Note: You might not be ready to get over your relationship, or you might not want to yet. You don’t have to. Sometimes sadness feels important to experience. In some ways sadness can be beautiful, or lead to beautiful things, but only if it isn’t lasting. Lasting sadness is stifling, dulling, deadening. Getting through the day is also important, and eventually you’ll want to get through the day without feeling awful. If you don’t feel ready to be over it yet, now might be the time for sympathy instead of advice. But read through this now, even if you can’t do any of it yet, and revisit this as you feel more ready to heal and recover.

I was very recently in a relationship that lasted for 4.5 years. My partner had been fantastic through all those years. My partner also was prone to depression, and is/was going through a bad episode of depression. I am usually a major source of support at these times. Our relationship was open for the last six months. I wasn’t dating anyone at this time (mostly due to busy-ness), and my partner was, though not seriously. I felt him pulling away somewhat, which I (correctly) attributed mostly to depression and which nonetheless caused me some jealousy. But I was overall extremely happy with this relationship, very committed, and still very much in love as well. It was quite a surprise when my partner broke up with me one May Wednesday evening.

After we had a good cry together, the next morning I woke up and started researching the literature on breaking up. Over the first weeks of this breakup, I’ve compiled that literature into this document. My goals were to:

 

1. Stop feeling so sad in the immediate moment
2. “Get over” my partner
3. Internalize any gains I had made over the course of our relationship or any lessons I had learned from the break up

 

I made most of my gains in the first few days and weeks, with a few hold-over habits and tendencies (like feeling responsible for improving his emotional state) which are currently too strong but which will serve me well in our continuing friendship.  Below are the states of mind and strategies that allowed me to get over it more quickly and with good personal growth.

Note: mileage may vary. I have a higher than average baseline of happiness. You might not get over the relationship so fast, but your getting-over-it will be faster if you try these as opposed to allowing your natural post breakup reactions.

 

Strategies (in order of importance)

1. Decide you don’t want to get back in the relationship.

Decide that it is over. Decide that, given the opportunity, you would not get back with this person. (If you were the breaker-upper, you might be able to skip this step.)

This isn’t really an action, its all about making a pact with yourself. Until you can do this, it is unlikely that you will get completely over it. If you’re always hoping for an opportunity or an argument or a situation that will bring you back together, much of your mental energy will go towards planning for that situation, formulating those arguments, imagining that opportunity instead of getting over it. Every glimmer of hope will bring new disappointment. Until you do this, you’re stuck in the break up that never ends.

Some of the below strategies can still be used even if you can’t reach this point (and in fact, they can help you reach it). But this is really the foundation of your healing. There are some facts that can help you convince the logical part of brain that this is the correct attitude.

• People in on-and-off relationships are less satisfied, feel more anxiety about their relationship status, and continue to cycle on-and-off even after cohabitation and marriage
• People in tumultuous relationships are much less happy than singles and far less happy than people in solid relationships
• Wanting to stay in a relationship is reinforced by many mental biases (status quo bias, ambiguity effect, choice supportive bias, loss aversion, mere-exposure effect, ostrich effect). For someone to break through all those biases and end things, they must be extremely unhappy. If your continuing relationship makes someone you love unhappy, it is a disservice to capitalize on those biases in a moment of weakness and return to the relationship.
• Being in a relationship with someone who isn’t excited about and pleased by you is settling for an inferior quality of relationship. The amazing number of kind, intelligent, fascinating, and date-able people in the world means settling for this is unwise. Contrast the situation we evolved in, where replacing a lost mate was difficult or impossible because so few unrelated people lived in your community. All these feelings of wanting to get back together evolved in a situation of scarcity, but we live in a world of plenty.
• Intermittent rewards are the most powerful, so an on-again-off-again relationship has the power to make you commit to things you would never commit to given a new relationship. The more hot-and-cold your partner is, the more rewarding the relationship seems and the less likely you are to be happy in the long term. Only you can end that tantalizing Pavlovian possibility of intermittent rewards by resolving not to partake if the opportunity arises.
• Even if some extenuating circumstance could explain away their intention to break up (depression, bipolar, long-distance, convincing from a third party, etc), it is belittling to your ex-partner to try to invalidate their stated feelings. Do not fall into the trap of imagining that you know more about a person’s inner state than they do. Take their statements at face value and act accordingly. Even if this is only a temporary state of mind for them, it is unlikely that they will never ever again be in the same state of mind.

