You’ll Never Move On From Your Breakup If You Keep Making These 5 Tiny Mistakes
Allow heartbreak healing to start sooner.
Motortion, a-image | Canva We all want to know how to get over a breakup, heal our broken hearts, and move on with our lives. Many people make mistakes after a breakup that prevent healing the heartbreak. Getting over it is not the easiest thing to do. The pain and change happen quickly after a heartbreaking breakup and throw people off balance, so they do things they might not otherwise do. These mistakes can cause problems with your ex and your self-esteem. Trying not to make these mistakes will allow healing to start sooner so you can get on with your life and be happy.
Here's why you’ll never move on from a breakup if you keep making these 5 mistakes:
1. Seeking closure
One of the biggest mistakes people make while getting over a breakup is they seek closure. While closure can be explained as a final chance to talk about what happened and leave on good terms, closure is one more chance to spend time with your soon-to-be ex and, perhaps, talk them into getting back together with you.
Spending even one more moment dwelling on what happened and begging your person to take you back will backfire. If your person has broken up with you and you convince them to take you back, chances are it will all happen again, sooner or later. Furthermore, prostrating yourself at the feet of your ex and begging them to give you one more chance will only damage your self-esteem. If someone breaks up with you, seeking closure will drag out the inevitable. So, rant and cry for a bit, then hold your head high and don’t let them know you are hurting.
2. Extensive snooping
One of the biggest issues with social media is it wreaks havoc, and it's not helpful when trying to figure out how to get over an ex. In the old days, when a couple parted ways (unless the situations were unusual), they rarely or never saw each other again. They didn’t know the intimate details of each other’s life as they went on with their own. When couples break up these days, part of the breakup means blocking or unfollowing each other on social media. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen fast enough.
I have a client who left her boyfriend because he was a mess. They agreed to remain friends and kept up their social media accounts. My client still loved her boyfriend, even though she left him, and she was drawn to his social media accounts regularly. This wasn’t an issue in the beginning, but once he got a new girlfriend, it became a real problem. She would waste hours stalking him and his new girlfriend on social media, extremely jealous he seemed to be doing so much better with someone else.
Thinking some other girl had a better version of him upset her, and her self-esteem was in the gutter. Then I reminded her people only post their best things on social media. They don’t post the fights, the posturing, or the doubts. What she was seeing was a curated version of her ex’s relationship. Understanding this allowed her to end her social media connection with him and move on.
3. Moving on too quickly
Another huge mistake people make after a breakup is they move on too fast. Yes, your heart is broken, and you desperately want to pull the pieces back together again, so you think the best way is to find someone else. Don’t get me wrong, people should get back on the horse quickly after a relationship fails. But it's also crucial to take some time and reflect on what happened.
Jumping into a new relationship doesn't automatically mean you're over someone. It means you might repeat the same mistakes. So, take some time and be alone. It’s important to cry and feel your feelings and process them. Gain some understanding of what happened and make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.
4. Staying in contact
Have you and your ex agreed to be friends? Do you want to set an example that people can break up and remain friends? Good for you, but it’s mostly impossible to do. When people are romantically involved and break up, especially one-sided break-ups, remaining friends usually isn’t possible.
The person who is broken up will use the friendship as an excuse to stay connected and hope for a reunion. The person who initiated the breakup can get frustrated with their ex’s clinginess and might push them away or ghost them. If you honestly want to be friends with your ex, take some time to get past the end of the relationship and get out into the world. Staying in contact with them now will only slow down your healing.
5. Holding on to what could be
Two things I hear over and over and over again after a breakup are they wish things could be back to the way they were at the beginning — they wish their person could be the person they know they can be. But wishing for these things will only confuse you.
The beginning of a relationship is a magical time. Hours are spent sharing your deepest thoughts, your heart races whenever you see them, and the chemistry is exhilarating. Unfortunately, maintaining the chemically induced excitement of the early part of a relationship is simply impossible. Even people in long-term, happy relationships no longer have those crazy feelings about each other. Their chemical draw has settled, and they move into a more comfortable, loving relationship. Furthermore, many people hold onto their exes because they focus on what their partner could be.
My client had to break up with her beau because he was a mess, but she saw the long-term potential in him because she loved him enough. Unfortunately, holding on to someone because of what they could be will only be an exercise in futility. You can’t save or change someone. Trying to change them will only hurt you more. So, if you long for the early days to return or know your person can change, neither will happen, and take steps to move on.
Photo via Getty
People make mistakes after a break-up, you aren’t alone.
Breakups are painful, and the need for the pain to go away makes people do things that are not self-serving. If you want to get over someone and heal your broken heart, make every effort to resist seeking closure and extensive snooping and don’t stay in contact or move on too quickly.
Most importantly, understanding things will never return to how they were, and you can’t make your person into the person you think they can be. I know you want to find love — we all do! If you can avoid these common mistakes, you can move on quickly to find the love you have always been seeking. You can do it!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate who works exclusively with women to help them be all they want to be. Mitzi's bylines have appeared in The Good Men Project, MSN, PopSugar, Prevention, Huffington Post, and Psych Central, among many others.