How to cope with seeing your ex girlfriend move on? After a breakup, most guys have to learn one harsh lesson: Life’s not fair. It is typically very common that an ex-girlfriend will always be the one who moves on faster after breakups. Many breakup studies have shown so, and of course, general dating dynamics explains why that is: Women just have too many potential suitors, so breakups always give them a nice safety cushion to fall back on: Other men. 

Meanwhile, for you, moving on is very hard, and so you will often struggle much longer, and because of this dynamic, a man almost always has to face the harsh truth that his ex-girlfriend is already halfway moved on, when he’s barely started accepting the breakup. So, let’s talk about how to not go crazy when you see your ex move on from your 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. Well, I bet most of you reading this post are going through this painful realization that your ex-girlfriend is already moving on and to her, the breakup seems like it doesn’t affect her a lot. It’s an absolutely miserable feeling when your ex-girlfriend acts that way. I think it feels a little bit like being abandoned by an ex-girlfriend.

Of course, the moment that you two broke up, she already made her choice to leave you behind, but still, the way how an ex-girlfriend leaves a relationship does matter a lot. Nobody expects that an ex-girlfriend will move on easily. Of course, you know that she would eventually find happiness again, but for a man it can come as a bit of a shock how much faster a woman will appear to be extremely happy again after a breakup.

“Appear” here is the keyword that should really help you put it into perspective. I think there are certainly some cases where ex-girlfriends will truly be happy and move on quickly after a breakup, and at other times, they just didn’t care about you at all… They probably were toxic, narcissistic, maybe she was a cheater or she lined up your replacement weeks before the breakup.

But for the ones who stay single or the ones doing rebound relationships, quite often, you will also simply see your ex-girlfriend putting up a facade of being happy. Nobody wants to appear weak after a breakup. You don’t want to look weak or unhappy, and your ex-girlfriend wants that even less than you, because to her, her entire appearance in public, with her social circle determines her social status. Or well, I guess the motivations are different for both of you. She wants to look happy in her social circle, and you want to look happy by seeming independent as a man.

So quite often, you might be overreacting or you think that your ex-girlfriend is completely over the relationship, when in reality, she may still be struggling in silence. That’s not to say that there won’t be some of you who will have an ex-girlfriend who is truly and fully moving on much faster than you had hoped, but I think it’s generally a good idea to remind yourself that moving on is never an easy process whether you are a woman or a man. Yes, women will move on faster, but in the end, moving on can be a long drawn-out and silent process, assuming that you both loved each other deeply and had important relationship goals together.

I think it’s important to recognize that healing and moving on after a breakup is very similar to breaking a bone in your body. The moment that a bone breaks is quite literally the moment that the healing process begins. Blood starts surrounding the bone and slowly begins to re-attach the bone. Of course, it takes weeks and months to properly heal a bone, but the healing begins from day one of the bone being broken. Breakups are no different. Both you and your ex-girlfriend are healing from day one, but for her the healing process may simply be a little bit faster or maybe it’s a lot faster. But it’s likely that she will still take time to heal just as you do. 

But the more crucial point to be made here is that the moment that the breakup happened, both of you had an opportunity to slowly heal. And I would say this is where women tend to outpace men because they embrace that healing process from day one. Women treat breakups very much like a binary matter. The moment that the relationship is over, they will actively take steps to move on. They go out with their friends. They go to parties. They meet new men. They socialize, go shopping, travel, have fun, and so on. But men tend to spend time brooding over their problems before they solve them — this isn’t just related to relationships. As a man, we can sometimes spend days and weeks thinking about a problem before we decide how to solve it. 

So effectively, the crucial part where we as men often are behind women in the moving on process is that we don’t always take steps to feel better about ourselves right after the breakup. Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking a bit longer to process the breakup, and to begin to get back on your feet. In fact, perhaps you could argue it produces better long-term results. But nevertheless, I certainly think that as a man, you don’t have it as easy as a woman to start again after a breakup. A woman will just have much more social interactions, and attention from the opposite sex, so there’s an inbuilt mechanism for women to be re-introduced to happy experiences after a breakup. But it is what it is. Ultimately, at some point, you have to go your own way and find ways to start your own new life. 

