Prepare: You’ll get plenty of advice when you tell friends that your love relationship is over.
Some will say things that will touch you deeply, triggering transformative reflections. Others will offer words that you will think are silly—that may even irritate you.
The intention is always the same: to help. But people are different—and their ways of coping with life’s consequences, too.
Tips for overcoming relationship breakup
In this post, we share 8 tips to overcome the end of a story, of a love. But just like your friends, what we have to say is not a magic formula.
Allow yourself to read the suggestions without prejudgment. Ignore those who don’t talk to your pains. Stick to the ones that bother you the most. After all, what disturbs us most is what we need to solve first.
Follow the reading and, if you can leave any advice in the comments that you believe is valuable, complement our list!
1. Read
Read this post, other posts on this blog, from other blogs. Read books, short stories, poems. Reading is a lonely exercise, but it leaves us in good company.
What does reading have to do with strategies on how to get over a breakup, marriage or whatever? Well, we can sum it up by saying that reading makes us think. It lends us examples from other lives, calling for self-analysis and the development of new behaviors.
A text is a chatty and silent friend at the same time.
Don’t worry about focusing your readings on the “relationship” topic. Your mind knows how to see metaphors and appreciates opportunities to interpret between the lines.
When we have a problem, regardless of its nature, reading it can bring us new insights and lessons in resilience.
A book on business administration can, in one sentence, surpass its purpose and connect us with answers we’ve long been looking for. And we are not talking about calculations! Believe me: it doesn’t matter what the author meant. What is relevant is what you understand.
2. Extend the previous tip to movies, music, fine art!
We urgently need to be understood, especially when we are fragile. Our identity gets confused and loses contours whenever an end imposes itself on our routine.
We understand each other in contact with the other, who mirrors us. We recover in these mirrors. We give names to unknown feelings, to the sufferings that torment. When the other expresses what we cannot define, we perceive ourselves understood. And we were able to move forward.
The arts, in their different manifestations, are this other, par excellence.
It doesn’t have to be a great work. A silly movie from the afternoon session, a comic strip or the cheesy music of the soap opera (if not the soap itself) can express the scream you’ve been holding back. Art is borrowed relief.
3. Respect your time
A cliché, we know. It is such well-worn advice, but so well-worn, that we despise it. However, it is a commandment that we should not lose sight of.
Respecting your own time is accepting the crying season, without guilt. It’s understanding that sadness doesn’t pack its bags the day after love leaves.
So, accept invitations to leave the house, embrace opportunities to have fun. But it doesn’t cover instant recovery from a breakup.
On the other hand, respecting your time is also not accepting the cesspool as a permanent home. Your time deserves to be treated with dignity. Don’t turn it into an endless storm.
If you find that discouragement is going too far, seek help from a psychologist. It will help you discover new ways of thinking.
4. Invest in self-image
Warning: This tip doesn’t suggest you take a zillion selfies and share them on social media to show you’re okay!
Self-image is looking at oneself, not at the approval or impression of the other.
Investing in self-image is prioritizing a healthy relationship with the person that is inevitably constant throughout your life: you.
If you put yourself down, you will have to live, every second, with that defeatist personality that you fed. A toxic relationship is not necessarily something that involves two people. You, alone, can boycott, rape, belittle yourself. Do not be to yourself what you would not want to find or receive from someone else.
At first, it may sound superficial. But we indicate: take care of your own beauty! No thinking about patterns! Remember that the idea is to nurture self-esteem, emphasize what is authentic and original.
Discover ways of self-care that give you pleasure. It can be through food, a physical activity (how about dancing? yoga? fight?), a beauty ritual with cosmetics of textures, colors and ecstatic perfumes.
Summon the senses. Self-esteem sometimes really starts from the outside in.
5. Leave the past in its place
Don’t expect to forget the person you were with. That won’t happen — unless you have some kind of amnesia…
However,don’t call her to your gift. Memories will come to you. But don’t leave them as parameters for a future relationship. When we look back, we edit our perception. Have you noticed? Memory selects “scenes”, choosing what to ignore and what to show.
You may remember the relationship that ended just for the “good parts”, creating an unrealistic expectation of a next partner, who will need to be everything that memory has set as the standard for happiness.
Or you may just remember the bad things and see signs of repetition in attitudes that actually have no correspondence with past experience. Learn from mistakes and avoid pitfalls. However, don’t confuse common sense with fixation.
Another very important thing: no stalking the life of the old love for social media! Not through mutual friends. Sooner or later, it will bring you more suffering. Its goal is to break the bond and make room for new achievements, new stories, new memories. Keep that in mind!
6. This will also pass
Make it a mantra. Repeat for yourself as many times as you need. Not just in breakup situations.
This is one of the main tips for relating to life! Everything will calm down. Unfortunately, even what is good.
As Guimarães Rosa taught, life is crossing.
7. Think positive
It’s pretty hard for a relationship to end when you’re both in love, let’s face it. And if the interest – at least for one of the parties – was not already “all that”, we can assume that dating or marriage was not at its best.
So what was it you really lost?
Suffering can occur, in large measure, by the imposition of change, by the famous exit from the comfort zone – even if, of comfort, there was little there.
Focus on noting what good the end brought. Focus on realizing how many ends—of negative circumstances and moods—the break brought with it.
Note the possibility of fresh starts, more quality time with friends, or involvement in things you enjoyed—but had left behind due to the routine of the relationship.
Rediscover yourself! Enjoy the freedom. Reinvent your everyday. Make room for your individual preferences and choices. Make the moment a personal evolution challenge.
8. Believe in a new relationship
If you paid attention to the previous tips, you’ll come to this one prepared!
Just in case, make a “checklist” before proceeding. Well-resolved self-esteem? Personal development in order? Link broken? Crying time over? So it’s time to take chances at random!
Also don’t wait for the new love to knock on your door. Don’t wait for someone to rescue you from limbo. Notice the people around you and make yourself noticed.
If you like the idea, accept that friends introduce you to interesting people. Open up to people you live with, friendships that can become something more. Leave the house when you have the opportunity. It’s always nice to lend a helping hand to fate.
A very functional option are social networking apps and websites. Research which platforms would be more compatible with your profile and what you are looking for. Be responsible, be careful, but allow yourself some virtual flirting — and real dates.
Research which platforms would be more compatible with your profile and what you are looking for. Be responsible, take care of yourself, but allow yourself some virtual flirting — and real dates.
Just make sure that whichever way you choose to meet new people, your expectations are grounded. It is natural that some attempts result in an error. Accept and move on!
A little addendum on relationship
All these tips on how to get over the end of a relationship are for men and women, ok? Pain does not distinguish between sex. And the behavior, contrary to what one might think, is very similar among humans.
Demonstrations may vary, of course. As well as the overcoming time and the strategies used. After all, each of us has a unique personality.
What doesn’t change is that, after an end of a relationship, if there is an opening, a new one tends to take its place. And when people are at ease with themselves, chances are, their relationships will improve. Have greater quality and maturity.
In other words, the end is a necessary stage for happiness to be reborn, even more sure of itself.
