How to be alone after a breakup as a man? Hey guys, how are all of you doing? I’m sure you’re probably struggling a lot with being on your own right now. Being alone after a breakup is really difficult for most men, although ironically, men take more pride in their independence than women. Or well, perhaps that’s the wrong word. Being independent is more important for our self-worth and perceived status. But of course, no matter how independent you might be, everyone can get lonely and struggle with the sudden feelings of emptiness and quite literally, being alone in a home that feels empty or perhaps it’s even emptier than usual because your ex-girlfriend moved out. So, let’s talk about how to deal with being alone and learning to rely on yourself again.

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. So, yea, the hard part about breakups for men is that we have to fully rely on ourselves again. There’s nobody to hold your hand, nor will happiness just be given to you for free.

Right now, it’s like you have to start from scratch. All the hard work that you did in the past, to be as attractive, to look like a good boyfriend, to be seen as reliable, and so on… A lof of this probably feels as if it’s gone.

If you think about it, as a man, your main goal in life is to be as independent and dependable as possible. This is what is going to make you attractive to women, and of course, it also is what makes you successful in other areas of your life. When we’re in a relationship with a good woman, we’re able to let our guard down and we don’t always have to be so perfect. Ironically, of course, when we’re on the hunt for the perfect partner, everybody always wants the perfect man or woman. That’s exhausting, so naturally, when we get into relationships, we can allow ourselves to be imperfect — after all, nobody is truly perfect, and it’s in our imperfections that we find love from our partners.

It’s nice to actually support each other during a relationship, and to invest into the other person and reach our goals together. We understand that we should be understanding, patient, supportive, and encouraging to help our partner reach their goals and just because you aren’t always getting things right or achieving your dreams, it doesn’t mean your girlfriend will love you any less, right? That’s because her attraction and affection has grown beyond the initial, shallow form of sexual interest.

But now, you’re all on your own and the criteria for being loved by a woman is very different. You’re now back on the journey of having to be the man who is always perceived as extremely dependable. Of course, you also have to be dependable in a relationship, but while you were with your ex-girlfriend, you both depended on each other and helped each other out when one of you wasn’t at their best. Now, you no longer have this kind of synergy. You’re heartbroken, lonely, all on your own — nobody is going to help you feel better. It’s up to you to find strength in times of weakness. And of course, you’re now going through a peak phase of vulnerability.

It’s no coincidence that women move on so much faster. They won’t be as alone after a breakup as a man in the first place. They’ll be swarmed by friends, girl friends who want to have girl’s nights out, and there will probably be a lot of men as well who will give her attention. The most tempting reaction to a breakup and seeing the contrast between yourself and an ex-girlfriend is wanting that same level of socialization and happiness — but of course, as a man, there are other things that you should be focused on.

One of the hardest parts of a breakup as a man is that we tend to dread the idea of being alone and having to be strong all on our own. If you’ve ever failed with a business, or a similarly big endeavor, then you know how much it sucks to let go of what didn’t work, and then having to start all over from 0. It makes you feel as if you wasted a lot of your time, and who’s to say that you can succeed again, if you’ve already failed once, right? So yea, trying to be strong again after a big failure doesn’t sound very enticing.

But of course, in reality, most of the time, as a man, we feel good about ourselves when we’re independent, self-reliant and dependable. Obviously, when women see you for that man, and you know that women recognize that you’re an incredibly ambitious and accomplished man, it feels AMAZING to be perceived in that light. And even women aside, just being good at something… Being known for doing something of importance, or something amazing… That by itself can get a man’s heart pumping with energy. But the problem is that you are currently hyper-focused on your relationship failure and the big setback of being alone again. And because of it, you’re unable to recognize that you thrive in your confidence and in your own competence to achieve great things all by yourself.

So from my point of view of always wanting to empower myself, and also you guys, I think it’s essential to see your life from the perspective that being alone is not only a bad thing. At times, being alone can be the time when you get things done and thrive to chase your biggest plans in life.

Yes, of course, you are missing your ex-girlfriend a lot, and in fact, you SHOULD feel a lot of pain and struggle because of losing her — she was an integral part of your life. Maybe the most integral one. It’s to be expected that this causes a big hole in your heart. It’s painful to feel empty, but with a big hole, there also comes the opportunity to fill it with something new.

You can still find something positive within the fact that you are alone. You now get to recreate yourself in your perfect image and become an attractive man in exactly the way that you would like to be seen. You can choose to focus on the negative aspect of the breakup, which admittedly is much easier. Or you can choose to focus on the positive aspect, which is the fact that you can start a new life.

I know, of course, in a perfect world, you would still be with your ex-girlfriend and you would just make any positive changes in your life together with her. But unfortunately, life isn’t always fair. And relationships not working out are part of finding new ways to live our lives. Sometimes, we have to lose something, so we can gain something in the future. There probably was some reason why things didn’t work out with your ex-girlfriend, so you can now find a better balance between all aspects of your life and hopefully, with new-found strength, and more wisdom, your next relationship will work out without it ever ending.

