If You're Serious About Becoming Someone Different In 2026, Here Are 3 Things You Should Probably Stop Doing
Sofia | Unsplash In the past year, you likely had at least a few breakups that have left you feeling broken-hearted. I don’t care how strong, independent, or confident you are; breakups hurt. There's a lot of practical advice on how to get over a guy, most of which I agree with. Block him on Facebook, take a trip with your friends, remove his personal items from your home — these are all good ways to help you stop feeling the emotional pain.
Although I recommend you take these actions, they only help you avoid — they don’t help you heal. Almost every woman I know, both friends and the women I coach, have some unresolved past relationship junk that is hovering in the background of her life:
- What did I do wrong?
- Why didn’t he want me?
- Why can’t I forget him?
- Will anyone ever love me?
You can see why, when these questions go unanswered, we can feel unworthy, insecure, unlovable, even hopeless. There’s also the anger. We have trouble trusting men, or even worse, we can’t trust ourselves. Until these feelings are acknowledged and the dynamics of your relationship are processed in a way that helps you understand your experience and learn from it, you are sure to keep repeating your patterns.
So if you're serious about becoming someone different in 2026, here are three things you need to quietly stop doing:
1. Romanticizing your last relationship
There are an endless number of steps on the way to your forever, grown-up love story. The lonely super single days, the bad and boring dates, the fun dates, the childish mistakes you make, feeling loved, and, yes, feeling like you have a broken heart.
You can choose to look at them as failures and wasted time, or you can choose to see them as requisite experiences leading up to your life’s ultimate desire. The first step in getting over your ex is to agree to open your heart and mind so you can look for the positive in your experience. When you do, I promise you’ll find it.
Research found that when you keep holding onto romantic feelings for your ex, you literally can't move forward or figure out who you are without them. People who stay emotionally attached to past partners experience way worse psychological well-being because they're stuck defining themselves through a relationship that's already over.
2. Ignoring red flags
Meruyert Gonullu / Pexels
This man and this partnership weren't right for you — ultimately, it didn’t make you happy. I’d even venture to say that, once you look closely, you’ll find you weren’t very happy while in the relationship.
How you feel is the bar by which you can truly measure the value of your relationship with a man, especially one that you want to last a lifetime. It’s not about what he DOES. It’s not about how much he makes you laugh. It’s not even about how he feels about you.
This is a hard process. Many women don’t even know what they want or need. We’ve never articulated it. We’ve never allowed ourselves to ask that question. Instead, we go by some general sense, an intuition, a day-to-day thing.
It helps if you understand the feelings that are important for you to feel fulfilled and whole in a relationship. When you look at your relationship based on how you feel with him (and not with him), things can look quite different.
Research showed that most people actually do notice red flags early on, but our brains ignore them because we want so badly to believe the person is great. Once you decide someone's worth dating, your mind goes into confirmation bias mode, where you only see what confirms your hopeful view and brush off anything that doesn't fit the story you want to believe.
3. Repeating patterns that keep you stuck
Relationships have three distinct elements: you, him, and the relationship. When you explore each of these elements separately, you can learn a lot about yourself and what you want.
Research on relationship patterns found that people unconsciously keep choosing partners with the same issues as their exes without even realizing it. When you actually sit down and look at your relationship history to spot these patterns, you finally get the self-awareness you need to break the cycle instead of staying stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over.
The purpose of some exploration isn’t to find out who was right or wrong, or what mistakes you made. The purpose is to take a thoughtful, truthful look at this life experience, grab the learning, and forge forward in your journey to lasting love. If you have a man who’s haunting you, or if you have a relationship you can’t seem to leave behind, I want to help you get to your positive takeaways … and move on.
It's understandable if you feel reluctant to revisit the past; it may feel like you’re finally getting over him, and the idea of dredging it up again feels pretty sucky. But it’s not enough to stop feeling the emotional pain because you’ve learned how to block it. You need to take the time to heal properly.
With healing, you will see the positive in this relationship. You will be able to use the experience to ultimately make your life better, and ultimately, you will be much closer to your love story.
Bobbi Palmer, founder of Date Like A Grownup, is an internationally recognized expert helping women over 40 find grownup, lasting, passionate love with the right man.
