Even if your heart tries to pull its broken self together to tell you it’s for the best, and your head – foggy and sad – tells you the pain will pass, the agony of a breakup can be relentless. When you’re recovering from a breakup, it’s important not to hurry things along – it’s your time to reset, recharge and draw wisdom from the experience – but what if your healing could be strong and complete … and quicker? Science may have just found the way.
New research has found that broken-hearted ones who reflected more on their relationships over a nine week period had a stronger overall recovery from their breakup.
An important part of the healing is a process called ‘self-concept reorganisation’, which involves rebuilding and strengthening the sense of who you are, independent of the relationship.
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Relationships have a profound impact on the beliefs we have about ourselves, whether we realise it or not. During the course of a relationship, it’s very normal to ‘intertwine’ with a partner. Goals and directions change, as well as wants and needs for now and the future.
This isn’t because you lose yourself, though certainly that can happen, but because intimacy involves opening up to another person – opening up to their love, wants, needs, feelings, opinions, love, goals, dreams. When that happens, you can’t help but be influenced and eventually move in the same direction. Sometimes that involves adjusting your own sails. It’s all a healthy part of being with someone fully, and part of the unpredictable magic of relationships.
A breakup means the undoing of this merging, which is painful to go through. However strong and independent a person may be, the fracturing of a relationship can also mean the fracturing of the self-concept. One of the most painful parts of a breakup is that it up-ends things as you’ve come to know them. The familiar is gone, plans are changed and the future all of a sudden has too many blank spaces where happy things used to be.
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Part of the healing is re-establishing who you are without your partner. Anything that can repair and re-strengthen the self-concept, will accelerate healing.
So, to get you back to strong, based on science …
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Talk. Go on. Go for it.
There are a couple of ways that talking about a breakup might help to facilitate healing. The first is that talking about the relationship will help to bring a different perspective to things. It’s not called a ‘breakup’ because it’s working well. Being in love or being in like-a-lot can blur things, hide things and dress things up, sometimes at the cost of clarity. There will be a level of insight that will throw itself at your feet when you talk about the relationship from a more distant perspective.
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Find your story.
Talking helps to construct a story of the relationship that gives meaning to the experience – including the experience of the relationship, the breakup, and perhaps most importantly for healing, the recovery. Let me explain …
If you tell the story of your breakup as one of rejection and a lost happy ever after, recovery will be slow, kind of like ‘walking through quicksand’ type of slow. It’s really easy to get stuck in this narrative when the thoughts are locked in your head and want to be with you at 2am. On the other hand, talking to people in your tribe will help you find a way to understand your story from a position of strength. This might involve finding the lessons, the learning and reframing the experience as, say, an ending, rather than a rejection.
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An emotional release – journalling.
Having an emotional release is an important part of healing. Journalling is one way to do this as it allows you to capture and give definition to the thoughts and feelings that are swirling around inside. Journalling doesn’t have to be done every day to have an effect. Even a few times a week will help the healing.
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Write – as though you’re talking to a stranger.
Writing repeatedly about the process of the breakup as though speaking with a stranger about it, is another way to move towards healing. As well as being an emotional release, it also encourages a fresh perspective and new insights.
[irp posts=”150″ name=”Your Body During a Breakup: The Science of a Broken Heart”]
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Reclaim yourself – what’s been neglected?
Reclaiming a strong self-concept – establishing who you are outside of the relationship – is critical and will be enormously supportive of a recovery. Think about the parts of yourself that might have been pushed aside during the relationship. When you’ve found these, find ways to build them and nurture them.
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And expand them.
Find new ways to expand your self concept. When you feel ready, (or maybe a little before then) take up new interests, establish new goals or re-establish your direction. Given that your need to connect has been messed with, anything that will give you the opportunity to connect with others who will also see you as your own, unique person will really help the healing process.
A breakup is an ending, not a rejection. It might not feel like that initially, but it’s an important thing to remember. When your heart has been broken, it can take a while to find your way back to whole but you will get there. Healing from a broken heart is as much a physical process as it is an emotional one. It’s very similar to recovering from an addiction, which is why it feels so hard and so damn painful.
Above all else, remember that there were things about you that were beautiful, strong, vibrant and extraordinary before the relationship. Nothing has changed.
