How to stop thinking about your ex gf all the time? It’s the worst feeling, isn’t it? I think most men think about their ex-girlfriends more after a breakup than they did before. It’s an ironic, cruel reality. We often don’t know what we had until it was gone. And this realization then makes us think about what we lost… Endlessly. This is a painful journey most men have to go through in their lives at least once. So let’s talk about what the right way is to move on from your ex and stop having her in every thought of yours.
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. Man, constantly overthinking the breakup, and missing an ex non-stop is an awful experience. I have only been severely heartbroken once, but I remember this feeling as if it was yesterday even though it’s been more than five years ago. It’s like you are being controlled by your ex-girlfriend. Every moment is spent thinking about her. Missing her. The constant onslaught of emotions. And the endless urge of letting out your feelings and giving in to the pain, but at the same time, of course, when you’re out in public, or at work, you can’t. You don’t want others to see how much you’re struggling. But you still think about her all the time. And when you get home from work, you are finally by yourself, and are able to properly feel your feelings that you’ve tried to suppress for most of the day.
Dude, it is an awful experience to go through this cycle. The hard part about the entire experience is that it’s a cycle that seems to never resolve itself no matter what you do. One day passes, and the next day is practically the same. Sometimes for weeks! And it seems like it’s never going to stop.
And this is the ironic part of breakups. You’re going to hate me for a minute with the advice that I’m about to give but hear me out for a minute. If you want to move on from an ex-girlfriend, you have to just stop thinking about her. And now you’re probably thinking… “Duh! You’re a genius dude! Ok, awesome advice! But how?”
Well, let’s talk about why we think about an ex-girlfriend… I mean, what’s the motivation of your brain and heart to think about her, when all it does is make it much, much worse? Well, your brain hates that things ended abruptly, or at least, it ended in a way that it wasn’t ready for. Even if the breakup had been building up for a few weeks, and it was obvious a month before that it’s about to happen, of course, your brain got used to your ex. She’s essentially been your little daily dopamine drug to make you feel good. And now, all of it is gone. Your story is written, but the ending is a very unsatisfying ending. I mean, surely you’ve watched a movie or read a book before, where the book has been anything but great, and you wanted to find a better answer to some of your questions.
Breakups are like those unanswered questions. The whole point of thinking about an ex-girlfriend is that it’s an attempt to try to somehow find an emotional conclusion to the entire situation. And of course, you want that conclusion to be satisfying. But if you think about it for a second, is that ever really possible? After all, a breakup is already a really painful conclusion to a relationship. Even the most polite, no-drama breakups can still hurt. And aside from that best-case breakup, there are all kinds of levels of really painful and emotional breakups. No matter how you look at it, going through a breakup with a woman is NEVER going to reach a satisfying enough ending.
But then, despite that, we keep on trying to make sense of it all. We think things through so much, we could have written a PhD thesis on our relationship by the time we’re done. We go through so many what-if scenarios, many which might even be unrealistic or would have never happened. We ask ourselves what we did wrong, how we should have said something differently, been more affectionate, paid more attention, and so on — but all of these what-if regrets really don’t lead anywhere. At least not for the last relationship. It could be useful for the next one, but you won’t rewrite the ending of your breakup. Instead, doing all of this will only bring you more pain the more often you think about it.
That said, of course, I really believe that it’s essential to reflect on a relationship and the breakup. In fact, it’s been studied that proper emotional processing of our breakup emotions, for example via journaling, can be extremely effective to move on from a relationship. So if you are thinking a lot about your ex-girlfriend and if you’re attempting to stop thinking about her, the best thing you can do is actually write down how you feel about her. Use a pen and paper so you can put all the thoughts into real words. When you do that, it’s almost as if the grief and the pain are being transferred to the paper. And perhaps even better, what you can also do, is to read some relationship books that are primarily focused on the topic of maintaining healthy relationships.
Usually, the thing that tears us apart after a breakup is that we don’t properly resolve what or how we really could have done things differently. If you reflect on the mistakes, then write down on paper what you could have done differently, and most importantly, make a positive resolution for yourself what you never want to do again in the future, then you will be able to find a more positive outlook. You can only let go once you understand all of it. But those answers are better to be found in the teachings of others, rather than in your own mind, as counterintuitive as that may seem. And of course, the key is to break the cycle of overthinking.
Believe me, if you read my book, and perhaps you read 1 or 2 more books about breakups, or healthy relationships, or rather, the patterns of unhealthy relationships, I’m sure you’ve found plenty of evidence why things didn’t work out, and then, from there on out, the key thing to do, is to stop thinking about the what-if scenarios. Actually, as you read those kinds of books, you’re going to gain so many epiphanies. And the best thing that you can do, is not to keep on overthinking again, and again, and again… But instead, just be, in quotes, “grateful”, as strange as it sounds, that you’ve learned some important lessons now. Now, things make sense to you. Now you understand why your ex did this. Or why you did that. You can’t change the past, and you’ve already gained most of the knowledge of where things went wrong. What else could you possibly do now, but to move forward?
In the end, your breakup is a lesson that you need to carry into the future, and hopefully this pain will serve you in good ways. Breakups are never easy, but at least they can help us to find new understanding of ourselves and relationships in general. Instead of ruminating for weeks or months how things could have played out differently, and trying to find that satisfying ending in your head, or even in a hypothetical scenario where you two meet up in a week from now and get back together, instead, gather some knowledge from good books, and then, there’s only one thing that you can do that’s productive:
Move forward, and set aside the thoughts about what you did wrong or how you wish something specific would have turned out differently. Now, it’s your time to reinvent yourself and learn from the mistakes. Now, you need to focus on how you can turn all the pain and the regrets into lessons that you apply to your life, for the rest of your life.
There is nothing worse than being stuck not knowing who you are and where you would like to go in life. Breakups are the epitome of this depressing feeling. You think you can’t move forward because you still have unfinished business in the past, and in the present, nothing feels satisfying and you’re not making any progress in life. So naturally, you always want to look backwards because you believe that’s where pain relief will happen. But it won’t.
If you want to break the cycle of constantly thinking about your ex-girlfriend, then reflect on the breakup, make a clear vision statement how this should influence your life from now on, and then the only choice you have to properly overcome this pain is to no longer choose to think about her, and the mistakes.
Thinking about an ex-girlfriend is a choice. Moving forward is a choice. And yes, it’s one that you can make, even if you feel too weak to do so. Of course, even when you take the first steps, you’ll still think about all of it occasionally, but instead of ruminating about the same regrets without any real progress, instead, you should stay focused on the realizations that you wrote down on paper, and live your life by these new principles.
Besides, how much more insight can you really gain, after you’ve reached 90% of the possible enlightenment about the areas where things went wrong? No matter how hard you try, you won’t reach those 10% extra insights. And they likely won’t make it any better. 90% is good enough. Then, instead of spending 90% of your time on trying to find some magic answer in the last 10%, it would be much better, if you spend 90% of your time, on building a new life and focusing your thoughts on new things that bring you happiness. I know this probably sounds like a massive mountain to climb for you right now, but I know you can do it.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.
