Have you ever found yourself saying (or thinking) “How do I stop caring about my Ex? Why am I still thinking about my Ex? I don’t care! But I do…” Like so many of our breakup counseling clients or divorce recovery clients, you’re wanting to fully heal your heart so that you can let go of the past, and move forward into a new future.
But —as we all know — letting go of a relationship is easier said than done. It’s close to impossible to turn off your feelings for someone else, even when you know, logically, that the relationship should be over.
Many people come to us for therapy or coaching after a breakup or divorce for this exact reason: They need support in figuring out how to move past the past, reclaim their power, and start feeling good again. The most maddening thing is often knowing the relationship is over…and yet they’re still thinking about their Ex. Still fantasizing about them, even. They sometimes think about getting back together with their Ex, or whether they should try to rekindle the relationship. Sometimes they try… and quickly remember all the very good reasons whey they broke up.
And yet, despite knowing that the relationship is wrong for them (or perhaps even toxic) they still think about their Ex. They still care about their Ex. They still feel jealous knowing that their Ex has moved on. They hurt… and they want it to stop.
But how? How can you break your attachment to someone? How do you turn off the feelings? How do you stop thinking about your Ex?
One of the first things we do with breakup and divorce recovery clients in therapy or coaching is helping them make sense of their feelings, so that they can learn and grow from them. Also, we need to normalize what is happening: Having lingering feelings for an Ex is very common, and there are many complex reasons for it.
Sometimes, people can’t get past a breakup because they have unfinished emotional business with the past. They have lingering feelings of guilt, anger, regret, or pain that are holding them in the past. They may never have gotten closure around their relationship having ended. They need to do the work of growing and healing before they can move on.
Sometimes, people are still thinking about their Ex for months, or even years after the relationship ended because of lingering insecurities or comparisons they’re making — even subconsciously. This is often true when your Ex has moved on before you have. The path to healing here is to focus on growing your own self-confidence, and feeling like you’re moving towards your goals.
Perhaps the most insidious kind of Ex-attachment is that related to your biology: When you don’t understand how you’re maintaining your attachment to your Ex on a neurological level, you can get stuck for years — even though you want desperately to move on. (For much more on this subject check out my book, “Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to An Ex Love”)
Yes, it’s hard to stop thinking about your Ex, but it’s also necessary: Not being able to move on emotionally after a breakup or divorce can impact your life in major ways.
Continuing to have feelings for an Ex is not just frustrating, it can also limit your ability to move on and start a new, healthy relationship with someone else. When you’re dating while you still have feelings for your Ex, it can interfere with your ability to form a new attachment. Comparing your new love interests to your Ex can also lead to your breaking things off with someone who could be great for you. If you’re officially broken up but still sleeping with your Ex? No judgment (this is surprisingly common) but you’re going to be stuck for a long time, unless you make some changes.
Another thing we often hear about are situations where you think you’re over your Ex, but then something happens: Your Ex moves on into a new relationship, or you have some new contact with them, and the feelings flare up all over again. Or perhaps you’re still connected with your Ex through social media or have shared friends. When you see or hear about your Ex starting a new chapter without you, it can bring all the pain, regret, anxieties, and even jealousy come roaring back.
If these feelings are strong enough, they can get in the way of your enjoying your life in the present. It can be hard to focus or concentrate at work, you might worry about running into your Ex and their new partner, or you might even make life decisions based on your feelings about the breakup. None of this is good for you, or fair to you.
The path to recovery often involves working through complex feelings related to grief, longing, guilt, regret, anger, and even self-forgiveness. While you can’t “turn off” feelings about an Ex, you absolutely can use them to do important personal growth work that will move you forward.
If you’re still thinking about your Ex, and wishing you could let go and move on, today’s Episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast is for you.
On today’s episode, we’ll be discussing:
Your partner in growth,
Ps: Some of the resources I mentioned on this podcast refer to other, past episodes, other articles on the blog, and also some listener questions about breakups I answered on IGTV. I’ve sprinkled links to them through this article. Do you have follow up questions? Get in touch through Instagram, or leave them for me in the comments below! LMB
Music Credits: Torrelli and the Fuse, “Forgive and Remember”
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby is the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching. She’s the author of “Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to Your Ex Love,” and the host of The Love, Happiness & Success Podcast.
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby | Sep 30, 2019
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby | May 6, 2019
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby | Sep 10, 2018
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby | Aug 28, 2018
Markie Keelan, M.A., LPC | Mar 8, 2018
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby | Jan 15, 2018
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby | Feb 29, 2016
As a therapist and life coach, I help people through many different forms of loss. One of the most common that I see is “ambiguous loss,” or a loss that happens without closure or understanding such as a breakup, a move/huge transition, a miscarriage, or lost dreams. I also help people mourn the death of a loved one.
Grief can take many different forms and it looks different for different people, but today I hope to give you a strategy to help you work through grief – in all its forms.
There is no right way to grieve. Sometimes it results in an overwhelming sadness that is accompanied by loss of motivation, difficulty sleeping, or loss of appetite. It can also take the form of irritability, anger, or numbness.