Hi am going through a break up which happened 3days ago it was a3yrs relationship so I don’t even know what to do anymore.The guy lived with his bother and bother’s fiancée.After sometime my ex asked me if we can rent our own place and cost share which I said yes to since we were now 2yrs in and that was something I was looking forward to but he became reluctant and never wanted to move out again now he was asking for another 5yrs at this point he had introduced me to his family already but he couldn’t talk to mine over the phone or arrange to meet them since we don’t come from the same continent so we have been having this fight for months now .He just called it quits 3days ago have after pushing and talking me to abortion I am so damaged please help I really need move on
I think a breakup will always hurt on some levels but time is what will help a person get back to some form of normalcy. I started dating one of my good guy friends and we literally had everything in common. I would open up to him as he would me and I felt he was someone I could rely on. I literally would had and did everything I could for him because I cared about him so much. I helped with issues with his son and helped him at work as well. It all came to a downward spiral one day out of nowhere without any notice after he felt things were moving quickly in Feb. He then started distancing himself and started seeing another person for work who was married but said she wasn’t “really” married. This woman who was way older wanted him from the time him and I started seeing each other in August and did everything in her power to cause a rift between him and I while she was Married.
The thing that hurts is that he couldn’t even have the decency to say he no longer wanted to be with me even though we made a pact before starting things to always we remain friends no matter what. We did everything together from going on vacations to just sitting hanging out doing nothing. What hurt the most is that when I found out about the two of them I didn’t flip out but instead went to talk to him about it and tried to make peace with it even though I was broken inside. I even tried to be cordial to the woman he was seeing but she went crazy on me one day and wanted to fight me at my job and then started harassing me following me home making sure I wasn’t with him and put nails in my tires. She was a lot older than me in her 50s so I tried my best to ignore it but then confronted her about it and it resulted in him and I no longer talking and each other blocking each other from everything and removing friends from our lives which hurt also.
Now almost 3 months later I still think about him, how he’s doing and if he is ok and his son..and I think in some ways I probably always will think about him since I did fall in love with my friend.
I often wonder if anything we had was real and how he could just do what he did and not even have the decency to tell me? Was he just using me all along or what was it. I will never know and just need to accept that and do what I need for myself in my own life because if someone wants you turkey in their life they won’t do what he did.
He is my ex, we broke up six years ago due to an infidelity from his side. We were having intimacy issues for a while. After the break up, Unfortunately I could not get the “space” to disconnect from him and heal and move on. This happened when our kids were 2 and 6 month old. Very intense time to keep relying on each other and seeing each other…We co-parent 2 beautiful boys. He is a great dad (most of the time), but when it comes to women and trust, he is a disaster! … he is a womanizer and I never cared much after the break up, at least he wasn’t “cheating” on me anymore…. But then he met (through me) a tenant in my house who was pretty much a single mom (or so she said, even though she was still living with her husband- my original tenant) our kids played together in my house….she became a sort of friend since I helped her settle in some aspects in this country…. People that knew both of us started mentioning that she was flirting with my ex, or both of them flirting with each other…. When I asked them what was happening they denied there was anything between them. But now they are officially dating and it bothers me soooo much… it triggers feelings of being “cheated on” even though I am not with him. The problem is he lies about it. I find out that they do all the things together through my kids. Now I am thinking I never healed from the breakup?
I cry at night sometimes of how angry I feel that they are having a relationship “behind my back”… But according to my ex I should not care who he is “sleeping with”… that I should still be friends with this woman because she is a good woman to our kids… omg I feel sick. I don’t know how to handle this!… I mean I did do something: I set boundaries with him, which I had not before this , he does not come in my house… Before he would even have dinner at my place sometimes… and that is why he met this woman through in in the first place…crazy
I am writing this to see if this helps me move on and set some perspective!
Any advice or feedback from someone who has dealt with something similar would be greatly appreciated.
