3 Tips For Moving on After Heartbreak or Divorce
Every, single one of us knows that it’s like to have our hearts broken. It throbs and aches, and when it’s bad we swear there is no way we could ever recover from it. But there is life after heartbreak (even the kind of heartbreak that ends in divorce), if you get your feet back under you, and keep moving.
If you’re not sure what to do, try these three things.
#1: Be Honest About What Happened
Whenever we get hit with heartbreak, the first thing we do is reach for our rose-colored glasses. We immediately start reminiscing about the old days, and trying to remember the good times we had.
Don’t do that. Or, rather, don’t just do that as Mind Body Green advises.
It’s perfectly okay to remember the good times you had with your partner, but don’t let that blind you to the truth of what was actually happening. Be honest with yourself about how and why your relationship ended. This matters, because if all you do is focus on the good things then you will be less reluctant to move on. You may even try to go back, forgetting (at least for a while) why the relationship ended in the first place.
#2: Practice Self-Care
Going through a break-up, even a “good” one, is a stressful, trying process. The worst thing you can do after putting yourself through that is to then ignore the damage it’s done to you.
Think of a break up like a workout where you felt something tear. Maybe you rolled your ankle, or maybe you seriously injured a muscle. Either way, if that happened, you wouldn’t just ignore it and push yourself even harder… that’s how you permanently injure yourself. You’d wrap that ankle, maybe take it easy for a while. Put some cream on your sprain to reduce the pain, and give yourself time to heal. You need to do the same for your heart, as Chatelaine points out.
Whether it’s taking some time to yourself, spending more time with friends, or just getting away for a while, make sure you give yourself time to heal instead of pretending you’re not hurt.
#3: Cut Off Contact
If you’ve had a breakup, it’s normal to miss that person. It’s normal to want to return to the status quo. Do not do it.
You need to have time away from your ex for the new reality to sink in. She Knows makes it very clear that you need to be away from your former partner in order to get a handle on what you want and how you feel away from the chaos of constantly seeing the other person, and all of the feelings that can stir up inside you. It doesn’t have to be forever, but it needs to be long enough that it really takes.