How to accept and move on from a breakup with an ex-girlfriend, especially when she doesn’t care about the relationship any longer? What do you do if she is fully determined to move on but you are still stuck with your feelings for her? This struggle of being unable to let go often makes breakups twice as hard as they would without it. You’re spending every day trying to work through the pain, unable to accept that it’s over. Meanwhile, your ex seems to be well on her way to a new life. So let’s talk about how you can come to terms with the fact that the relationship is over, and how you can accept that it’s time to move on when your ex doesn’t care any longer about you, or the relationship.
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. You probably have heard about the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Acceptance, which is referred to as the last stage, is of course, the hard part after any breakup. Losing your ex-girlfriend is not too different from the grief caused by the death of an important person. The death of a relationship effectively means that your ex-girlfriend is dead to you. Not in the sense that you wish she were dead, of course.
What I mean is, that at the very least, you are no longer openly invited into her life. So you basically have no idea what is happening in her life. And with time, you will both become strangers. So in time, her presence will fade and you won’t interact with each other anymore. It’s almost as if she’s dead. At least, she’s gone for good. That’s a scary thought for any man after a breakup. The more you loved your ex-girlfriend, the harder this hits. This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from One Piece:
“When do you think people die? When they are shot through the heart by the bullet of a pistol? No. When they are ravaged by an incurable disease? No. When they drink a soup made from a poisonous mushroom!? No! It’s when… they are forgotten.”
Right now, you are sort of being forced to forget your ex-girlfriend because she no longer wants to be with you. Of course, it doesn’t feel like it right now, but eventually, you will forget her. It’s just human nature and how it works with time and distance. And at some point in time, you will also be forgotten by her. Maybe it takes you much longer, but it’ll happen for both of you. As such, with enough time, you will both metaphorically die for each other. This sounds harsh. Perhaps it gives you a lot of anxiety and it doesn’t make you feel any better, but I believe it is important to understand this metaphor. The longer you hold on to your grief, stop yourself from forgetting the relationship, and don’t accept the death of that relationship, the harder it will be for you to move on.
There’s probably nothing worse than behaving like your own worst enemy. Often, the only thing that creates the bad outcomes in our life, is ourselves and our actions. And at times, we are even painstakingly aware of it, yet we can’t help ourselves. We’re stuck in the behavior that felt right to us at one point, and then we can no longer stop.
I’m sure, instinctively, and of course, also logically, you know that you have to get past the denial, the anger, the bargaining, and the depression, and you have to move over to acceptance. Holding on to the memories, and not wanting to accept that the relationship is dead, and that it is time to move forward with a new life, is always going to make things harder on yourself. But it’s easier said than done.
The cruelest part about breakups is that most of the time, your ex-girlfriend isn’t really physically dead. She’s only out of reach. So that gives you a sense of false hope, a possibility that you could get back together in the future, or a chance to at the very least be close friends again and see where things go in the future. It can trap you in an endless loop where you don’t accept that there is a finite end.
But of course, this only ends up torturing you further. The metaphorical death of a relationship means that theoretically, you could hold on to your ex-girlfriend and the relationship forever. As long as she’s still alive, there’s still another chance to connect with each other’s feelings in some shape or form. This is why some people will even try to get back with exes or cannot get over their exes even when they know that she’s about to get married, has moved to another country, is in a happy relationship with another man, and so on.
This is the big problem. The end of the relationship is forcing you to forget her, but you’re forcing yourself to not forget her. We fail to move on because we try to tell ourselves that the breakup, or the relationship isn’t 100% final. As long as we don’t fully forget our ex, there is still something small to hang onto. Even if that thing is just a tiny glimmer of comfort, for some men who lost their ex-girlfriend, this is better than nothing. If you still own certain things from your ex-girlfriend, like a favorite t-shirt that she gave you, or something like that, then you know what I mean. You could just throw it away. But at the same time, it doesn’t hurt keeping it, right? It’s a nice t-shirt after all.
But no, when we have a breakup, we really have to treat the relationship like a final conclusion. No second chances. No CPR or resuscitation to bring a heartbeat back. You have to choose to forget on purpose, so that you can let your old life with your ex-girlfriend die. If your ex-girlfriend is mostly done with the relationship, and it seems as if she doesn’t care, then that’s all the more reason to accelerate the forgetting process, rather than trying to delay it, or block it altogether.
This is actually what a LOT of women do. If not most. Most women really accelerate that process as quickly as possible. Perhaps you could argue there’s a biological reason for that, as in, a woman has to find a new partner relatively quickly because she has a limited window of opportunity to have children. Though, that is just an anecdote. I don’t have a specific study to back this up right now, but when considering most studies on evolutionary science, I definitely think this makes sense. I’m sure you understand my premise. In general, women don’t fight a breakup — they welcome it as an opportunity to start fresh. And so because of this, even if they may at times hurt, they are coming to terms with the fact that they need to forget their ex-boyfriend. You have to do the same. As I said, you have to decide that you won’t try to revive the relationship. Not even in your memories.
That is a scary proposition, but only once you fully do so, are you able to start a new life for yourself. You essentially have to live in the moment for yourself. And instead of forcing yourself to not forget your ex-girlfriend, so, for example, instead of actively thinking about her, holding on to the memories, wishing for the good parts to come back, and so on…
Instead, you should remember that you still have the rest of your life ahead of you. There are still things that will bring you happiness. And someday, you’ll even find a similar happiness that you’re missing right now with another woman. The key principle is to recognize that you don’t have to live in the past. It’s not only in the past where you can find comfort. There are incredible things to experience in the future, and even right now.
What are some of these new experiences, or well, memories, essentially, that you could focus on? It could be becoming muscular at the gym. It could be making some new friends. It could be trying out a new hobby or going to a new type of meetup group. And of course, at some point in the future, when you’re ready for it, it could even be finding a new girlfriend.
Whatever it is, you can make new memories and while you do, you can hold on to the only thing that currently is alive: Your connection with the things that you experience on a daily basis. Your own life, your own experiences, and your own capacity to live a good life — all of these things have not yet ended. In fact, in a sense, they have been given an opportunity to focus more on them by being single.
Your ex-girlfriend may be gone, and soon, you will both be forgotten to each other, but when that time comes, you won’t be sad, but rather, you will be able to finally remember that there is still a light at the end of the tunnel and that it is possible to accept that the past has a written conclusion. And because of it, the only and best way to move on is by going forward and creating a new life. Of course, all of this is MUCH easier WHEN you have already forgotten your ex-girlfriend and no longer miss her, but just because something is hard, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Quite the opposite. Exactly because starting new is hard, is exactly why you should consciously try, and not stop yourself from doing so as soon as you feel resistance, depression, sadness, and so on.
I know you must be scared to take that first step. Trying to fully forget your ex-girlfriend, and instead shifting that attention, the old memories, and your life plans towards a new future isn’t easy. It feels unnatural after it was centered around your ex-girlfriend. But I know you can take the first step. So, take the first step, and remember that you still have a life to live for yourself. And then take the next step. And another. One step at a time. Hopefully, with every little step, things will become a little easier for you.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.
