Learn Hardcore Russian: После разговора с другом я почувствовал облегчение. - After the conversation with my friend, I felt relief.

друг is nominative.
Instrumental singular of друг is другом, but here we have с другом.
The ending -ом is reduced in pronunciation, but in spelling it’s другом. In the sentence, due to context styling, it appears as другом; if you saw другом, that is instrumental.

So:

с кем? → с другом – with (a/my) friend
other examples:
- с мамой – with (my) mom
- с братом – with (my) brother

Why doesn’t the Russian sentence say my friend, like in English?

In Russian, possessive words like мой / моя / мои are often omitted when it’s clear from context who you mean.

с другом can easily be understood as with my friend if you are talking about yourself.
You only add моим другом if you need to emphasize whose friend, or to contrast with someone else’s friend.

So:

с другом – usually with (my) friend in context
с моим другом – with my friend (emphasized or clarified)

Why is it я почувствовал, not just я чувствовал?

Russian distinguishes perfective and imperfective aspect.

чувствовать – imperfective (to feel in a general, ongoing way)
почувствовать – perfective (to feel / to start feeling as a completed event)

In this sentence, the idea is: > After talking, I (came to) feel relief / I felt relief (as a result).

That’s a single completed change of state, so Russian uses the perfective:
я почувствовал облегчение – I felt (experienced) relief.

If you said:

я чувствовал облегчение – I was feeling relief (more about the ongoing state, less about the moment it appeared).

How would the sentence change if the speaker were female?

Past tense in Russian agrees with the subject’s gender in the singular.

Masculine: я почувствовал
Feminine: я почувствовала
Neuter (for оно): почувствовало
Plural (for мы / они / вы): почувствовали

So if a woman is speaking, the sentence becomes:

После разговора с другом я почувствовала облегчение.

What does облегчение literally mean, and what part of speech is it?

облегчение is a noun meaning relief (the feeling that something has become easier or a burden is gone).

It comes from the verb облегчать / облегчить – to make something lighter or easier.

So:

облегчить задачу – to make the task easier
почувствовать облегчение – to feel relief

It’s neuter, nominative singular here, used as the direct object of почувствовал:

почувствовал что? → облегчение.

Why is there no article (a / the) before разговора or облегчение in Russian?

Russian has no articles. It doesn’t use words like a, an, the.

Whether you mean a conversation, the conversation, or just conversation is decided by context, not by a special word.

So после разговора can mean:

after a conversation
after the conversation

Similarly, почувствовал облегчение can mean:

felt relief
felt a sense of relief

Translators choose the best article in English depending on context.

Is the word order fixed? Can I say Я почувствовал облегчение после разговора с другом?

Yes, you can. Russian word order is more flexible than English.

Both are correct:

После разговора с другом я почувствовал облегчение.
Я почувствовал облегчение после разговора с другом.

The difference is mostly about emphasis:

Starting with После разговора с другом focuses on when / after what this happened.
Starting with Я почувствовал облегчение focuses on what you felt, then adds the circumstance.

Grammatically, both are fine.

Why is после used, and not something like потом?

после is a preposition meaning after, used before a noun (or pronoun) in the genitive:

после разговора – after the conversation
после обеда – after lunch

потом is an adverb meaning later / then and does not require a case after it:

Мы поговорили, и потом я почувствовал облегчение.
– We talked, and then I felt relief.

In your sentence, you need the structure after (something) → that’s why после + genitive is used.

Could I say после того, как я поговорил с другом, я почувствовал облегчение instead?

Yes, and that’s also very natural.

После разговора с другом… uses a noun: after the conversation with my friend…
После того, как я поговорил с другом, … uses a clause: after I talked with my friend…

Both are correct. The version with после разговора is a bit more compact and neutral.
The version with после того, как… explicitly shows the action (I talked), not just the fact of a conversation existing.

Why is it разговора, not something like поговорил or поговорив?

Russian has two common ways to express after doing X:

Preposition + noun
- после разговора с другом – after (the) conversation with a friend
Subordinate clause with a verb
- после того, как я поговорил с другом – after I talked with my friend

In your sentence, the author chose the noun version (разговор → разговора in the genitive).
Using just поговорив would sound more like a gerund construction and needs a different structure:

Поговорив с другом, я почувствовал облегчение.
– Having talked with my friend, I felt relief.

So после разговора is a simple, standard way to say after talking / after the conversation.

How do I know that разговора is genitive and not something else?

For masculine nouns like разговор, the -а ending is a typical marker of the genitive singular (among a few others).

Declension of разговор:

Nominative: разговор – a conversation
Genitive: разговора – of a conversation / after a conversation
Dative: разговору
Accusative: разговор
Instrumental: разговором
Prepositional: о разговоре

Since после always requires genitive, разговора must be genitive here. Context plus the preposition tell you the case.

Is there any nuance in после разговора с другом versus just после разговора?

Yes. Both are correct, but they say slightly different things:

после разговора – after the conversation (no information about with whom)
после разговора с другом – after the conversation with (my) friend

Adding с другом specifies the participant in the conversation, which can be important to the meaning (for example, the relief came specifically from talking to a friend, not a doctor, parent, etc.).