If you can, take a few days off of work, and do whatever brings you comfort (as long as it is not harmful). Watch sad movies, sleep, or eat some ice cream. If it becomes unbearable, remember that pain does eventually get better. [2] X Research source
In the heat of grief, it’s likely that you are romanticizing the person and forgetting about his or her flaws and weaknesses. It’s important to remember both. Try to be grateful for the ways that your love changed you and helped you to grow as a person, but also recognize if there are areas where it hindered your growth or made you into someone you don’t want to be. These are lessons you can take with you as you grow and learn. [4] X Research source
Of course, if you feel that you need someone to talk to, it’s okay to spend time with close friends. Find someone understanding who will let you vent about the relationship, but who will also tell you the truth about what they see from their perspective on the outside. If you’re open to advice, the good advice of a trusted friend can help you to reassess your loss and think about your future. Don’t spend too much time dwelling on the breakup, what went wrong, or what your ex is up to. Instead, focus on yourself and how you can move forward.
You can keep a journal, write poetry or short stories, draw a picture or a painting, write or learn to play a song, or take up spoken word poetry. These creative efforts will let you express your pain while also making something beautiful out of your experience. If you feel uninspired or are not the artistic type, visit a museum, theater, or concert. Sometimes seeing or hearing other artists’ interpretations of heartbreak helps you to understand it as a universal experience that binds you to the rest of humanity and, as painful as it may be, makes life worth living. [6] X Research source After all, if you never experienced loss, then you never truly loved.
While keeping these things is a good idea, you may not be ready to see them right now. Put the items you keep together in a single location and then put them somewhere out of the way. You can take them out again when you’ve emotionally recovered. This includes digital items, which can be similarly saved and stored out of the way on your computer.
If you have a bunch of the other person’s stuff, give it back. Untag yourself from pictures with him/her on Facebook, delete the pictures off of your own Facebook that remind you of him/her, and generally do away with extra digital items as well (saved voicemails, for example). Keeping items like this has been found in studies to prolong the grieving process and make it more difficult to recover. [7] X Research source
Don’t go out for coffee, don’t call, don’t text, don’t ask your friends about what the other person is doing. Stop thinking about the other person and start thinking about you. Experts recommend at least a 30-90-day break from all contact with the other person. Unfollow/friend the person on social media. Keeping an eye on him/her, intentional or not, is not healthy and will make it more difficult for you to fall out of love with the person. Break your social media ties with him/her (at least for now) so that you can think about more healthy things, like taking care of yourself.
Explain to them that you need a bit of a break and to spend some time away from them until you feel a little more stable. Good friends will understand. This may include mutual friends on Facebook, especially if you have friends who tend to post a lot of photos of your ex. Seeing or hearing little reminders of your relationship is likely to prolong the grieving process. If you can’t cut off ties with mutual Facebook relationships, just temporarily block them from your newsfeed or take a social media break until you’ve had time to heal.
For many people falling out of a very intense love, it may take several years before you are able to be close friends again. You may find that you have to wait until both of you are in love with someone else and in committed relationships before you are comfortable being friends again. For others, it’s impossible to ever be friends again, especially if the break-up was not mutual.
Friendships are a good thing to explore in this instance. You may find that while you were in love you let certain friendships lag that you really don’t want to lose. This is a great time to try to repair them. Think about who you were before you met your ex, and reclaim your single self. Maybe he or she was not into theater, and you are; maybe he or she liked your hair long, but you preferred it short. You may have put hobbies, friends, or parts of your personality on the back burner while you were with your ex, and now that you are single again, you should feel free to choose which aspects of your former self you want to hold onto.
Try taking yourself out for dinner or a movie. This is even better if you eat food or see a movie you want, but you know your former love would have hated.
Travel as much as you can. Traveling is a sure way to build new memories and experiences, both positive and negative. In having these new experiences to focus on, you’ll begin to forget (or at least become less focused on) your past experiences and troubles. Remember, travel doesn’t have to mean hopping on the next plane to Paris; you can travel locally too! The important part is to get out and go to places and do things you’ve never done before.
Be thankful for the good things that came out of the relationship, like a chance to know your own heart better and to learn what you need in a partner. Then, when you are grateful that you had the chance to love this person, you will be able to truly heal from your grief, because you will know that the grief served a purpose. [10] X Trustworthy Source HelpGuide Nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free, evidence-based mental health and wellness resources. Go to source
You can meet new people by going to bars and clubs, joining a church or civic group that share your interests, or volunteering. Also, keep your eyes open at work, school, or in the community for people you may have overlooked in the past. Be friendly and open to new people.
You will know you are ready to date again when you can say that you truly love and respect yourself. The truth is, we attract people to us who will treat us like we treat ourselves. If you are full of self-pity and self-doubt, it will be impossible to attract the kind of person who will love you for who you are.
Don’t let your heart fill with hate or negative feelings. Under no circumstances should you attempt to move on by trying to make yourself dislike the person you loved. If she/he hurt you or harmed you, you are perfectly allowed to be angry. However, it is healthy to forgive the other person, not for him/her, but for you. Letting all that hate into your heart is toxic and may ruin both your enjoyment of your life and your ability to have healthy future relationships. [11] X Trustworthy Source Greater Good Magazine Journal published by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, which uses scientific research to promote happier living Go to source Don’t go looking for faults in the other person. Certainly don’t make lists of everything that was wrong with him or her. Don’t make yourself hate the other person. Don’t force yourself to think that you’re better off. These things will only create negative emotions within you, not open you up for positive experiences.
When you’ve finally met someone who knows you and loves you for who you are, don’t feel bad about falling in love with someone else. You are not betraying or belittling your past feelings by finding new love; even books of fairy tales have more than one story in them, and our hearts are books with many pages. That said, if you don’t fall in love again for a long time, this doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you. Some hearts take longer to heal. Just focus on making yourself happy.
