5 Easy Tips to Help You Survive After a Break Up
Breaking up is hard. It’s also usually for the best. When it happens, you need to stop worrying about your relationship and go into damage control for one person: yourself.
If you don’t take care of yourself, you could slide into bad habits or, worse, get back into bad relationships. It’s estimated that up to a third of all people have sex with their exes after they’ve broken up. You can do better. Here’s how.
1. Don’t say, “It could be worse.”
The absolute worst thing that we do to ourselves is going, “Hey, at least we had some fun while it lasted.” Yes, you did, but you’re not having fun now and you need to acknowledge how much it sucks!
If you’re in pain because of a break-up and you enjoyed that relationship and that person, then denying that pain actually prolongs the grieving process because you’re telling yourself not to make a big deal. This creates a feedback loop where you feel bad, which makes you feel bad for feeling bad, which makes you feel bad, and so on and so forth.
Talk with someone about how much you hurt and, more importantly, let others help you feel that pain. That honors you and lets you feel important, which can galvanize you and help you move on.
2. Treat yourself!
I think this may be the most common piece of advice that people actually put into practice. However, if you’re like us, you might be thinking too much with your head and not enough with your heart. Honor any feelings you might have for at least 24 hours.
If that includes starting your day with three chocolate sundaes, treat yo’ self. If this means getting some toys for yourself, go all out. This can help you find the joy in being alone just a little bit and give you those pleasure endorphins that you need to make yourself feel good.
3. Don’t call him.
Within the first 24 hours, don’t make contact.
Don’t do it.
You need to be without your former S.O. No matter how badly you want to, just don’t call them. If you need to move things out of your place or into another place, either get it done as soon as the break-up happens or postpone it a day. Give yourself the time to grieve instead of focusing on the practical aspects of decoupling.
4. Don’t listen to break-up advice for at least 24 hours.
Again, this is to honor your emotions. No matter how right your friends might be, the most important thing is to get your own emotions in check. You probably feel like garbage, so the best thing you can do is empower yourself by doing stuff on your own. Whatever you do in that critical 24 hour period is exactly the thing you need to do and you can deal with the consequences later.
Honor yourself and your own reflexes before rushing to the experts for help. Who knows? Maybe those reflexes you have can give you the emotional satisfaction you need.
5. Honor yourself.
All of the above advice goes back to this last piece of letting yourself feel terrible. Your relationship just ended and it sucks. Because of this, you need to:
- Feel angry at your former S.O.
- Feel angry at the world
- Feel angry at how unfair things are
- Feel sad at how great the relationship was and how it’s not going to happen
- Feel all the negative emotions
Feeling those things lets the reality sink in faster. The sooner you can deal with the reality of the situation and the reality of your feelings, the better you’ll be.
