Do’s and Don’t's When You Split with an Ex

What distinguishes strong, attractive, accomplished people in any area of life is their ability to accept losses with grace and dignity. Dating and romantic relationships are not an exception to this rule. It’s easy to enjoy love when it’s reciprocated and everything is great, but too many people act in not so honorable ways to their partners and to themselves when things go south. It is of course understandable how someone who loses a person who they love, care and had long-term plans to be with would be angry and frustrated after their lover unexpectedly leaves them or even worse – leaves them for someone else, but it is very important to your emotional health and to your proper recovery after the break up to not make certain mistakes motivated by the anger cause by splitting with your ex, as that will be primarily to your own great benefit. Here is a short but important list of do’s and don’t's for that difficult time in your life, shortly after you broke up with someone you really care about.

Dont’s

* Don’t disparage your ex to your friends or co-workers or her friends or co-workers. Don’t blame him/her for the break up and don’t get into the details of why things didn’t work out. It will not benefit you at all to say anything bad about your former partner, and it certainly won’t help you if your ex starts saying bad rumors about you in reaction to what you say about them.

* Resist the urge to contact your ex and check if there is any chance in the world that you can get back together if your ex was the one who broke up with you. The reason a reason why he/she left you and if anyone decides to make a move in the direction off getting back together, it should be the same person who initiated the decision to not be together anymore.

* Don’t waste any time “licking your wounds.” Do not try to imagine how many things you could have done together and how great it would if you could spend the coming weekend, week, month or year with your ex. It’s not going to happen, so why even bother and allow your rich imagination go in that direction.

* Stop telling yourself that you are never going to meet anyone like that again. The undeniable truth is that everyone is special in their own way, and even though you will not meet your ex’s twin in the future, you will likely meet quite a few more people that will move you emotionally in different but equally potent ways.

* Don’t hate your partner for hurting your feelings. No matter what happened, the reason that you partner didn’t want to be with you any longer is not because he/she wanted to intentionally hurt you, but because of their own selfish reasons. They did not feel like you were a good match from their perspective. Whether it’s good news or bad news for you has no bearing on how they feel about it, so they don’t deserve to be hated, but they probably deserve your good faith effort to understand them.

* Don’t keep talking about your split. Sharing news about your recent break-up and how you feel about it with the closest friends once and getting their perspective and support is very important, but there is no reason for you to do it more than once. Tell your story one time and move on. It won’t make your day or your friend’s day to keep going over the same thing, and it certainly won’t restore your relationship.

Do’s

* Stay busy and entertained. This is a common but true advice. It’s the wrong time to be alone and feel sorry for yourself. This is the time to connect with your friends, to perhaps share your problems ones and then let your social circle help you forget about your break-up and make it easier for you to move on by occupying your time and mind. Of course, this should be the right circle of friends – people who are positive and supportive and who “infect” you with strength and hope, rather than despair due to their own endless relationship and other problems.

* Meet other people. Some people believe that it’s important to fully recover after the break-up before meeting new people. This is hardly true.  Talking to others and going out on casual dates might just be one important elements of taking your mind off of your recent break up. This doesn’t mean that you have to go on a “rebound” and have sex with random strangers or that you have to use others by misleading them inot believing that you are more interested in them than you really are. You can make small steps that won’t hurt anyone but would be fun and helpful to you.

* Use your recent relationship and the break-up as a valuable lesson. Step aside and look at your recent relationship and the break-up as objective as you can as an outsider. It’s not easy, but it’s worth the effort to try to apply logic and reason to what happened. Were there any mistakes on your part? Or… perhaps you weren’t a good match in the first place, but you refused to recognize it and waiting till your partner made a move? What else could you have done or could have avoided doing that would have made your relationship work out better? These are very important questions, as your answers will directly and necessarily affect your future romantic relationships. That important lesson that you learn might be laying right in front of you, but you have to make that move and take the time to learn it carefully.

Break-ups are tough and painful, and, of course, the more special your ex was to you, the more difficult it will be getting over them. But it is your right and your duty to yourself to get the most good out of the seeming negative situation so that you become stronger, wiser and more attractive to your future partners, that will be undoubtedly coming into your life.

And don’t forget to read more advice on dealing with and overcoming and painful break-up.

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