Relationships are a very huge part of all our life. When we are with someone, we shape our lives, our routines, and even our future around the person. We dream to spend our entire future with them. Our lives get tangled with theirs and when suddenly a relationship ends, it is going to be hard to move on.
Each of us moves on differently. Some of us get into harmful habits or addictions while some move on towards the better version of themselves, towards a better and more successful life.
After a break-up, the partner leaves behind a lot of emotions, experiences, and baggage. Most of us carry scars and fears that stop us from growing and moving towards someone actually worth it, towards the better version of ourselves and our lives.
When a long term relationship ends, people are usually left so distraught that they isolate themselves. They avoid social situations and also avoid getting attached to people. They stay away from any possibility of being vulnerable and they prefer keeping to themselves.
They struggle with connection and vulnerability and take months and months to get anywhere closer to getting attached to someone else.
Before moving on, one needs to understand that moving on IS difficult. It IS completely okay to grieve and want to cry and stay away from others. It is valid to want to isolate yourself for a while, to stay in bed, take a leave from work, and have disrupted appetite or routine for a while. Falling down is okay. But what is not okay is to always stay there and never try to get better.
Moving on is a lot more than just letting go of the person. You have to bring changes in your life; there is this gap in your life where that person used to be. You are unsure of who you are without them, you need to cleanse your mind, your life, routine, mindset, everything after they leave. There are those memories that you can never get rid of. All the good and bad experiences would stay with you. You are filled with nostalgia, despair, and sometimes, even relief and feeling of freedom.
For any person having to deal with the death of a relationship, read on to make moving on easier on yourself.
Accepting and embracing reality.
When one is in a relationship, they are entitled to dream of the possibility of where the future might lead the two of them together. From where they would buy a house, to places they would visit, people wonder and create a world in their imagination, a world they very much want to experience in reality with their partner.
And when they realize that the most important aspect of all those dreams, that is, their partner, is no more going to be part of those dreams, despair, and dejection are some of the common feelings one would experience. Before the break-up, it seemed like they had their entire life planned and drawn out in front of their eyes. A beautiful canvas with all the tiny and big elements that would bring them happiness, but then the break up comes as a fire burning the beautiful painting away.
People have to start again, imagining, and planning a new future. A future in which their partner no more exists in their life, a complete upside downturn and it turns out to be a very gloomy and lonely feeling.
But the first step towards moving on is to accept what it is. It is to start planning a life without them, without you ever getting back with them. It is allowing yourself to grieve their absence but at the same time thinking about a future that doesn’t have them in it.
When you accept the fact that they have left, that you people just weren’t meant to be, that being without them as your partner is only going to make you better, you are setting yourself towards a path of freedom. You are allowing yourself to grow and to find someone or something that is way more deserving of your attention and dedication.
Lastly, it is always good to talk about your feelings and thoughts instead of keeping them bottled up. Though it clearly isn’t a good idea to bombard your ex with hateful texts and keying their car, as much appealing as that sounds, it is not the right choice because it is going to take you nowhere.
If you struggle to talk about it with someone, you can write about it in a paper or keep a journal.
“Acceptance is the key, to be truly free.”
– Katy Perry.
Look in the mirror.
When we are in a relationship, we associate a lot of our worth to that of our partner and the relationship. We shape ourselves so completely around them that we start losing sight of ourselves, many times forgetting that loving yourself is much more important than loving someone else.
After a relationship ends, you get the freedom to spend your entire time focusing on yourself, focusing on bettering your health, mentality, skills, getting closer to your goals. You start redefining yourself, finding time for things you never got to do.
When you focus on yourself, on falling in love with yourself after the end of a breakup, you are bringing peace into your mind and also improving your mental stability as well as increasing your self-esteem and confidence.
Detox yourself from them.
A reason why people find it hard to move on from someone is that they are still surrounded by little physical reminders of their ex-partner. With their suggested songs still in the playlists and maybe even playing from the speakers, with their clothes still in the wardrobe, their gifts still cautiously kept in the room, we find it hard to move on when every tiny thing around reminds us of them.
The problem with keeping all their physical memories around us is that even when we wish to move on from them, we only need one look on any of those objects to go back to the time which now you remember as one of the happy days that has gone by. What we are doing is stopping ourselves from having the complete space to move on from them.
It would be extremely hard to get rid of everything, but when you delete their photos, throw away their clothes, delete their songs from your playlist, even remove their favourite food from your refrigerator, replacing all their framed photos and all the other tiny things, you are bound to experience complete freedom and relief. Doing this would not only make you feel relieved but it would also make you feel that yes, yes you can do it, you can get through this tough time and you don’t need them to be in your life.
Burn all the bridges.
It is absurd how many people think that after the end of a long relationship it is not wrong to still be friends with them. When we are struggling to move on from them, we know that the only person who can understand our situation is the person going through the exact same thing, our ex-partner. And for that reason, we often find our way back to them, if not as a partner, maybe as a friend.
Doing this is like forcing yourself to live in denial. The relationship ended because the person wasn’t supposed to be in your life, as a partner or even as a friend. When we are bringing them back in our life, we need to remember that no matter what, two people who have been in love for a long time, could NEVER go back to just being friends.
From future relationships to all our simple decisions, this friendship is going to affect both you and them. Both of you would struggle and it would get harder with time to move on.
And even for relationships that ended badly, or for the ones that had no chance of the people involved to become friends again, out of desperation and for old time sake, people reach out to their ex, disrupting both their lives.
Burning all the bridges is the best way to keep them away from you and to keep yourself from going towards them. Deleting their contact is the first step, the next is unfollowing all their social media accounts. If the relationship ended with unbearable chaos, blocking them everywhere is a wise decision. Avoiding places where they might be, at least for a while, is another good trick. Telling all your mutual friends that you want to move on from them and don’t want any encounter would give your friends a heads-up on how to not invite you two together anywhere. And they wouldn’t try to bring you two back together either.
Don’t be bitter about it.
As much as we want to believe in the happily ever after, life isn’t like that. We don’t get everything we wish for, but we do get what we needed. We might want to be back with the person, but maybe life has something else planned, maybe they aren’t who or what you need.
Being bitter about the end of a relationship makes you forget about all the good times that were there, all the happy and adventurous experiences, you remember the relationship only based on the break-up. Clearly being the wrong method of moving on, being bitter only makes you struggle even in your future relationships. It makes you move forward with all the wounds from your previous relationships still strong and open.
When you try to understand that what happened was for your good, when you accept what it is and stop trying to change it, and when you allow bitterness to leave your mind, you are letting the end bring peace in your life. Carrying all the heavyweight emotions would get tiring, you’d be emotionally exhausted as well as unavailable. You’d be stealing away your own unhappiness by letting yourself dwell upon how bitter you are about the relationship ending or about whatever way it ended.
When you accept and forgive them instead of wanting to hold on to the bitterness and resent them for as long as possible, you are giving yourself the courage that you are strong and mature enough to move on, you bring peace and eliminate all harm that could have been caused to your mental and emotional health if you held on.
Tell your friends to don’t bring them up in conversations unless you do, start doing new and old hobbies, detox your life and mind from their existence, burn all the bridges between you two, accept that it happened for good and try to evaluate how this would be extremely good for you and your life. But most importantly, forgive them for things in the past and also forgive yourself for everything that happened.
