Healing after a relationship break-up is difficult, but it’s not impossible. Right now, you might feel like you will never move past this pain. The idea of feeling better seems far away and unattainable.
Maybe you’ve been scrolling through various articles wondering how to get over someone. You are hoping to find an easy answer. However, the truth is there is no set way to get over someone, nor is there a set timeframe outlining how to get over someone quickly.
At the same time, there are actions you can take to feel better and begin the process of moving on.
In this article, we’ll discuss:
Why Getting Over Someone Is So Difficult
When it comes down to it, relationships give way to a lot of meaning within our lives. In fact, an 80-year-old Harvard study outlined how important relationships are for overall happiness, health, and longevity.
However, when you end a relationship, you lose some meaning in your life.
For example, you’ve probably had future plans with your ex. Now, you have to reimagine your life without them. Perhaps you also had a routine together, and now you have to find new ways to fill up your week or days. All this creates feelings of uncertainty.
When a break-up happens and you lose a partner, it actually feels like you lose a part of yourself. This is why break-ups are so hard and take a huge emotional toll on us.
After a break-up, you might struggle with your life’s purpose and a loss of identity. The emotional pain might also feel unbearable. This is a completely normal and natural reaction.
At the same time, you do not want to wallow in these emotions and thought processes for too long. Doing so can lead you to try to fix the past and reunite with your ex.
Yet, when a relationship ends, it is usually for a good reason. Perhaps you were not a good match, or maybe trust was completely lost through cheating or other means.
As difficult as it is, you need to accept the break-up, let the relationship and your ex-partner go, and move on.
So, how long does it take to get over someone exactly?
Getting over someone is a process. There is no exact end destination. It requires patience and trust in yourself. So, let’s take a closer look at how to get over a breakup and begin the process of moving on with your life.
7 Steps To Getting Over Someone You Love
Understanding how to get over someone you love is never a straightforward process.
One of the best things you can do after a break-up is to practice self-compassion and be kind toward yourself. Bring this with you every step of the way, and soon enough, you will wake up and find you are no longer thinking about that person.
Use the following seven steps to help you get through this tough time.
It can be difficult. However, down the line, you will thank your past self for taking these steps to move on and step into a better life.
Step 1. Grieve the loss
Pain is not enjoyable. Yet, mourning the relationship is essential for moving on. There is no shame in feeling rejected and hurt.
Expect feelings of denial, anger, and sadness to come up. Accept these feelings and allow yourself to feel them.
Until recently, this person took up a lot of space in your life, and now you are experiencing a loss. It is okay to grieve that loss.
While looking up ways on how to get over someone helps, giving yourself time is most important. This means not rushing through the process or putting pressure on yourself to get over it by a certain date. Instead, give yourself space.
Empower yourself to take the time you need to process and heal from what happened.
During this time, remind yourself that sometimes a relationship needs to end, especially in situations where your or your partner’s needs are not being met.
To actively participate in the grieving process, you may want to try to get closure. Meeting with your ex in person may actually stir up more hurt feelings than you had before. Instead, consider writing a letter that you will never send.
In this letter, forgive them for anything they’ve done that hurt you and thank them for all the things they’ve taught you. Leaving the attachment to your ex and your relationship in the past can help you move forward to a fresh start.
Step 2. Connect with friends
It’s normal to feel very lonely at times after a breakup. Your ex may have been your best friend or your closest confidant. Yet, one of the best things you can do is reconnect with friends and spend time with the people you love.
Research shows that social relationships significantly impact our physical and mental health. By spending more time with people you care about and who care about you, you will begin to feel more emotionally stable and positive.
For instance, you could connect with a family member or a friend and plan a weekend or evening together. This could even be something as small as watching a movie together.
Connecting with friends will distract you from feeling sad and also show you that you can still enjoy activities without your ex.
Step 3. Quit romanticizing the relationship
It is easy to resort to thinking about all the happy times and think the relationship was better than what it actually was. Additionally, your mind will find evidence to support the stories you tell yourself.
With three decades of experience, Marisa Peer, a world-renowned therapist, motivational speaker, and best-selling author, outlined a list of rules by which the mind works.
According to Marisa, one of the “rules of the mind” is that, “Your mind is hardwired to resist what is unfamiliar and to return to what is familiar.”
In the same respect, your previous relationship is what is familiar and comfortable. Therefore, your mind will find every possible reason to support why the relationship was great.
Being single, on the other hand, is uncharted territory. It is new and unfamiliar. The mind does not like that.
To use this rule of the mind to your advantage, you have to make what is familiar unfamiliar and what is unfamiliar familiar.
Every time you find yourself thinking about how great your relationship or your ex was, challenge these thoughts.
Be honest with yourself and remember what the relationship truly was.
Try to take an objective perspective. Focus on the facts. There were not only good times, but bad times as well. Your partner was not perfect all the time. There were things you were not happy about.
