How long does it take to move on from your ex girlfriend? It’s the 100.000 dollar question that everyone wants to have answered when they miss their ex… But the question, of course, is whether it’s possible to quantify the love you had for your ex-girlfriend and whether based on that, it’s possible to say how long it’ll take to move on from her… So, let me give you my opinion on how long it takes and what it takes for you to move on from your ex-girlfriend.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster, and here I teach men how to move on from their ex-girlfriend. If you’re wondering how long it takes to get over your ex-girlfriend, then my first guess is that you’re desperate to find a specific timeframe for when you finally get over all that unbearable pain. And the truth, of course, is that the answer to that question is that it depends a lot on many factors.

Primarily, it depends on how long you’ve been together and how important the relationship was to you, or how much you loved your ex-girlfriend. Giving an exact time for how long it takes to get over an ex-girlfriend is difficult to say, there isn’t really any clear evidence about that, but it seems that according to studies, most people are in new relationships relatively fast, within maximum two years from a breakup.

And the average healing period to be ready to slowly start dating seems to be about 6 months, but the reality is that the average time that’s needed to move on from your ex-girlfriend is quite irrelevant. The truth is that moving on from her all depends on you, not on some rough statistic.

The interesting thing to understand in terms of the duration it takes to move on from your ex-girlfriend is that you can control a lot how long it takes to get over her. And when you obsess about how long it will take for you to finally get over the pain of losing her, then that tells me that you’re probably not yet reaching the stage where you finally start to move on. That stage is the acceptance stage, where you begin to live your life again, rather than focusing on the pain that you’re feeling.

Honestly, moving on from an ex-girlfriend can happen fast, if only you stop focusing on getting rid of the pain that you’re feeling, and instead, start focusing on actions that actually make you overcome the pain. When you aren’t yet moving on from an ex-girlfriend, it’s usually because you are stuck with your feelings for your ex-girlfriend, the loss of all the things you cherished, and of course, the empty hole that’s been created because she’s gone.

And after a breakup, especially as a man, you could stay stuck with that emptiness for years if you don’t find to close the hole. You have to close the wound, so to speak. It won’t close by itself. I mean, sure, theoretically, with enough time, it will LIKELY heal for the most part… But, if you don’t take your own action to accelerate that process, depending on your type of breakup, that process could take an extremely long time, when it could happen 5 times faster.

So, asking how long it takes you get over your ex-girlfriend really isn’t the correct question to ask, because for some, it can practically be only 2 months if they get their lives back together, whereas another man may be much slower with the process of properly filling his emptiness with new meaningful life experiences. And that man may take a year before he even begins to heal and slowly move on, and it may still take him another 6 months to properly feel okay without his ex-girlfriend, to feel complete and enjoy his life by himself.

So if you want to know how long it takes to get over your ex-girlfriend, the simplest answer is that you will move on from your ex-girlfriend the moment that you take real steps to get over her. Or more precisely, I would say you truly move on from an ex-girlfriend when you are taking steps to get over her, and you are finally enjoying those action steps.

For example, some guys might be hitting the gym after they have been broken up, but the truth is that the first few months, they may feel good about becoming more attractive but their ex-girlfriend may still be a strong motivator to become outstanding and attractive — sort of to prove to themselves that they are still a man worthy of admiration and desire. 

So moving on is a 2 or 3-step process. Step one is identifying how you want to reinvent yourself after the breakup and creating a proof of concept of what type of man you’d like to be, how you see yourself enjoying life and feeling good about yourself again.

Step two is taking actions steps to become that man. Then somewhere during step two, you will probably struggle at times, and not always enjoy becoming that man.

And at step 3 is where you truly flourish, where you absolutely love what you are doing and you are finally enjoying life again. This is the point when you begin to properly move on from your ex-girlfriend because even though she left a gaping hole in your chest, all the other good things that you are manifesting into your life are numbing all the other pain.

And once that pain begins to numb, and all the noise of your ex-girlfriend gets canceled out, your heart is slowly going to heal and you will lose feelings for your ex-girlfriend, or at the very least, even though you may still love her, you will finally be okay that you both no longer give that love to each other. This is how my own big breakup happened many years ago. It was the breakup where I was so madly in love with the girl, and for about 3 months, I desperately wanted her back, but eventually, there was a shift where all the work that I was putting in my own personal growth, began to only be for myself. And I absolutely LOVED the entire process.

I loved the results, who I was becoming, how my life was becoming 3 times better, or probably even more than that… Even compared to before the breakup. And even though I was still madly in love with my ex-girlfriend, even though at times, I still missed her like crazy, the bottom line is that I was finally beginning the REAL healing process. I was finally starting to let go. I no longer cared about proving anything to her…

I never thought about her in any way when it came to my own life. I accepted that she was gone and I just honed in on the process of rebuilding a new life. And then, one day, without realizing it, I just didn’t care about her anymore at all. I will never forget the year when I no longer remembered that it was her birthday. I think I remembered it like a month or two months later and I was like “Oh wow, that’s nice, I guess I finally stopped giving a shit”. And that point, she was only someone that I used to know. Such a great song, that captures the idea so well. That’s kind of how it has to feel… Where you don’t even realize that you haven’t thought about her anymore.

So, perhaps the most accurate answer that I can give you regarding how long it takes to move on from your ex-girlfriend is the following: If you haven’t even started step 2, so taking actions to become the man that you want to be, for yourself, then you are still far away from moving on. Almost indefinitely.

If you have started step 2, then you are on your best way, and depending on how diligently you attempt to start a new life, it may be another 3 months, maybe it’s 6 months to mostly be over her. It likely won’t be longer than a year from now that you don’t think about her at all, and the in-between stages will already feel relatively happy. I think the first 3 months of the second step are the hardest, because you will have made the resolution to move on and live your life, but the things you set your mind to will feel difficult. It won’t feel rewarding, and at times, you’ll want to give up and get back to what felt comfortable, so the past and your ex-girlfriend.

But once you get past the uncomfortable stage, which will likely be a few months, during which you may even miss your ex-girlfriend more than before, because change is hard, after all… THEN you will feel finally better and you are more than half moved on. Does that mean I’m guaranteeing you that you won’t still have feelings for her, or that you won’t love her or still think about her from time to time? No, of course not. There will still be the occasional moment of missing her, but that’s roughly the correct time frame. 

So if you desperately want to get over your ex-girlfriend, then ask yourself where you currently are. Are you at step 1, where you are still in the planning phase of how you want to re-envision your life? Are you at step 2, where you are starting that journey, but you are still struggling or not always enjoying the process? Or are you at step 3, where life is finally fun again and you’re slowly feeling a weight removed from your shoulders? Once you’re at step 2 and step 3, these are the stages where the big changes happen. So assess where you are on your journey, and then take the next step.

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