Breaking up is hard. Here are things you can do to make it a little easier.

Key points

• Breaking up is hard and painful, no matter the circumstances.
• Focus on loving and building a relationship with yourself, and investing in your interests and community.
• Remember that you deserve a relationship with a partner who wants to be with you.

How to Get Over a Breakup

Breaking up is hard. When we're in a relationship, we form an attachment bond with our relationship partner, and our attachment system is very powerful. It makes us want to be close to people we care about, and we feel a lot of distress when we lose an attachment figure in our lives. Attachment distress can feel like panic at the thought of not being able to see your former partner, hopelessness about your future, and an intense sense of loss or abandonment. The pain of attachment loss can happen even when you know the breakup is for the best, and even when you were the one who initiated the breakup.

When will I get over this breakup?

Getting over a breakup is a process, and how long that takes depends on the power of the relationship bond and the circumstances regarding the relationship ending. Usually, people will start getting over a breakup within a couple of weeks to a couple of months, but the full healing process can take more time than that, especially if the relationship or the breakup was complicated.

Longer and more committed relationships take longer to get over, of course. It also takes longer to get over a breakup that you didn’t see coming, or if you don’t understand why the relationship ended. Toxic relationships can leave us with a lot of psychological wounds, like low self-esteem or attachment anxiety, that take even longer to heal. And sometimes we make breakups harder on ourselves by clinging to the relationship even after it's over — this can make healing even more challenging.

What if I didn't want to break up?

The challenging truth about relationships is that they take two people to work, but only one person to end. The relationship is over as soon as either person doesn’t want to be in it anymore. If you’re having trouble accepting that the relationship is over, here are a few helpful statements that you can remind yourself in moments of struggle.

Missing a partner doesn’t mean you should get back together. You are allowed to miss your ex! You are even allowed to wish that the relationship didn’t end. Feeling your feelings fully doesn’t mean that you need to act on them and get back together.

You don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you. You can’t talk someone into wanting to be in a relationship with you. You deserve someone who wants you as much as you want them.

Your value and worth as a person are not dependent on a romantic relationship. Focus on building a life that’s worth living for yourself, regardless of whether you have a romantic partner. If you can build a secure attachment with yourself first and foremost, any future relationships will be much healthier.

Closure comes from inside you, not from your ex. Rather than looking to your former partner to help you find closure, focus on making sense of your own personal experience of the relationship and the breakup. You don’t have to like or agree with the breakup, but you can work toward accepting reality.

3 steps to getting over a breakup

When we’re working with clients going through a breakup, we give them three pieces of guidance:

1. Go no-contact for a period of time.
2. Invest in yourself and your other relationships.
3. Allow yourself to fully process your feelings.

First, the best way to accept that a relationship is over is to end contact with your former partner for a period of time. You need to give your mind and nervous system time to let go of the attachment bond — any time you come into contact with your former partner, even just seeing them post on social media, it reactivates the attachment bond and will take you longer to let go. Being friends with exes can be very healthy, but that can only happen after you’ve given yourself plenty of time and space to truly let the relationship go. So after a breakup, you need to end direct contact (no texting, calling, or hanging out), mute them on social media, and ask your mutual friends to not talk to you about your former partner. You’ll know you’re ready to reach out to re-establish contact again when you’re no longer thinking about your former partner every day.

Last, it’s really important to let yourself feel all the feelings that come up for you after a breakup. Losing a relationship is a grieving process, and you can expect to feel all the emotions we associate with grief: sadness, anger, denial, hopelessness, and more. Resist the urge to numb your feelings with alcohol, compulsive sex, or by jumping into a new relationship right away. Emotions have a natural lifecycle, and without giving yourself plenty of time and space to process your emotions, they’ll hide underneath the surface and cause problems for you at really inconvenient times. You might feel afraid that you’ll be overwhelmed by your feelings, but remember that emotions — even really big and painful emotions — are not harmful and they don’t last forever. If you open yourself up to feeling them fully, they will come and go like ocean waves. Breathe through the waves of emotion and remind yourself that you are going to be okay.

Making the most of breaking up

When we invest time and effort into taking care of ourselves, building a life worth living, and processing our experiences and feelings, we are able to make positive meaning of even very difficult experiences. Look for ways that the breakup is helping you grow as a person. Are you increasing your capacity to feel difficult emotions? Did you learn valuable lessons about love or dating? Were there positive experiences during your former relationship that brought you joy? All of these are extremely valuable, even if the breakup itself is painful.