 

2. Talk to other people about the good things that came of your break-up.  (This can also help you arrive at #1, not wanting to get back together)

This leads to three benefits: first, simply talking about good things makes you notice good things and talking in a positive attitude makes you feel positive. Second, it re-emphasizes to your brain that losing your significant other does not mean losing your social support network. Third, it acts as a mild social commitment – it would be embarrassing to go on about how much you’re growing outside the relationship and later have to explain you jumped back in at the first opportunity.

You do not need to be purely positive. If you are feeling sadness, definitely talk about it! But don’t dwell only on the sadness when you talk. When I was talking to my very close friends about all aspects of my feelings, I still tried to say two positive things for every negative thing. For example: “It was a surprise, which was jarring and unpleasant and upended my life plans in these ways. But being a surprise, I didn’t have time to dread and dwell on it beforehand. And breaking up sooner is preferable to a long decline in happiness for both of us, so its better to break up as soon as it becomes clear to either person that the path is headed downhill, even if it is surprising to the other party.”

Talk about the positives as often as possible without alienating people. The people you talk to don’t need to be serious close friends. I spend a collective hour and a half talking to two OKCupid dates about how many good things came from the break up. (Both dates had been scheduled before actually breaking up, both people had met me once prior, and both dates went surprisingly well due to sympathy, escalating self-disclosure, and positive tone. To them, it seemed like I was an emotionally healthy person dealing with an understandably difficult situation).

If you feel that you don’t have any candidates for good listeners either because the break up was due to some mistake or infidelity of yours, or because you are socially isolated/anxious, writing is an effective alternative to talking. Study participants recovered quicker when they spent 15 minutes writing about the positive aspects of their break up, participants with three 15 minute sessions did better still. And it can benefit anyone to keep a running list of positives to can bring up out in conversation.

 

3. Create a social support system

Identify who in your social network can still be relied on as a confidant and/or a neutral listener. You might be surprised at who still cares about you. In my breakup, my primary confidant was my ex’s cousin, who also happens to be  my housemate and close friend. His mom and best friend, both living in other states, also reached out to check on me. Most of the time, even people who you consider your ex-partner’s friends still feel enough allegiance to you and enough sympathy to be good listeners and through listening they can become your friends.

If you don’t currently have a support system, make one! OKCupid is a great resource for meeting friends outside of just dating, and people are way way more likely to want to meet you if you message them with a “just looking for friends” type message. People  you aren’t currently close to but who you know and like can become better friends if you are willing to reveal personal/vulnerable stories. Escalating self-disclosure+symmetrical vulnerability=feelings of friendship. Break ups are a great time for this to happen because you’ve got a big vulnerability, and one which almost everyone has experienced. Everyone has stories to share and advice to give on the topic of breaking up.

 

4. Intentionally practice differentiation

One of the most painful parts of a break up is that so much of your sense-of-self is tied into your relationship. You will be rebuilding your sense of self, and depending on the length and the committed-ness of the relationship, you may be rebuilding it from the ground up. This is hard, but its also an opportunity. You can rebuild any way you want. All the things you used to like before your relationship, all the interests and hobbies you once cared about, those can be reincorporated into your new, differentiated sense of self. You can do all the things you once wished you did.

