Character Development

All right, this has been bugging me for almost two weeks and I'm hoping that some fresh input will give me some insight.

My main character, Emily, has been with her boyfriend for three years, the last one was long-distance. The first chapter has her move from her home in Maine to Oregon, where he'd moved for college. On the plane, she meets the primary love interest, Nora, who I'll talk about later.
During that last year, he becomes possessed by a demon(which is fairly common in this universe), and he cheats on Emily. When she finds out, the demon becomes violent, but she blasts a chunk out of him(with hereto undiscovered magic) before Nora busts in and shoots the thing's head off.

Emily then gets drunk and tries to f#ck Nora, who has been trying to get into her pants for two chapters, but is refused "I don't want to take advantage of you, you'll hate me in the morning. I want you to love me."

With all of that, how many chapters should Emily angst about the loss of her love of three years? Taking into account that she blames herself. And that she's now being trained to use her magic.

Hmm, personally I'd say it would depend on Emily. If she and her boyfriend were very close - which they may have been, despite the long distance stuff - then it would probably be .... a few weeks of potentially waily stuff, then mebbe a month or two of not wanting to talk about it, and maybe finally reconciling herself with the fact it's never really going to stop hurting and she needs to move on a few months later?

It may also depend on her personality; is she the weepy type, or is she a no-nonsense sort of girl? How often does she just sit and think about things? Is she a massive self-guilt-tripper? That sort of thing ....

The situation also mattters, of course, and the character's personality, what is happening to her in the meantime. Par example; if she's out in the world, meeting people and doing things then it might be quicker, but if she's alone with her thoughts a lot then it may take longer. Nora could be an interesting interjection on that front too - either helping her get over the loss, or giving her little grief-twangs 'cause she thinks of the BF.

.... Sorry, that probably wasn't very helpful, but I hope it's vaguely useful to you xD

If they have been dating long distance for the last year, it may not take too long. You could probably get by with one initial sad spill and then maybe mention it once later on when she runs into a situation that reminds her of him.

Point blank like Spook said, it depends on their relationship. Was it her first boyfriend? How much did she really love/like him? If it was her first, it could either mean that he was more important OR less important depending on whether she even likes men that much. If she is falling in love with another girl, she could have occasional guilty feelings about having not felt the same about her ex.

Hope that helped.