we co-parent and we're amicable and I love him dearly and I appreciate him and have such gratitude for him and that that's a unique situation because we share a child you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
YAZ:Do you have any like good advice for somebody going through a breakup right now?
AVA:Best breakup advice Start with honoring it and allowing all the pain and the grief Let that pass Once you come out of the like eating ice cream and crying over romantic movies.
YAZ:Looking at couples down the street.
AVA:You know that phase the ugly crying at romantic movies phase, like. Once you're out of that, then I would say, go into doing all the things that you love. So if you're into yoga, eating good food, going to the beach, getting in the water, getting in the water is always really good.
YAZ:I mean, we're lucky here in australia I feel like it's nicer to go through a break off in australia. Definitely better to go through a break off in london.
AVA:What are you doing? Oh, I went to the park.
YAZ:I ran, ran I thought you were going to say went to the pub and I was like I don't think you should drink.
AVA:No, don't drink. Get things not to do. Don't drink. Don't like indulge in all those like things that make you like the Band-Aids. Just avoid the Band-Aids. Just like go into it, allow yourself to feel it.
YAZ:And then meditating yoga. Do you think it's healthy to reflect on it from your behalf a lot, or you know what I mean, like thinking about, like what I did wrong, or do you think that's not good?
AVA:to do. I think that there is merit in owning what your accountability was in what went wrong, because it always is, you know, majority of the time there's going to be some ownership in that there's there's two people in this relationship. If it doesn't work that, there's going to be some responsibility from both sides. Um, so yeah, being able to see that because that's where your growth comes from is like owning the things that you could have done better, owning the things that maybe it wasn't even that you could have done better for them, but you could have done better for yourself when I've only had a very minor breakup.
YAZ:But I felt, you just feel that I just felt ugly and I don't know if it was because there wasn't enough time, so I was just crying the entire time, like if someone would say I'm not joking. The the sounds of my cries was literally like Totally cry, yeah, like an animal had just been hit on the road and like lost its mom, and I was the baby animal. Oh, I feel your pain.
AVA:I remember feeling like that at times in my life. It is, it's like it just is the most painful thing ever and yeah, it does make you ugly because you get all puffy and the tears and then like the face and all the you know and then you try to do your makeup because you want to do something yeah, the blotchiness, the blotchy, puffy.
AVA:Oh yeah, the swollen I. I know it's hard, so once you get out, like you can hide for a few days, that's okay. Allow yourself like, just honor it. It's okay to hide for a few days.
YAZ:Do you think you should like be around people in that time, or totally alone?
AVA:No, I think it's okay to be alone, Like really listen to yourself. You have a guidance system. Don't push yourself to do what you think you should because of societal expectations. Just be with it. I think that my younger years I would push myself. So I'm going to go party. I'm going to do this. I'm going to find some new boy to boy to kiss tonight. I'm gonna like dress up and make myself feel fabulous. I was like this band-aid over the top and all that did was like postpone and prolong the feeling that would come and get me later. You know it always resurfaced when I was on a yoga mat or when I was awfully the worst time at a wedding and like someone's going through breakups. When you like have to get off and do like a wedding every day is like such an ironic tragedy.
YAZ:Do you think men and women handle breakups differently, so differently, like do you think it catches them later, because that's like a big thing.
AVA:Yeah, I think it catches them way later. I think that the initial response most men that I've observed go through is that like there's a relief and then they kind of like have this sense of freedom and they go out and they enjoy it and they don't really process it. And then all of a sudden it comes and gets them when they least expect it and then they call and it's usually this amazing universal timing that it's the second you've moved on and you're like ready to kind of like start dating. You're feeling really great again, your energy's all clear, and then they've like realized and they come calling. And that's when you have to be really strong and go like we broke up for a reason you broke my heart.
YAZ:No, I'm not taking you back. So, being a makeup artist, you obviously you try to make people. You don't try. You do make people look like and feel their best for somebody going through a breakup. Do you have any like good tips, makeup wise?
AVA:My go-to is always a haircut. I just I don't know what it is. It's like it's cutting off the old energy, it's removing I just I love a breakup haircut. I usually like fake tan is always great If I'm feeling like I want to get ready to enter the dating market again. It's a bit of fake tan, bit of sun, nice like face mask and just yeah, I like might buy a few new products and put them in my routine and make myself feel extra pretty and that's like I'm ready to get back out there.
YAZ:It's a good feeling it's also really good if you've been through the like crying, depressed stage where you're all like puffy and stuff and the first time you put makeup on and a good state in your mind after you feel like a supermodel it's like the elastic band effect.
AVA:It's like you've been in this relationship. You kind of let yourself go, everything's gone down you go through the breakup and then it's like this elastic band boom, I'm back out there and I'm feeling better than ever.
YAZ:You didn't actually let yourself go, but you feel even more because you look so disgusting in the like hermiting stage that you're like, no wonder anyway. Then, when you get the makeup, it's like whoa, I'm back, I'm back, baby, I'm on fire.