Spend at least 5 minutes thinking about what your best self looks like. Seriously, get a pen and paper and really devote some mental energy to the question: what kind of person do you wish to be? This is a great opportunity to make some resolutions. Because you have a fresh start, and because these resolutions are about self-identification, they are much more likely to stick. Just be sure to frame them in relation to your sense-of-self: not ‘I will exercise,’ instead ‘I’m a fit active person, the kind of person who exercises’ not ‘I want to improve my Spanish fluency’ but ‘I’m a Spanish speaking polygot, the kind of person who is making an big effort to become fluent.’

Language is also a good tool to practice differentiation. Try not to use the word “we,” “us,” of “our,” even in your head. From now on, it is “s/he/they and I,” “me and him/her/them,” or “mine and his/hers/theirs.” Practice using the word “ex” a lot. Memories are re-formulated and overwritten each time we revisit them, so in your memories make sure to think of you two as separate independent people and not as a unit.

 

5. Make use of the following mental frameworks to re-frame your thinking:

Over the relationship vs. over the person

You do not have to stop having romantic, tender, or lustful feelings about your ex to get over the relationship. Those type of feelings are not easily controlled, but you can have those same feelings for good friends or crushes without it destroying your ability to have a meaningful platonic relationship, why should this be different?

Being over the relationship means:

 

• Not feeling as though you are missing out on being part of a relationship.
• Not dwelling/ruminating/obsessing about your ex-partner (includes both positive, negative and neutral thoughts “they’re so great” and “I hate them and hope they die” and “I wonder what they are up to”.
• Not wishing to be back with your ex-partner.
• Not making plans that include consideration of your ex-partner, because these considerations are no longer important (this includes considerations like “this will make him/her feel sorry I’m gone,” or “this will show him/her that I’m totally over it”)
• Being able to interact with people without your ex-partner at your side and not feel weird about it, especially things you used to do together (eg. a shared hobby or at a party)
• In very lucky peaceful-breakup situations, being able to interact with your ex-partner and maybe even their current romantic interests without it being too horribly weird and unpleasant.

 

On the other hand, being over a person means experiencing no pull towards that person, romantic, emotional, or sexual. If your break up was messy, you can be over the person without being over the relationship. This is often when people turn to messy and unsatisfying rebound relationships. It is far far more important to be over the relationship, and some of us (me included) will just have to make peace with not being over the person, with the help of knowing that having a crush on someone does not necessarily have the power to make you miserable or destroy your friendship.

Obsessive thinking and cravings

If you used a brain scanner to look at a person who has been recently broken up with, and then you used the same brain scanner to look at someone who recently sobered up from an addictive drug, their brain activity would be very similar. So similar, in fact, that some neurologists speculate that addiction hijacks the circuits for romantic obsession (there is a very plausible evolutionary reason for romantic obsession to exist in early human societies. Addiction, less so).

In cases of addiction/craving, you can’t just force your mind to stop thinking thoughts you don’t like. But you can change your relationship with those thoughts. Recognize when they happen. Identify them as a craving rather than a true need. Recognize that, when satisfied, cravings temporarily diminish and then grow stronger (like feeding a begging dog, you’ve rewarded your brain for bad behavior). These are thoughts without substance. The action they drive you towards will increase, rather than decrease, unpleasant feelings.

When I first broke up, I had many unpleasant hours of rumination, thinking uncontrollably about the same topics over and over despite those topics being painful. At some point I realized that continuing to merely think about the break up was also addictive. My craving circuits just picked the one set of thoughts I couldn’t argue against just so my brain could go on obsessively dwelling without me being able to pull a logic override. These thoughts SEEM like goal oriented thinking, they FEEL productive, but they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

In my specific case, my brain was concern trolling me. Concern trolling on the internet is when someone expresses sympathy and concern while actually having ulterior motives (eg on a body-positive website, fat shaming with: “I’m so glad you’re happy but I’m concerned that people will think less of you because of you’re fat”). In my case, I was worrying about my ex’s depression and his state of mind, which are very hard thoughts to quash. Empathy and caring are good, right? And he really was going through a hard time. Maybe I should call and check up on him…. My brain was concern trolling me.

