Breaking up sucks. Tell yourself so. If you’re going through a breakup right now, just give yourself a second to acknowledge that breaking up is miserable. Have you acknowledged it? Okay, good.
Now, chances are, you and everyone you know have ideas for how to get through this rocky time. You have techniques tailored to your personality, or if you don’t have any techniques yet, you’ll find them soon. I’ll leave it that part up to you. This article is about avoiding the bad habits that often come with the end of a relationship . . . the habits that develop from our wild attempts to find closure. Here are a few tips to help you keep your pride intact while you get back on your feet, romantically speaking.
The Habit: Calling/texting/emailing because you have one more thing to say.
The Cure: Say it to someone else. That’s what your friends live for—the opportunity to sit beside you in your darkest hours and listen to you slam your ex-boyfriend. Or wax poetic about how wonderful he was. Whatever you need, your girls are there to listen. And if that doesn’t work? Go ahead and write a letter to him, but hang on to it. Don’t look at it again until the next day at time when you’re feeling a little better. When you read it over, consider if it’s really important for him to read your words. Make sure you remind yourself that sending him your letter will not make you a couple again. Chances are, you’ll find that you’d rather let him believe that you’re letting it go than give him reason to think you’re still desperately hanging on.
The Habit: Facebook Stalking
The Cure: Be your own warden. Set rules for yourself and stick to them. Maybe you can only peek in on his profile once a day. Maybe you’re feeling a little tougher and you forbid yourself from checking in at all. Or maybe you’ll respond best to a challenge. Keep a tally of how many days (or hours) you can go without Facebook stalking. Each time you drive by his profile, challenge yourself to beat your last record. As always, don’t be shy about asking a friend to support you and hold you accountable.
The Habit: Asking him why . . . again and again.
The Cure: Consider it over. Each day, you recall new incidents in your relationship and new possible causes for the breakup. This means that each day, you come up with a new theory for why things went wrong and a new reason to contact him and ask if that’s what this is all about. Before you pick up the phone, give yourself a time out. Go for a jog, take a shower, meditate . . . whatever clears your head. Then remind yourself that it’s over. That there’s nothing you can do or could have done. It’s over and you have to let go. Then, let it go. It will keep coming back again and you’ll have to keep letting it go, but eventually, with practice, the bargaining in your mind will stop, and you’ll be able to let go for real.
The Habit: Resenting yourself for being so darn emotional.
The Cure: Empathize with yourself. It sounds stupid to suggest such a thing, because obviously you get what you’re going through. Nevertheless, we tend to be hardest on ourselves. During this time, you’re probably doing your fair share of self-pitying. You probably stay in bed too long some days or whine more than usual. You’ve most likely laid all of your most vulnerable thoughts and feelings bare before your friends. These things can sometimes get a person feeling really lame. Forget about it. You’re not lame. As we established six hundred words ago, breaking up sucks. Always. For everyone everywhere. These demonstrations of emotion? They’re necessary parts of the healing process. Give yourself a break. Hurting means you’re normal.
All of these sneaky little habits mean you’re normal, too. This whole stupid process is so normal it’s ridiculous. The most important thing you can do for yourself along the way is to always remember that this process is about letting go. Hang in there. You’re almost through it.
