Being in a relationship is great.
Loneliness rarely sets in because you always have someone to spend the day with or talk to when you need to vent.
You experience new things with this person, like seeing plays, going to concerts, traveling, exploring new restaurants and shops, etc.
You can also learn from this person by talking to and challenging each other to understand different ideas and philosophies.
So being in a relationship sounds great, and on paper, it is. However, in reality, relationships are not bulletproof.
You’ll argue over trivial nonsense like where to eat or what movie to watch.
Relationships are complicated and stressful, so failure is always a big possibility.
Now, no one who is happy in their relationship would want it to end; Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we want.
As the famous saying goes, “All good things will eventually come to an end”.
Dealing with the aftermath of a failed relationship is always a difficult thing to get over, especially if it’s a long-term relationship.
Going through each step word for word won’t work for everyone, but hopefully the information (and addressed with the ability to adapt to your situation) will help some of you get over your recently ended serious relationship.
Eight Steps to Moving On After a Breakup
- Accept the truth. Your relationship is over. The sooner you accept this fact, the sooner you can move on with your new life.
- Go out with friends. Be proactive and ask your friends for help. They probably want to help you out and go out with you, but you have to be the one to take the initiative.
- Do something. Try to avoid spending too much time at home alone thinking about your relationship. Read books, listen to music, watch movies, go out, etc. Do anything to keep yourself busy.
- Work on something or learn a new skill. Unlike the previous step, not only does picking up a new hobby (or picking up an old one) keep you busy, but it also helps you rebuild your identity without your partner.
- Work out. Exercise has been proven to be a mood booster. Plus, it will help you get in shape so you can be more confident when you’re ready to start dating again.
- Go on vacation. A vacation is a great way to experience new things, build a new life without your ex, build relationships with friends and family (whether you’re traveling with them or visiting them), and keep yourself busy.
- Take a break. Don’t fall in love again. Instead, take the time to reflect on your relationship and what you want to do differently next time.
- Change your life. Unfollow or block your ex on social media. Get rid of the memories of him in your everyday life. Build a new circle of friends, especially if you have mutual friends with your ex. If you can, you should try to get a new job. Do what you need to do to build your new identity without your ex.
Good luck!
Step One: Accept The Truth
Honestly, there are many things that can act as a catalyst for ending a relationship: cheating, miscommunication, or just plain boredom.
It doesn’t matter where the relationship went wrong, and you’ll go crazy just trying to retrace the timeline trying to pin down the exact moment when everything fell apart.
Instead, take a deep breath and swallow the truth.
That’s the first step: accepting that it’s over.
This will be the most difficult step for most people, as optimism naturally takes over when the relationship ends.
You’ll try to get the person back, dwelling on the idea that maybe there’s a chance they’ll accept you.
The faster you accept the truth, the faster you will get over him and start dating again.
Try to reflect on the purpose of your relationship.
After accepting what happened, try to reflect on it.
According to the doctor. Karen Weinstein, a psychologist in New York, you should look at the relationship for all it was: both the good and the bad.
Don’t idealize it.
Instead, make a list of the things that didn’t make you happy.
You might find some reasons it was better than the two of you going your separate ways.
A study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science also shows that thoughtful reflection on a relationship after it ends can help speed up the healing process — that’s not wallowing, though.
If you’re not in a place where you can think clearly about your relationship, that’s fine.
Give it some time and try again.
Step Two: Go Out With Friends
The worst thing you can do after a relationship ends becomes a recluse.
You see it in movies all the time (typically romantic comedies).
The protagonist is lying in bed, sulking over her broken heart.
Her friends then burst into the room – usually opening the curtains to let light into the dark and depressing room – and cleaning up the protagonist’s filthy food scraps and disheveled belongings.
Friends say something like, “Come on, you have to get out of this bad, it’s been a week.”
The protagonist retaliates, “Leave me alone,” and pulls the sheets over his head.
The friends then drag her out and eventually the protagonist finds her next love.
If you have female friends devoted to you, then consider yourself lucky.