Depending on how your relationship ended, your brain could be trolling in other ways. Flaming seems to be a popular set of unstoppable thoughts. If you can’t argue with the thought that the jerk is a horrible person, then THAT is the easiest way for your brain’s addictive circuits to happily go on obsessing about this break up. Nostalgia is also a popular option. If the memories were good, then it’s hard to argue with revisiting them. Other common ruminations are problem solving (how can I make things better?), simulating possible futures (because of my breakup, my life is going to be…), trying to resolve confusion (but why would he say that?…), regret (“I shouldn’t have done…”), counter-factual thinking (“If things were different then…”).

As I said, you can’t force these parts of your brain to just shut up. That’s not how craving works. But you can take away their power by recognizing that all your ruminating is just these obsessive circuits hijacking your normal thought process. Say to yourself “I feeling an urge to call and yell at him/her, but so what. Its just a meaningless craving.”

What you lose

There is a great sense of loss that comes with the end of a relationship. For some people, it is a similar feeling to actually being in mourning. Revisiting memories becomes painful, things you used to do together are suddenly tinged with sadness.

I found it helpful to think of my relationship as a book. A book with some really powerful life-changing passages in the early chapters, a good rising action, great characters. A book which made me a better person by reading it. But a book with a stupid deus ex machina ending that totally invalidated the foreshadowing in the best passages. Finishing the book can be frustrating and saddening, but the first chapters of book still exist. Knowing that the ending sucks isn’t going to stop the first chapters from being awesome and entertaining and powerful. And I could revisit those first chapters any time I liked. I could just read my favorite parts without needing to read the whole stupid ending.

You don’t lose your memories. You don’t lose your personal growth. Any gains you made while you were with someone, anything new that they introduced you to, or helped you to improve on, or nagged at you till you had a new better habit, you get to keep all of those. That show you used to watch together, it is still there and you’re still allowed to watch it and care about it without him/her. The bar you used to visit together is still there too. All those photos are still great pictures of both of you in interesting places. Your mutual friends are still around.

The only thing you definitely lose at the end of a relationship is the future of that relationship. You are losing something that hasn’t happened yet, something which never existed. The only thing you are losing is what you imagined someday having. It’s something called the endowment effect: you assumed this future was yours so you assigned it a lot of value. But it never was yours, you’ve lost something which doesn’t exist. It’s still a painful experience, but realizing all of this helped me a lot.

 

July Update – three months later:

Comparisons and self-esteem:

Brains are built to compare and optimize, so one difficult problem I’ve faced in the months after the break up was seeing my ex date other people. I had trouble because my unconscious impulse is to think “he has chosen them over me.” This thinking pattern is instant, unconscious, and hard to break. And it comes with a big hit to either self esteem.

It was helpful to remind myself that the break up occurred because the relationship was broken. There is a heavy opportunity cost to date someone if it could never work out, or if you aren’t happy. That opportunity cost is the freedom to seek a better relationship. So I shouldn’t be comparing myself to any flesh-and-blood person. He chose opportunity and freedom over a relationship, not her over me. And its just not possible to compare yourself to a a concept like that in a way that makes sense. The people that come as a result that choice for freedom aren’t relevant to the decision to break up.

Milestones:

It took me 2 weeks to be over this particular relationship, it took me a month and a half to not wish I was in some relationship, to get excited and happy about being single.  It was 3 months before dating and experiencing new people started to sound like it might be fun/interesting.

Long Tail of Sadness:

During the period after the break up, for about 3 months, I had to be extra careful to have enough sleep, drink enough water, get sunshine, eat enough, and meditate. If my physical state was normal, I almost always felt great, acted normal, and rarely thought about my ex. But if I let myself get into a physical state which would normally cause a generalized bad mood, I would more often find myself ruminating on the break up. Sleep is medicine.