My boyfriend and I broke up just before our year anniversary. We got on so well, were like the other peices of each other and I believe my soul mate. I thought we’d get maried, at one point I wanted his kids. But his family was a massive issue. My therapist has said what they did to me classifies as psychological abuse. His mum love bombed me, said I was part of the family, even comforted me about my dead brother, then she would go on rampages about how I wanted to baby trap him when I left, when is never said anything like that especially not to her, at most I’d said her nice was cute. She critisised the way I dressed, whether I was too masculine, how colour coordinated I was, how I smelled, how I talked and said in front of everyone that I was feral and raised feral all coated in sugar, because I didn’t use my fork in the right hand according to her, and left a coffee cup on a table where she didn’t like it but had never mentioned to me before. I also struggles to keep my feet on the floor when I ate due to anxiety so crossed my legs. She got the whole family including my boyfriend involved and said I was feral, and needed to be trained. I went away with them for a week thinking things were ok enough. I don’t want to talk about it but it was a very traumatic experience and I refused to go to their house after.
I thought not being in hwr presence would free me. I was working through the traumatic relationship with his mother in therapy, but couldn’t fully because I was still dating her son. She broke down my self worth and confidence almost completely. It took a lot to build that back up.
I thought it would improve things, but it made my and my boyfriends relationship so much worse.
She started guilting him to come home early, making plans last minute and not giving him notice until he was at mine, causing conflict.
She started limiting how much time he was spending at mine even tho he’s 18.
To his credit, my boyfriend put his foot down. But it resulted in a horrible argument that tired him out. He started projecting his anxiety about his mother’s reactions onto me, telling me I would prove her right and it would cause more friction between him and his mum when I needed to cancel him staying over for an early driving test.
For months he became unreliable. Cancelling last minute. Changing plans. It started to become more consistent that he would cancel than commit. He started belittling any of my acheivements he didn’t help build. To his credit he apologized as pqrt of the break up.
When we broke up, he stopped to talk to a girl he despised, despite the fact I was crying and he’d been comforting me a minute ago and continued to after. This was the third time he’d stopped to speak to friends regardless of what he was doing with me which had been a constant in our relationship.
He eventually pit his foot down with his mum but broke it off a few days after sick of having to go against his mum and terrified of her reactions.
The ending was horrible, but before his mum got involved we were good. We were happy. In love. Wed been best friends for a year before hand and this was my first real relationship. He meant everything to me. I got to explore parts of myself I never had before, including sexually but also emotionally, how deeply u can connect with another person.
Now it’s ended, and I feel relief that his unreliability, bellitiling tendenencies, constant anxiety about his mother is gone. I never have to think about that woman again. But I lost the most important person in my life. I lost the love of my life. The person I could tell anything to, who I could act like a kid around, who I could be every part of me around him. But then by the end it didn’t feel like I was fully accepted by him, I didn’t feel like I could grow with him. And I felt like he took out his relationship with his mother on mw sometimes, particularly when I achieved things he didn’t help me to achieve.
Any thoughts about healing, recovery and how to deal with break ups healthily would be appreciated. I know from this he may not sound great, but he shared all the good parts about myself with me and he elevated my life and my good qualities. He was the first person I met with a brain like mine and I thought I’d never meet someone like me. I still love him and it sucks. The whole damn situation.
Hey there, broken up for 8 days as of today. Fairly new relationship so I try to lean on that to convince myself it will all be okay. I know that it will. This one hurts because from the very beginning we both felt this was it for us. While I walked into the relationship a bit more guarded, little by little he made me feel safe enough to trust and feel safe in the relationship. With this things did seem to move a bit fast. I allowed myself to go with the flow. He met my family early on and so on. Everything was great. After joining my family for a trip which was a bit stressful for me things on my end shifted, but I communicated that it was the stress of the trip. He definitely tried to be supportive which I appreciated and even stated I was overwhelmed and just want some one on one time with him to reset. Which was almost impossible on this trip and I think I also did not push myself as much. Well after this trip I think I carried this anxious energy back with me and I started bleeding into our relationship. I will add prior to all of this my grandmother passed away, I had quit my job of 12 years after a very toxic environment and started a new job that I felt a lot of pressure to ensure I was doing a good job. While dealing with the transition of jobs I also put my hobbies to the side to give self a break. This was all prior to meeting with him. So with out knowing it I was setting myself up for failure while also navigating being in a new relationship. Now and even day 1/2 after the breakup I realized I was burned out and overwhelmed and was talking out my frustration out on him. I processed it, apologized and express where and how this energy was coming from. It hurts because I feel this is something that could have been avoided had I checked in with myself better, but also hurts because while he was great during the relationship it seems he doesn’t care to understand now. I have been trying to balance giving him space while also letting him know I recognize where I felt short in this and willing to do the work. I know now that we are broken up he does not owe me any explanation or to hear me out but it hurts that after sharing the deeper concerns I was facing it seems her does not care and made me wonder if he ever cared at all. I do not want to ever diminish his feelings which I quickly addressed, but I felt the punishment did not fit the crime but I also know we all have different ways of processing. After making last attempts to reach out I decided to delete his phone number, our text exchanged and remove each other from out social media. I was feeling too anxious at all time wondering and waiting if he will respond. Again it hurts because everything else had just been fine but I know everything happens for a reason. I choose to believe that the important part here was to own my mistakes and recenter myself but I do miss him dearly because he did treat me with so much care.