And yea, that is not easy. It’s the most painful experience when you still cling to the old life that you had together with your ex-girlfriend, while you can see that she has left it readily behind and has already started a new life. Of course, the less you have established a new identity, a new routine, new goals, hopes and dreams for your life, the harder it is to see your ex-girlfriend drifting further away because the life with her was your main source of happiness. And perhaps it still feels this way right now. And this is perhaps the core thing to highlight about coping with moving on from an ex-girlfriend. You need to establish that new identity, similarly to how your ex-girlfriend probably has begun to do so long before you started. 

There’s really no other way to cope with seeing an ex-girlfriend move on with her life and setting new roots for the future, than doing the same. Now, perhaps you have already been thinking about these things, but the most important thing to do is to actually convert your thoughts into actions.

If you haven’t done this enough yet, then of course, you are a bit behind. Roots take time to grow. So if you establish a new life without your ex-girlfriend right now, then it may take some time for you to reap the benefits and feel happy or at least content without her, but starting today or tomorrow is better than nothing. As they say: Better late than never. I’m sure it seems hard or almost impossible for you to take some steps to start fresh. You probably want to hold on to the feelings that you have for your ex-girlfriend.

And I bet you are obsessing more about her than before now that you know that she is moving on. The truth is, what you’re feeling now will only get worse if you don’t take action steps to mitigate your heartache. Your ex-girlfriend is already on her trajectory to move on with her life, so you need to do the same. So what you need to do is set a new direction for yourself, and generate your own momentum.

The simplest thing that I can always advise any man, because it’s literally the easiest goal to follow, is to hit the gym. It requires very little brainpower to get started. Becoming attractive after a breakup is a no-brainer that provides a lot of benefits, especially with starting to date again, Or at least, to interact with women more often. And it will also boost your mental health if you work out a lot. Of course, there are many other things that you could start planning and working on for your life, but the easier that you can get started with something, the better. And with time, you can look at more things that you’d want to do for yourself to reinvent your life.

I know it’s really hard to see your ex-girlfriend moving on, but in a sense, what she is doing should be your north star. You have to take the same approach and start something new, and enjoy life. The key goal is to gain some new momentum. I actually have a few posts about breakup depression as well, and in those, I think I talked about similar ideas. Anyone who’s ever been sad, depressed, or lonely for a prolonged time knows how much of a difference it makes when you suddenly start to be more outgoing, have more fun, do more activities, make more friends again, and so on. Life can often change for the better much quicker than we think. Just small movements forward, compared to practically not moving at all, can make a massive difference in our lives. The shift in mood simply from moving forward with life, and actually feeling that you are getting something done, can at times feel like a life saver.

So I would like you to take some first steps. Maybe start going to the gym if you aren’t yet, and find one more thing for your life that you can do to start from scratch with your life. Perhaps it can be a new hobby, a new interest, or learning something new by digging into lots of books to become knowledgeable in a new field of expertise. I hope that you can think less about your ex-girlfriend by finding new ways to enrich your own life, rather than thinking about the life from before the breakup.

Just imagine all of the possibilities. For example, just look back at how you’ve spent the last 14 days. I’m guessing they were filled with lots of thoughts of your ex-girlfriend. Maybe, especially, you were thinking about how she’s been doing so great and all of this has been extremely hard on you. Just imagine, what if you would have spent more of that time on actually moving forward in life. What if you would have found some new northstar to chase.

Maybe it would be to apply for a startup accelerator. Maybe it could have been to try and read one book out of a series of books on business, relationships, or another skill important to you, like marketing principles. Or maybe you could have done a 2 weeks fasting and High Intensity Interval Training regimen to lose some bodyfat. The possibilities are endless, and it all depends on what’s important to your life. This dooesn’t mean you have to torture yourself, or push yourself and feel bad if you don’t move forward at all, but certainly, you can set some goals for yourself, that you’ll be proud of. Because when you look back after a few weeks, you’ll realize: “Wow… This is where I was at, a month ago… And now I can Do X”…

That kind of momentum, positive energy, and change, can drastically help you to feel better after your breakup. So, I hope you can find some momentum. And do new things with your life, not too different from how your ex-girlfriend is likely doing it.

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