Breakups suck. I get it. ESPECIALLY if you’re the one being broken up with. And, while watching Cristina Yang’s “he’s not the sun, you are” speech on repeat may help ease the pain for awhile, at some point, you’re gonna need to pull yourself out of your break up blues with some tough love- and I’m here to give it to you.
1- You need to come to terms with the fact that it’s over.
I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent waiting for boys to realize they’ve made some awful mistake and hoping they’ll change their mind and come back. It’s a waste of time. If he’s going to come back, he will- regardless of whether or not you’re waiting around for it to happen. So, do yourself a favor and start moving on.
2- Stop checking up on his social media.
Stop seeing if he’s followed new girls or liked someone’s pictures- stop checking to see who likes his. Just stop. You’ll drive yourself crazy reading into every single interaction you see on social media and, chances are, they don’t mean anything. Regardless, you’re never going to know what these interactions may mean, so you’ve got to let it go.
3- Do NOT talk to his friends about it.
Now, this one can be tricky if you guys have a lot of mutual friends. But, unless they really offer to talk to you about the relationship, don’t go out of your way to seek answers from his friends. I know you want to understand what’s going on in his head and you might think that the only way to find those answers is by talking to people close to him, but just don’t. If he can’t give you the answers that you need, his friends can’t either. And, it will make them pretty uncomfortable, too.
4- You may never fully understand why things ended, and that’s okay.
Your break up may have left you confused and wondering how things ended up this way. Maybe you don’t believe the reason your ex had for ending things or, even worse, maybe he didn’t give you a reason at all. You’re human and of course you want to understand why things ended, but most of the time, we don’t get to know those answers. It’s possible that your ex didn’t even really understand his reason for calling the relationship off either. You have to accept that sometimes, it doesn’t make sense- maybe it never will- and it’s not your job to make sense of it all.
5- Stop overthinking what YOU could have done or changed to save the relationship.
This is a trap we often find ourselves falling into more than any other. After a breakup, it’s easy to look back and over-analyze every possible thing that may have caused it. Was I too clingy or detached? Was I fun enough? Did his friends like me? Is there something else I could have done to keep him from leaving? It’s easy to blame ourselves for relationships ending because, after all, if we did everything right, then why did we get dumped? Here’s the thing: whether it was your fault or not, it’s over. You can go over everything in your head again and again but it won’t change the outcome. If you think there’s something you could’ve done differently, maybe work on that in your NEXT relationship and put this one to rest.
6- Stop talking about it.
Yea- I know it seems, like, literally impossible. It’s totally normal to feel the need to let out all your emotions after a breakup, but, you’re going to have to tone it down after awhile.While venting about everything that happened is completely natural, if you do it too much, or for too long, you’re only hurting yourself. Not to mention, your friends are too nice to tell you they’re sick of hearing about it. Next time you want to talk about him, stop and think, “does this really matter?” If it really does, then go ahead and vent. If it doesn’t- get over it. Or, write it in a journal. After awhile, you’ll realize how much you talked about it just for the sake of talking about it, and not because you actually needed to. AND you’ll realize how little it really means to you.
See- that wasn’t too bad, was it? It’s okay to mourn the loss of a relationship but, at some point, you NEED to get over it. And you need to do it for yourself.