How can I move on if I feel like dying everyday? I lost him, my friends, my hope, my dreams and myself. We had a five year relationship but it’s now over. It just hurts.
I’ve recently come out of an 8 year relationship. It had its ups and downs and we argued but usually over mundane things.
We split up numerous times but my ex always came back after a few weeks. We loved each other intensely and there was never ever anyone else involved. We were best friends as well as lovers. The intimacy was amazing constantly, right up until the end. I would just stare at him and felt so lucky that he was mine.
I have two teenage children and he also has two grown up children. This is where the root of problems were. I was very jealous of his bond with his daughter. I felt pushed out but I don’t know why. He was always loving and kind towards me but I was obsessive and possessive and wanted him all to myself.
He was so good and kind to my daughters and they adored him so that wasn’t even an issue.
I would get little digs in about his family. I would get jealous when I went to his house and see a new drawing from a grandchild yet no pictures of me? (He deletes all pictures every time we argued). It’s pathetic and my friends and family laughed but also warned me I would drive him away…
Well yep, I did.
It’s been two weeks now but he’s blocked me for four weeks prior. I’ve seen him twice in passing in this period and we’ve spoken amicably but with me being distressed.
He feels so sad about how I feel but says I need to stop bumping into him and move on.
He said I’m so gorgeous and pretty and I could get any man… I asked him if he’d met someone and he said yes. Whether he has or not he’s still said it.
My heart has been ripped out of my chest. I can’t eat, sleep and am constantly crying and being physically sick.
I want to start moving forward but am so low and depressed I’m struggling really bad.
We go to same supermarket and I see his car at the gym most mornings so I’ve tried to avoid going to these places but it’s so hard.
I feel he was everything I ever wanted. Kind, caring, funny, extremely fit and healthy, good job, nice house and I’ve lost him with my jealous, pathetic ways.
His mother passed away one week ago and he didn’t even contact me to tell me… this is how I know it’s for good this time.
I’m utterly devastated to my core and can’t see a future without him…
Please can anyone help x
Ps I’m 50 although in good shape and fit but this doesn’t help me see a future with anyone else 😰
We loved each so much. We tried so hard. At the end we got it very very wrong. We hurt each other and we lost ourselves.
The love is still there.
Resentment, lack of trust and the hurt is also still there.
We were young and foolish and destroyed something that could of been majestic and heavenly.
The damage is done, time to move on.
I’m at the point where I don’t think I’m strong.
My ex and I dated for 5 months. Everything seemed great. We both had similar values, a lot of similar interests that we would do together and things felt good. We both put in effort to the relationship. Then 5 months in, he wasn’t doing well mentally, brought up randomly how he struggles to communicate and express himself . I went to him and tried to sit and resonate with him. Told him I was there for him and wanted him to be able to talk to me, didn’t expect him to share everything but that at the end of the day I won’t know what’s going on until he speaks his truth. Asked him directly if there was anything he wanted to talk about and he proceeded to say no. He then went into a vague conversation about marriage and how he wants it but doesn’t know what it looks like. It was an odd conversation but I stayed unreactive and afterwards he seemed grateful that we talked and was open to talking more about it if needed. He had another day a few days later where things seemed off and when I asked if he was ok, he said he was. Week later he says he needs to think more on the conversation and couldn’t explain what he meant by that. He texted me the next day when I left and had this really vague break up message where he just said he needed to figure things out and still wanted us to be friends. I tried to ask what happened and he again couldn’t speak on it. I proceeded to tell him I couldn’t be friends cause I wanted the relationship and left. From there he’s been posting inappropriate things on social media. “Subtweeting“ how he tossed out a 10. And posting desperate things about wanting a muscle mommy. He got upset when I tried to inquire two weeks after our breakup about what had happened with our relationship because he felt pressured. Even though it was a conversation over text and he still couldn’t answer the question until two days later after I had asked. It’s been a rollercoaster watching him do everything from a distance. He’s also brought some of our friends into the situation in which they too had to call him out.
