I'm a librarian. I want to tell you that first because it explains almost everything else about this site.
When I was at university — studying library science, with a side of data science, because apparently I needed two ways to organize my feelings — I met someone. We were together for five years. We graduated together, found an apartment together, learned to cook the same four dinners together. I thought that was the whole story, settled. The rest would be epilogue.
It wasn't. She ended it when I was 28. And here's the part that took me longest to accept: nobody did anything wrong. Nobody cheated, nobody lied, there's no villain in this story. We just slowly became two people who loved each other and couldn't build a life together anymore. If you've been through that kind of ending, you know it's its own specific devastation — there's no anger to hold onto, nothing to push against. Just grief, and a strange, total disorientation. I didn't know who I was without her. I had never been an adult without her.
So I did the only thing I genuinely know how to do: I looked it up.
I work at a university library. On my lunch breaks, I started pulling psychology journals. Why does heartbreak physically hurt? (It genuinely does — your brain is not being dramatic.) What is attachment, actually? Why did I keep replaying the same conversations? Every answer opened three more questions, and the folder of saved studies kept growing, and at some point the folder became this website.
Two things I need you to know
I'm not a therapist. I'm a librarian who got dumped. I can't diagnose anything, I can't treat anything, and if you're really struggling, a real professional will help you in ways a website never can — I'll always say so when it matters. What I can do is what librarians are trained to do: find the good sources, read them properly, and translate them honestly. My data science background mostly gets used for telling you when a study is weaker than its headline. (You'd be amazed how often "science says" means "38 undergraduates said.")
I'm still in it. I'm not writing to you from the far shore, fully healed, dispensing wisdom. I'm 29, I'm on the dating apps, I'm getting better at this — and by "better" I mean I understand my own patterns a little more each month, not that I've cracked some code. I get things wrong. When I do, I'll tell you.
I started this site to save myself. I kept going because of how many people are out there searching the same questions at 2am — why does love hurt, how do I know if it's real, will I ever feel normal again. You deserve better answers than the internet usually gives you. Not colder answers — better ones. Answers with receipts, delivered like a friend would.
That's what this place is for.
— Rowan