Sometimes it feels scary to face the feelings accompanied with grief. There may be the fear that you will never stop feeling the pain, so it seems easier to ignore it. Choosing to not deal with the sadness, hurt, and anger that often accompanies grief, however, may leave you feeling lost, lonely, and overwhelmed. I often view the grieving experience as “waves”.
When you “ride the wave” by allowing yourself to feel and deal with your emotions, you will experience some relief from the pain faster than if you choose to “fight the wave.”
The stages of grief: denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, and acceptance are very true experiences for those who are grieving and are true for ambiguous loss as well. I used to believe that these stages were linear, but they certainly are not.
Typically, when you go through these stages it tends to be “out of order” in the sense that you can be angry and sad at the same time. Or maybe you feel acceptance one day but anger the next.
While these stages are a great reference point, it’s important to give yourself the space to feel your emotions without judgment. Everyone grieves differently and for different periods of time. If you’re working through grief in the aftermath of a loss, here are a few strategies that might be helpful to you:
In the long run, it is better to go through the grief than to suppress it, although in the moment it is much more difficult to allow yourself to feel it. By going through the grief, you will allow yourself to process in a way that allows you to heal. As difficult as this process is to experience, giving yourself the time and space to work through your emotions helps to alleviate your pain and allow you to feel like yourself again.
Wishing you grace through your healing.
Warmly,
Anastacia Sams, M.A., LMFT-C
Anastacia Sams, M.A., LMFT-C helps her clients create their very best life. She has a warm, compassionate, and gentle yet highly effective approach to personal growth work. She specializes in helping couples create healthy, happy partnerships, and assisting individuals to heal from past hurts in order to create fulfillment and joy.
Anastacia Sams, M.A., LPC-C | Jun 19, 2019
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby is the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching. She’s the author of “Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to Your Ex Love,” and the host of The Love, Happiness & Success Podcast.
In my role as a therapist, life coach and breakup recovery coach here at Growing Self, I have had the honor and privilege to walk along side many people as they make agonizing decisions about whether or not to stay in a relationship. They often have deep ambivalence about the relationship: They love their person, and they acknowledge that the relationship has many good aspects, and yet they simply feel in their heart that it is not the right relationship for them.
So they stay. Sometimes, for years.
Can you relate? If so, you know how difficult it is. I bet, if you’re like most people currently in a relationship that you would like to end, you can feel pretty stuck. On the one hand, you care for your partner and don’t want to hurt them. On the other hand, you know that sooner or later, this needs to end.
But how? When? How do you breakup with someone you still love, especially if they don’t want the relationship to end?
It’s actually very normal to care about someone, and yet want to end the relationship. In fact, having compassion for your partner as a human being is one of the things that can make a breakup so difficult.
I actually had someone write in with this exact question, asking about how he’s actually tried to break up a number of times, but his partner essentially convinces him that things can get better. He acquiesces, and things do get better for a little while, but then things go back to the way they were. He feels that they are not right for each other, but gets talked back into trying again every time he tries to break up.
This has been going on now for… ready? … Eight years.
He know it needs to end. They’re actually engaged now. He wants to break off the engagement but doesn’t know how. He doesn’t want to be the “bad guy.” He feels that he’s hurt her enough already, and doesn’t want to cause her more pain. But… he also wants to be out of the relationship.
Hear Henry’s whole question, and my response, on this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast. I’m addressing:
I hope this perspective helps!
Music Credits: Harry Nilsson, “Jump Into The Fire”
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby is the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching. She’s the author of “Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to Your Ex Love,” and the host of The Love, Happiness & Success Podcast.
We get so many breakup questions on our Growing Self blog and through Facebook from broken-hearted people looking for breakup recovery advice. More than anything, they want to know how to get over a breakup. They have questions like:
“How long does it take to get over a breakup?”
“How do you get over a breakup when you live together”
“How to cope when your Ex moves on?”
“How to stop thinking about your Ex?”
“How to get over a bad breakup?”
As you know if you’ve ever listened to my podcast, I have a special place in my heart for people who are in the midst of a bad breakup, and I really want to help. (You can read my own horrible breakup story here.) I thought that, instead of trying to answer so many specific breakup questions, it might be more helpful to everyone to learn more about the stages of a breakup. My hope is that in learning about the stages of a breakup, you can identify where you are in this process and get some direction for how to move past your breakup.
Breakup recovery is not an event, it’s a process. Learning about the stages of a breakup, and what the breakup recovery process actually looks like, will provide you with a more robust answer about what to expect.
Breakup Stage 1: Craving Contact With Your Ex
In this stage of breakup recovery, you’re in intense pain. You can’t stop thinking about your Ex, you’re craving contact with them, you’re idealizing your Ex, and you’re often wishing that you could get back together. This is the “withdrawal” stage of breakup recovery, and it’s bad. Worst yet, people can get stuck in this stage for a really long time. We’ll talk how to take your power back, and break free from this stage so that you can truly begin the process of healing.
