The end of a relationship brings with it all kinds of strong emotion, no matter whether you’re the partner who’s ditching, or the one who’s jilted. You can expect it will take some time to get your equilibrium back. You may be pining away for your ex, and wondering if there isn’t any possibility of repairing the break up. On the other hand, you may have accepted that the relationship is over but feel so hurt you can’t bring yourself to socialize. No matter what and how you feel, rest assured that your feelings are normal. Here are some steps you can take to get your life back on track:
Allow yourself time to mourn the lost relationship. You may be experiencing a mix of emotions, including depression, denial, despair, shock, jealousy, blame, anger, hurt, and guilt. Maybe you’ve even suffered a blow to your self-esteem and feel a strong sense of worthlessness. You may need solitude to process all of your feelings, but as time goes on, it’s healthy for you to confide in a few supportive friends or family members. If you find yourself unable to get past this stage of intense emotions, you may need to discuss your situation with a health care professional, who can decide if you might need the help of a mental health care professional and give you a referral, if necessary.
Breaking up is a stressful event, and like all such events, can have a negative impact on your health. In addition to the way stress affects your physical well-being, you may not be in the mood to exercise, for instance, or you may turn to fattening food binges for comfort. No matter how little you may feel like it, forcing yourself to exercise can only improve your mood, since it increases the body’s level of endorphins, the feel-good hormones.
Daily Routine
It’s important at this time to stick to your daily routine, including keeping all social dates already penned into your calendar. Being with friends and nice people is a great antidote for what you’re feeling right now. The more you isolate yourself, the longer it’s going to take you to get past this rough stretch of feeling.
Don’t fall into the trap of blaming your ex for everything that went wrong. Remember that it takes two to tango. Think about what you might have done different, and learn from that. It’s important to take responsibility for your own behavior and it’s a great deal more useful than assigning blame to everyone else.
Avoid looking at the wreckage of your relationship as a failure. It sounds cliché, but living is learning—whatever mistakes you made in the relationship will have taught you something that will make your future relationships a lot healthier. Muster some objectivity and see what it was about your relationship that did and didn’t work and think about how you might use this information the next time around.
Emotional Baggage
Keep working through your issues and toward your goals. That extra emotional baggage will drop off in time, but don’t start a new relationship until the lightening of your emotional burden is complete. One day you will wake up and realize the hurt isn’t so strong today. It’s time to think about creating some new life goals and to take some baby steps toward their achievement. That’s the way to ensure a good start to a new, healthy relationship.
