Can you even get over a breakup when you’re still in love with your ex-girlfriend? I’m sure some of you guys only broke up with your ex very recently, so getting over her probably feels impossible, especially because you still love her so much. 

And to be a bit realistic about breakups… It’s almost always the guys who are the ones who are left, not the other way around. I think it’s a pretty accurate rule of thumb to suggest that most guys aren’t ready for a breakup to happen. Even if you should have had plenty of signs that the breakup was coming really soon, you may have been in deep denial and despite indirectly knowing that things were going downhill, you still love your ex-girlfriend like crazy.

Even if you knew for 6 months that things were getting worse and worse, you still weren’t ready to let go of your ex. So, is it possible to let go of your ex-girlfriend when you aren’t anywhere near the idea of no longer loving her? What if you still love her as if it’s your first week together? Let’s talk about it.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster, and here I teach men how to move on from an ex-girlfriend. I bet this post title is extremely triggering to a lot of guys watching this. The end of a relationship with an ex-girlfriend whom you still love is really mentally draining and massively anxiety-inducing. If you think about it, it’s a bit ironic that we become the most anxious about a relationship when it has ended because almost all relationships that ended probably were on some downward trajectory for quite some time already.

So for example, if you have been a couple for one or two years, then it’s likely that the breakup has been slowly building up. So that means that most likely, you and your girlfriend have been slowly falling out of love, or perhaps the problems have been stacking up more and more over time. And of course, at some point, things got too bad or stagnant, and eventually one of you broke up — most likely your ex-girlfriend.

But despite the obvious truth that the relationship was already at the “end of its lifecycle”, so to speak, now that it’s finally over, you might feel like you love your ex-girlfriend even more than before. Sure, the relationship wasn’t perfect and there are 15 rational reasons that some of your friends could mention why this wasn’t working out and why the breakup might be for the best in the long-run… But to you, you feel the exact opposite way. Now that it’s done, you love her even more. You want her back even more than before it all ended. I’m sure you know the saying: “You only know what you had when it’s gone”

So the irony is that now that she is gone, it almost feels as if you love her more than before. Life is cruel. I am sure you are thinking right now that there is no way that you could move on from the relationship. You want her more than before. I feel it’s important to point out to everyone who feels this way, that this is only a temporary feeling. The “you only know what you had when it’s gone” syndrome doesn’t last. It’s triggered by the fact that your relationship ended abruptly, probably without you properly agreeing for it to happen. 

Most breakups are almost like a fight, or the very least, a power play. There’s typically one person who no longer wants to continue, but the other one tries to hold on, and so the person who wants to finally move on with their lives will try to assert their power over the relationship. And eventually, they’ll win — and of course, quite often, the one who “wins” is the ex-girlfriend who is done with the relationship. Men are far more accommodating to try to work things out when the relationship goes wrong. 

And as a result, after a breakup, you’re almost always the one without the power. So once your ex-girlfriend disappears from your life, you will feel triggered to feel even more strongly about her. The best thing when you feel this way is to not rush to any conclusions, find something to occupy your mind with for a few months, such as going to the gym, and come back to those thoughts and feelings later again and see if you still see things in the same light.

I’m not going through a breakup, but I’m currently occupying myself with working on a new tech startup. Find something that keeps you busy, and perhaps even gets you in the zone, to make you forget your breakup even just a little. 

For me, programming, although I sort of hate it as a creative person, really can get me in the zone, make me forget time, and just lets me focus on building something delightful. Everybody has their own unique thing that gets them in the zone, or helps them de-stress. I don’t have a universal tip for you what that is. For somebody else, it might be picking up a cheap used APS-C camera and walking through the city and learning to appreciate street photography.

If you find something that can distract you, even just for 2 or 3 months, I guarantee you that you will slowly start to feel a little less anxious and a little less dependent on your ex-girlfriend. Eventually, although you will of course still love her almost as much as right now, you will probably have come down from your anxiety high and I’m sure missing her will slowly turn into more of a routine-kind-of-feeling.

That sounds strange, but with time, you will most likely begin to feel relatively passive about missing her. The more time passes, and the more you realize that you can at the very least still go on with your life, the easier it gets to start to appreciate other things in your life.

So the best thing you can do is to give yourself some time. Yes, even if you still love your ex-girlfriend, it is possible to get over her. It won’t be easy in the first months, but this is exactly why you should find new things to occupy your time with. The first 6 months are the hardest after a breakup. Once you can get past that time, you’re already well on your way to long-term recovery.

6 months sound like a long time, but time often flies faster than you think. Especially if you occupy your time, rather than seeing every day as one more day where you got nothing going on and all you can think of is your ex-girlfriend. 

Just consider what I am doing right now… I’m coding for a tech startup idea… That takes up A LOT of time. In fact, it takes up the majority of my time these days. It’s hard to find ENOUGH time for myself with everything that I’m working on, plus, these posts/videos of course. My channel is faceless so that I can optimize my time, but even with that… I basically don’t have as much time as I wish I would have. So find something that helps you make time fly a little faster. Then you will also seemingly get over your ex-girlfriend quicker.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.