For the rest of us, we have to be the ones instigating a “hang out” with our friends, because they have lives too.
Also, when you tell someone to leave them alone in real life… friends tend to do that.
So be a big girl and get a friend to spend time with you.
Your closest friend maybe even closer to you at this stage.
You can watch movies and TV shows, chat and even go on a trip.
The point here is, that your friend will be there to help you and you could even say that your relationship with your friend will improve because of it.
Talk about what happened (but not so much that it annoys your friends).
Talking about the breakup with close friends can also be therapeutic.
A study by Northwestern University’s Grace Larson found that talking about how you’re feeling now that you’re no longer in a relationship and revisiting key breakup points, like when you saw the relationship going down the drain and how that affected your perspective on romance, can help you regain your own identity and sense of self now that you are no longer part of a couple.
As you talk about this, it can be helpful to consider your own story from a third-person perspective.
In other words, put yourself in your friend’s (or someone else’s) shoes and describe yourself from her point of view.
Research shows that this kind of detachment helps you reflect and derive solutions from what you’ve experienced without feeling sorry for yourself.
Step Three: Do Something
This step links to the second.
Make sure you find something to do.
It needs to be clarified that this step is mainly for times when you are alone.
What you can do is watch movies, listen to music and read a bunch of books.
Get out of the house (always a good idea), pack my laptop, headphones, and Kindle, and relax in a bookstore all day.
During the duration of this period of mourning, occupy your time and your mind.
Sure, hanging out with friends is a great way to take your mind off the relationship and your ex, but they also have lives and can’t spend all their waking hours consoling you.
So do anything as long as you’re not just lying in bed digging through your cell phone.
What you do doesn’t have to be big either.
In fact, research indicates that even doing something with the intention of helping can be effective.
Taking notes intentionally is an example of something small that can be really helpful.
Step Four: Work on a Project or Learn a New Skill
Similar to step three, this step requires you to get up and do something.
Where this differs is in what you are doing.
The third step takes your mind off your ex but allows you to do unproductive things for the sake of healing.
The fourth step is different because you must do things considered “productive”.
Write and learn to play the piano or guitar.
Do something productive like writing, learning to play an instrument, learning a new language, or taking up a new hobby or sport.
This is a crucial step in rebuilding your identity – one that doesn’t include your ex.
It’s been shown that people who identified strongly with their partners had a harder time getting over the relationship, so the more you can build a new you or rediscover old hobbies, or even rediscover what it feels like to do your old hobbies as a woman. single, the closer you will get to be happy without your ex.
Step Five: Workout
Physical exercise is good for your body as well as your mind.
It has been proven that the person becomes more focused and energized.
Having focus and energy will help motivate you to do things like those listed in step four.
Plus, if you’re already out of shape, exercise will help tone that body so that when you’re ready to date again, you’ll look more physically attractive.
Step Six: Go On Vacation
This step may not be possible for some.
If money is tight or you are young and have no job, this step may not be very helpful.
For women who can spend money, take a mini-vacation.
You don’t have to fly to Hawaii, Italy or some strange place.
Take a trip with your parents or just your mother and a friend.
How about just going to another city?
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to escape and have fun.
When a relationship ends, it’s difficult to give full and complete attention to work and school.
Sometimes you need to let go and enjoy life.
And if you’re having urges to do something crazy — like dyeing your hair, getting a tattoo, quitting your job, and moving to New Zealand — it’s best to wait to do those things until you’re a little more stable and in control.
Vacations can be a good way to feel a little impulsive without being totally out of control.
You can try a new identity later in life after this is over.
Step Seven: Take a Break
A little different from going on vacation, this step encourages you to take a break from dating.
A common mistake women make after being dumped by their boyfriend is to date someone immediately afterward.
This is a big mistake.
Don’t make someone else your recovery – that’s never cool.
Instead, take a moment to reflect on yourself.
Spend time working to improve your life through your hobbies, your schooling, your career, or anything else.
Stay away from dating because there are a lot of things that can go wrong with it.
You may end up talking nonstop about your ex to your new partner, leading him to question your sanity and attraction to him.