Breakup Stage 2: Grieving
Once you’ve decided for yourself that the relationship is really over, then your healing process begins with honest grieving. We’ll talk about how to use the power of grief to release your attachment to your Ex, and work through the pain of heartbreak.
Breakup Stage 3: Releasing Anger
Once you’re past the hardest parts of withdrawal and grieving, the deeper layers of healing can happen. Most people, when the dust starts to settle, become aware that they still have feelings like anger, guilt, and even shame related to their relationship. Until you work through these feelings, it’s hard to fully release your attachment to your Ex.
Breakup Stage 4: Repairing Your Self Esteem After a Breakup
The next stage of breakups often involves turning away from the focus being on your Ex, and turning towards yourself. Most people going through a bad breakup feel like it’s taken a toll on their self-esteem. Learning how to love yourself again is the foundation for being able to truly rebuild and move on after a breakup.
Breakup Stage 5: How to Stop Thinking About Your Ex
Once you’ve worked through the dark emotions of a breakup, craving, grief, anger, shame…. you’re free to move on. AND, annoyingly, many people still find that they are thinking about their Ex. They might even have intrusive thoughts about their Ex. In this stage of a breakup, there’s no continued reason to keep thinking about your Ex… but it’s easier said than done.
Breakup Stage 6: What Did I Learn?
When you’re feeling clear and strong, you have a wonderful opportunity to gather up the learning experiences that you may have uncovered through your healing process. Keeping these life lessons in the forefront will give you the power to create a better future for yourself in the future. If not, you’re destined to repeat the mistakes of your past.
Breakup Stage 7: Learning to Trust Again
The last stage of a breakup is learning how to create healthy new relationships in the future. For many people, this requires learning how to trust again after a breakup. What many people discover through this healing process is how to trust themselves.
Today, I’m putting my breakup recovery coach hat on to address your breakup question and put them in context of the stages of breakups. I’m also taking this opportunity to answer a few listener questions.
All of these stages of a breakup require intentional skills and strategies to work through effectively. Some stages of a breakup take longer to work through than others. For example, many people stay stuck in the first stage of a breakup, craving contact with their Ex, for a very long time. However, getting stuck in any of the stages of a breakup can prevent you from being able to move forward.
I also hope that learning about the stages of a breakup will provide you with guidance about how to move forward after a breakup, no matter what stage of breakup you’re currently in. I’ll be sharing tips on how to move through each stage of a breakup on today’s show.
We’ll be talking about specifics related to how to get over a breakup when you live together, how it takes to stop thinking about your Ex, how to get your confidence back after a breakup, and how long it takes to get over a breakup.
I hope that this breakup advice, and the breakup success stories I share help you find your way forward too.
Yours in healing,
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby
PS: I discussed many resources to support you in YOUR journey through the stages of a breakup. Here are links to all of them, if you’d like to learn more:
Music Credits: “Better Things to Do,” Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings
Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby is the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching. She’s the author of “Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to Your Ex Love,” and the host of The Love, Happiness & Success Podcast.
Break up or stay together? Who hasn’t wondered the same, during a seriously difficult time in their relationship? Or, entertained an even bigger question: Should you try to save a relationship? Especially a relationship that has been feeling really hard and unsatisfying for a long time? How do you know when it’s time to call it quits?
I’ve been an online couples therapist for years, a Denver marriage counselor for over a decade, and a married person for even longer than that. I can say, with confidence, that all relationships go through hard times.
Strong, healthy couples with a lifetime of love ahead of them can have weeks, months, or longer where they do not feel good about their partnership. Communication is hard, they’re upsetting each other, and one or both people can even start to wonder if they’re compatible after all.
This is normal. Couples go through this and can come through the other side having grown as people and having stronger relationships than ever before. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s happened in my own marriage. Not getting along for a spell is does not neccesarily mean you should break up.
Yet there are situations where relationships are too far gone to be salvaged. There are partnerships where partners are fundamentally incompatible. And there are toxic, unhealthy relationships that aren’t good for anyone. Sometimes, breaking up is the best thing for both of you.
It is very difficult to know sometimes what is “normal” relationship turbulence and what are signs that you should break up. The dilemma about whether to break up or stay together can be even more pronounced if you have complicating factors, like shared children. Other cases of whether a relationship can be saved seem more clear-cut, but even then people wonder if they’re doing the right thing by ending the relationship or if they should give their relationship another it one more chance.
Because deciding whether to break up or stay together is such a hard decision, we have many questions come through from clients, listeners of our podcast, and readers of our blog wanting help in deciding if their relationship can be saved, or if it’s time to throw in the towel. They want to know things like:
If you’ve been going through a hard time in your relationship that has led you to have doubts, I hope that this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast can help shed some light on signs that it’s time to break up, or whether your relationship can be saved.
Sincerely,
P.S. We discussed a number of resources on this show. Here are the links for more information if you want to check any of them out:
Music Credits: The Velvet Underground, “Pale Blue Eyes”
