Getting Over Your Ex Is Easy When You Understand These 5 Specific Things
scott neil | Pexels Is there anything harder than letting go of a past love? Getting over your ex and learning how to move on after a breakup can feel impossible, especially when you still love the person and replay the good memories in your head. You shared a life with them, imagined a future, and now you're supposed to just let it go. Of course, that's not easy.
But here's the part people don't talk about: getting over your ex becomes a whole lot easier when you understand what's actually keeping you stuck. If you can see clearly how emotional baggage and living in the past are affecting you, you can finally start moving forward instead of sitting in the same pain. And that's where these things come in.
Getting over your ex is easy when you understand these 5 specific things:
1. Your sadness is keeping you stuck
One thing about sadness and depression is that they hold you back from living fully.
- Do you find that you would rather stay home, feeling sad, waiting hopefully to hear from your person?
- Do your friends find you tiresome to be with because all you can do is talk about your ex, and so they no longer invite you out?
- Do you find, if you are out, that you have a hard time having fun because you are preoccupied with thoughts of your ex?
It's hard to be happy and live your life fully if you're stuck in the past. Thoughts of what was, and might have been, keep you from looking at the life you are living right now, and appreciating things that are wonderful. If you don’t notice the world around you, if you don’t engage in it fully, you can never find the happiness you seek.
2. Your emotional baggage is weighing you down
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Letting go of a past love is crucial to your happiness because of the weight of the baggage. Unfortunately, bad relationships can cause you a significant amount of damage.
Career coach Steph Auteri explained, "If you see him smile in a certain way or utter a certain phrase, and you immediately think of your abusive ex-boyfriend or that immature idiot you rebounded with or that unfortunate one-night stand, you're letting your past drag you unnecessarily down. Do you consistently find yourself souring on new dating prospects simply because of unfortunate similarities? It's important to remind yourself that he is not your ex. "
You might stop trusting people, become sensitive to the things other people do that are like your ex, and feel easily abandoned or unworthy of love. Once you accept and work through the issues that cause "baggage," you can accept your new relationship and put the old one in the rearview mirror.
3. Living in the past prevents you from finding love again
Do you want to find someone to love who will love you completely? Are you struggling to find a person in spite of how much you would like to? Research shows that going through a separation or breakup can be accompanied by depression.
Unfortunately, it will be impossible to find someone new if you're obsessing about your ex. If you spend all your time staying home depressed or, when you're out, not picking up your head and seeing what's out there, then even if someone does come along, you might not see them. It's important to put your energy out there as a single, available person in the world, not someone who is mired in misery because of a past breakup.
4. The emotional rollercoaster is exhausting you
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Letting go of a past love is fraught with big emotions. You feel anger, sadness, despair, hopelessness, self-loathing, and insecurity. Those feelings can coexist or come and go separately. And those emotions can suck the life out of you.
Feeling extreme emotions can be debilitating. The long-term damage caused to your body and mind by anger and sadness is quite profound. Studies have shown muscles absorb emotions, especially if the emotions are stuffed down. This can lead to physical problems, such as a sore back, a frozen shoulder, or worse.
Your mind can get exhausted by the constant barrage of feelings, and you could have a hard time concentrating. The thoughts in your head could keep you from sleeping, which isn’t good for anyone. If you're in pain, consider the fact that letting go of a past love is the best thing you can do for both your mental and physical health.
5. Holding on can cost you your friendships
When going through a breakup, your friends are a valuable resource. They love you unconditionally and want to support you through your pain. They are willing to listen, to assure you that your ex is horrible, and remind you how amazing you are.
Research has suggested that getting through breakups without friends is difficult. Unfortunately, sometimes there is a limit to your friend's willingness to support you through a breakup. The threshold can change, but sooner or later, your friends might tell you to get over it and let it go, and it’s time to move on and live your life.
When you don’t or can’t do that, they get sick of it and choose not to spend time with you. Not having your friends is a horrible thing in any situation, and especially when you're feeling vulnerable from a breakup. So, letting go of a past love is crucial because you will keep your friendships intact. After all, your people were with you before your ex, and will be with you long after. How lucky are you?
Letting go of a past love is absolutely crucial to moving forward and being happy. It’s really hard to do, and it takes some effort, sometimes a lot of effort. But it can happen, and when it does, you will have a real shot at being happy. And happy people attract other people who are happy, so living happily ever after isn’t just a possibility! How great would that be?
Mitzi Bockmann is a NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate. She works exclusively with women to help them be all that they want to be in this crazy world in which we live.