If your ex cheated on you, then you will likely have trust issues with your new boyfriend.
So just take a break.
You don’t have to wait a whole year before getting back into the dating scene, but at least give it a few months.
You might even get over the breakup faster than you think.
Most people overestimate the time it will take to get over a breakup, especially if people weren’t involved with the decision to end the relationship in the first place.
So it may seem like things are never going to get better and that you’ll never meet someone else, but those thoughts just aren’t true.
Step Eight: Change Your Life
Note here that these steps do not need to be followed in any order, with the exception of the first step.
In fact, these steps shouldn’t really be “steps”.
You should continue to do all of them simultaneously or alternately until you reach an emotional state that you are satisfied with.
That said, this final step is the MOST important step, which is why it’s the last one.
It’s going to sound a little harsh and a little drastic, but it’s necessary.
The last thing you need to do is change your life.
This can mean almost anything and will differ from person to person, but one thing must always be done.
Get rid of your ex’s stuff.
Throw away photos, videos, notes, gifts, etc… or at least hide them.
You can’t make progress completely if you’re holding on to the past.
Also, someone is comfortable with someone else having things from previous relationships. It’s sick and stubborn.
Why do you want to keep memories of a failed relationship?
Sure, there were good times in the relationship, but the very fact that it’s over means that those good memories are over.
If you stop focusing on the good times in the relationship, you will remember all the bad ones.
Get Rid of Your Ex
The next thing to do is get rid of your ex.
Wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense… I mean, we’re already apart, right? Wrong.
In today’s internet age, most people never get rid of their ex.
They keep them as friends on various social media platforms.
This usually happens because both parties agree to “still be friends”.
Do not do it! Get rid of him or her.
You’ll only hurt yourself pretending you can still be friends.
That sounds bad, but you regret it when he gets a new girlfriend and floods his Facebook or Instagram with pictures of you kissing and making love or you bombard your “timeline” with updates showing how amazing the new girl is.
Take cover. Stop worrying about him.
If in the future you decide that you can be friends, go ahead (unless your new partner has a problem, which is perfectly understandable), but during the healing process, it’s best to exclude them completely.
Additionally, one study showed that people who stalked their exes tended to have more negative feelings about them, miss them more, and generally feel worse about the breakup.
Do not do it!
Delete him from your social media.
New Job, New Friends
Also, if you are young and can afford to find a new part-time job, go for it.
A good change of scenery and routine will help to delude that things are better.
The effort to move forward in life and create big changes for your work and circle of friends will help motivate you to become the person you want to be.
Based on what has just been said, you should also find new friends.
Now, wait!
Before you call it bullshit and close the page, listen.
If you have friends who are exclusively your friends, who are going to be with you and not your ex, then keep them.
However, if you have mutual friends, you might want to consider distancing yourself from them.
After all, your friends won’t be kind enough to plan every event so you and your ex aren’t invited to the same event.
I’m not saying they’re bad friends, but it’s not their obligation to make sure that doesn’t happen.
How weird would it be to be invited to a party, movie, or some other event by one of your friends, only to find your ex when you arrive?
Remember, you can always find new friends.
And the ones who can’t choose you over their ex are probably not worth being friends with anyway.
Good luck!
Conclusion
There you have it. Those are the tips on how to get over a long-term relationship.
Again, not all of them will work for everyone. You have to choose which ones look most natural to you.
Maybe you don’t want to get a new job, and that’s okay.
Maybe you really want to be alone, and that’s okay too. Just remember that all things heal with time.
So cheer up, because there really are a lot more interesting men out there.
It hurts now, but eventually, you’ll look back and laugh. You shouldn’t be ashamed of not having a boyfriend.
Instead, use the opportunity to work on yourself. Make new friends and work on personal goals!
It takes work to be happy and get over this long-term relationship.
You will come out wiser from your experiences and you will know how to deal with it if or when it happens again.
And if you can’t remember the steps, you can always reread this article!
Also, leave comments below if you have any other tips you want to share.