Hi, I am just curious how you are doing? My ex, as of a few weeks ago, had similar behaviors. We went from everything was great and sailing along smoothly to a break up text a couple of days later. We were together almost 5 months.
I’ve given up hope that I will get a reason for the break up. He told me he needed time in his break up text, but that was three weeks ago
Thanks,
I recently broke up with my boyfriend a week ago, and the wound is still so fresh. I find myself going back to our old messages, crying why everything changed. Since June he all of a sudden just stopped trying, he didn’t want affection or nothing and I started questioning if it was me. He said it was not. Later July, we met up and talked about whether we should break up or not. I said we should but he went on and asked again if this is what I wanted. I said no and he said he didn’t either so we didn’t break up. He began to distance himself a lot and I found myself cancelling plans because I felt so depressed at how things were changing or going downhill so fast. I soon realized he was talking to other girls about our relationship and how he was feeling. Whenever I asked and told him I was there for him and he could always talk to me, he would talk to them instead. He hid hanging out with a girl that he invited over to his place to play videogames and when I found out and confronted him about it, he was angry that I went through his phone rather than explaining to me what that was. It took me almost a month to get him to explain, he said they were friends nothing was going on, but it did not seem that way. I asked if maybe he could stop talking to her until I could heal from that and I found out he was still asking about her day. I was completely crushed and later on I learn that he was actually hiding things from me. It is so hard when you put so much trust in someone later for them to crush it to pieces and act like they didn’t. I am so tired and I want to be able to move on but right now it is so hard. Can anyone please give me advice on how I can do this?
Hii, Now I am also in similar situations. But this is my second time. During first breakup, I got depressed for 1 month, I deleted and kept away all belongings which can remind me of her. Then I focused to my career, changed my job as we both were from same organization. I got new fresh friends (both boys and girls). I enjoyed my new task and with new friends. It was so smooth in forgetting her. But in your case this may not be the option but try to find similar ideas, you tell your breakup story to those who are close to you.
For this time, I also do not know what to do though she is not from same organization. It’s difficult for me to forget even I don’t prefer tell any known person. I look for some unknown person to tell my story. Can we make it by saying to each other…….
We have been broke up since 1st week of January . It is now March and the pain still is there . I miss him but he was not a good honest person . He used me for money and a place to stay . He is a user of women . I loved him so much . I don’t know what to do with myself we did so many things together .
Went through the exact same thing. So many thoughts went through my head, 1st I was mad at myself for not seeing the red flags, my ego was bruised, I felt stupid and used,kept asking myself why didn’t I see it. He refuses to take my calls cause he doest want to go into what happened. So I’m taking it a day at a time and taking time to heal. I’m putting me 1st now.
We know each other for 3.5 years. Before that we are friend and classmate. Thereafter we graduated we still meet, thereafter we together for 3 month. But during the 3 month, only the first 1.5 month was happy. Thereafter he start to have mood swing, blame me for small stuff, like whatever I do is wrong. Then I suggest a break up recently. His family found out about our relationship, as we are still student. His family is against our relationship. I tried to contact him for one week, he read my messages fast, he still my all whatapp status promptly but he just don’t reply any of my messages. I felt hurt as I was very nice to him during the relationship. He is always the receiving side. Then his father found out I spam messages him then he changed his number. But I mean if he want to find me, he know my Instagram just message. It’s been 1 week since we have no contact. I know I should move on since is not healthy to stay in a relationship one sided and he doesn’t respond to message