Moreover, if your relationship ended, there must have been reasons for it, and you might want to remember or even write down what those reasons were.
Examine the relationship and determine the takeaways. Instead of focusing on the loss, look for the lessons you’ve learned in this relationship. Think about how you can take these lessons with you throughout the rest of your life.
Step 4. Create space between your ex and you
Remember, the mind turns to what is familiar. You may find yourself thinking about your ex and feel the need to check in on them via social media or through text.
Yet, getting over someone requires you to stop thinking about them all the time.
You may want to consider deleting your ex from your social media and your phone. Constantly checking their social media can make it that much harder to move forward.
Clear out any physical reminders of this person. Get rid of pictures of the two of you or give away items they gave you. This way, your mind will have fewer triggers to resort back to thinking about them.
It all comes back to that old saying: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Step 5. Rediscover yourself
After a breakup, you might feel really lost. You may have attached your identity to joint activities you and your ex participated in together.
Now that your relationship is over, you might notice you have much more time than you previously had. The good news is that you can fill this time with activities you enjoy.
In other words, how to get over someone may mean rediscovering yourself.
According to Marisa Peer, the relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship in your life. This is important to remember, especially when you are going through a tough breakup.
Becoming acquainted with yourself means figuring out what you like to do and filling your time with those activities.
For example, if there was something your ex never wanted to do but you did, now is the time to go for it. Take that dance class or go on that trip you always wanted to take. This will help you find fulfillment and meaning in other parts of your life outside of the relationship context.
Step 6. Know you are enough
Maybe you are hesitant to accept that things are over because you are afraid you won’t find love again. As many other people feel after a breakup, you might think you are unlovable or not enough. However, accepting yourself and knowing your self-worth is essential when it comes to knowing how to get over someone.
Marisa Peer is a big advocate for practicing self-love and acceptance. When you accept where you are at, everything else gets easier. You quit beating yourself up, and you can begin to take steps toward pulling yourself and your life together.
Working on your own self-worth can also help with future relationships down the road. Additionally, it can help you avoid jumping into a potential “rebound relationship” as a means to feel accepted and loved.
“You can only love someone to the degree that you love yourself, and another person can only love you to the degree that they love themselves.”—Marisa Peer.
Feeling confident and worthy must come from you, and there is no better time to work on this than now.
Marisa Peer recommends repeating a powerful phrase, “I am enough,” to yourself every day.
As one of the “rules of the mind” is that “the mind loves repetition,” when you say this often enough, your mind will begin to believe it.
Look at yourself in the mirror and repeat this phrase for two to five minutes each day. After 21 days, reassess and see how you feel. Has your perspective changed?
As your practice progresses, you can work with other similar affirmations such as, “I am lovable,” and, “I am worthy of love and happiness.” You can also create your own empowering affirmations to support yourself in the process of rediscovering your inborn lovability and confidence.
Step 7. Seek out help
There is no shame in asking for help. Knowing how to get over someone and actually going through the process can be difficult. Seeking out a professional can help you sort through your thoughts and feelings, and move forward with your life.
With her Rapid Transformational Therapy® (RTT ®), Marisa Peer created one of the most ground-breaking and innovative forms of therapy in the world.
Developed over her 30 years as a therapist, RTT® combines a variety of techniques: Neuro-linguistic programming, cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, and neuroscience. It helps you take control of your thoughts as opposed to them controlling you.
An RTT® therapist can help you understand your own feelings and emotions. They can also help you resolve things that are keeping you attached to your ex-partner.
If you are not ready to work with a therapist, but you are ready to move on from your past relationship, explore Marisa’s ‘Dating and Relationships’ hypnotic bundle.
Research shows how hypnosis can reduce emotional stress and even potentially reduce pain. It does this by changing habitual behaviors and thought patterns rooted deep within your subconscious mind.
Marisa’s hypnotic audios will help resolve disempowering beliefs you may have about yourself or a relationship.
It includes three different hypnotic audios:
- Hypnosis ‘Attract Your Perfect Relationship‘ helps you transform yourself so you can attract a lasting and loving relationship.
- ‘Boost Your Confidence & Self-Esteem‘ hypnosis helps you understand how the mind works so you can take back control and improve your confidence and self-esteem.
- ‘Lovability‘ hypnosis helps you believe that you are lovable by reprogramming your mind for love and relationships.
The 21-Day Meaningful Relationship Challenge
If the recent ending of your relationship has left you feeling insecure about your future, or your ability to cultivate and maintain a meaningful relationship, it is a good idea to break down these misconceptions as soon as possible, so you can begin to break free of your traumatic experience of a relationship ending, and move on.
The 21-Day Meaningful Relationship Challenge aims to unravel the mistruths about love and relationships you have, so that you can understand what might have gone wrong, and allow you to head into the future, and any future intimate connection, with the confidence and understanding of how exactly you can make it authentic, real, and beautiful.
Click the banner below to read more about Marisa Peer’s challenge, and sign-up today.