When you struggle with being alone after a breakup and you cannot stand being alone, a big part of it has to do with the fact that you are so focused on what you lost with your ex-girlfriend, and being alone only makes you feel even worse. You feel so lost without her. And you feel extremely powerless. None of this will change until you find new sources of power. This is why the only right choice is to learn to be OK with being alone, and even finding the good sides of this.

For example, I used to be single for several years, and that was somewhat by choice. As a relationship and dating coach, I could have dated 100s of gorgeous women. But I wanted to prioritize my long-term goals in life. One of them was learning a bunch of languages. Now I speak Spanish, Indonesian and Japanese. I now effectively speak most languages that I care about on an advanced level to the extent that I’m happy to dedicate time again to women. I would have never found the time and energy to become so advanced at these languages if I hadn’t made the compromise of appreciating being single. Likewise, during those times, I built two businesses that now pay my bills extremely comfortably, probably for the rest of my life. And this confidence and success in life is also what enabled me to date in exactly the way that I wanted to date, and it helped me date exactly the woman that I wanted to be with.

Of course, my example is slightly different. I wasn’t going through a breakup. I didn’t have a broken heart. Well, not about a woman, anyways. That part came years before. But the moral of the story is the same. The fact that you are alone is an opportunity to find new things in your life that you want to focus your attention on.

In the end, you have no other choice but to let go of your ex-girlfriend. You have to find something new for yourself or you will feel this emptiness for months, or worse, several years to come. You have to start learning to appreciate being alone. I’m sure one of the reasons why that seems hard, is because you haven’t done it in a long time. When was the last time that you’ve gone weeks on end with just doing things all for yourself… It probably doesn’t even feel normal to you anymore, right? Most of your time was spent at work, or with your girlfriend, doing things that worked mostly for the both of you. I’m sure your own specific interests during the relationship made up, at most, perhaps 20% of your total available time on a daily basis. So you have to find back to what you enjoy doing all on your own.

One way that might work for you as a quick hack, is simply asking yourself what a big interest of yours is that you never could pursue when you were still in a relationship. You now have the chance to invest time in this interest. You probably won’t be dating for another 6 months, so you can try to make the most out of this time by finding something new that excites you or that you enjoy. And there’s even a big chance that becoming excited about that very thing will play a big role in finding a new girlfriend in the future. I know, most of you don’t even want to think about a new girlfriend — I totally get it.

But of course, I have a different perspective and can see that your long-term goals, and of course, happiness in love with another woman will eventually be something that you’ll care about again. And while you cannot imagine yourself being with someone else, and while you miss your ex-girlfriend like crazy, you might as well invest your time into something new that makes you seem dependable, intelligent, hard-working, and so on. That will benefit your own life, and eventually, it’ll also make you attractive to other women. So think about how you can reframe your singleness as something positive. As an opportunity to give you time to re-invest in yourself again.

My suggestion for you is to set yourself a little bit of a mini project of how you could fill your time with things that you enjoy… Not as a means to apply pressure in the negative sense, but to have a concrete goal of trying to enjoy being single for X days. For example, you could define 3 things that you want to try and do within the next 2 months. Sometimes, we don’t realize that we’re just aimlessly drifting, and not making progress with the things that we want in life. I’m sure you’ve heard of Parkinson’s law, or at least, the idea behind it: “Work expands to fill the available time“… If you don’t have a set deadline for something, you could never get anything done. But once you finally have something that pushes you to take action, you achieve that same goal in a much shorter, maybe even much better way.

This is why I very often use a tool called focusmate.com, which is just a website where you hop on a call with a stranger, and for an hour, you tell your partner what you’re focused on for the rest of the session. And this is not just about work… People use this website for all kinds of things. Reading the news. Doing research for a thesis. Applying for jobs. Doing yoga. The point isn’t the type of work. Sometimes it’s not even commercial work anyway. The point is that you commit to the work and make progress on the things that are important to you.

You’re feeling powerless because your ex-girlfriend is gone, you don’t know what to do with yourself, or perhaps, it’s just that you aren’t PUSHING yourself to do something for yourself. Maybe you already have an idea of things that you’d like to try out, but you’re just not taking the actions to do so. Sometimes, we just need to commit to something new and a little bit of positive pressure can be extremely helpful to get back to a new state of momentum. Once you have a little bit of momentum and you’re trying out new things in life, I’m sure, that by itself will show you that being alone isn’t just bad. Honestly, being alone is only bad when you are always on your own and you’re not doing anything productive with that time. And again, productivity doesn’t have to be about getting work done. It’s about the feeling that you spent your time for today in a meaningful way.

So, ask yourself: What can you do in the next 2 months, or whatever timeline that you want to give to yourself… And then brainstorm what you could start doing to keep yourself a little bit more busy. How can you enjoy being alone by generating new-found momentum? How can you stop being in place? I think a little bit of momentum will do you good to see that life is not just awful after a breakup. This approach has worked for me and my clients countless times. For work, for jobs, for heartbreak, for general ambitions, hobbies, and so on. In the end, as a man, you find purpose in the things that you do. So hopefully, you will find something to do in the next months to find a new purpose.

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