How to move on after breakup: expert advice for rebuilding your life

Hi Chris,

My boyfriend recently dumped me, and I’m finding moving on really hard. How do I even stop thinking about him for long enough to start building a new life?

Stuck

Hi Stuck!

Getting over a break-up is always hard. Because a relationship becomes part of your identity and so, when it ends, your sense of who you are is also broken. And life after a relationship ends isn’t normal. Memories keep intruding, and even preparing a meal reminds you that something’s missing.

You also need to accept that you feel bad in all sorts of ways, because acknowledging those feelings will help them fade away faster.

Keep Reading

And stop thinking of yourself as ‘moving on’ because that keeps your thoughts focussed on ‘what you lost.’ It will also be much harder to get over your ex if you’re always seeing his face online. So un-follow him and quit checking his social media.

Create a new normal. Choose a new coffee shop. Change the furniture around. Try a new hair style. Start a new project. Hang out with some new people. Make this new phase of your life as different from the last one as you can.

Because that shifts your focus away from what you’ve lost, and on to a new future. So think what you’d like to do with your life. You want to study more? Completely change your career? Make a start, right now.

Do something that’s all your own. Something that will start to build you a new identity that doesn’t involve your ex. Stop thinking of this as the time you lost everything, and start thinking of it as the moment when you finally began doing what you really wanted to do.

And date. It doesn’t have to be anything too serious right away, but you do need to convince yourself that there are other people out there, and that you haven’t lost everything just because one individual let you down.

And before you know it, you’ll realise you’re in the middle of a whole new life. And a far better one.

All the best,

Chris