When your ex girlfriend moved on too fast and you can’t seem to cope with all of the pain. How do you get over all of it? The pain. The disappointment. Maybe you even feel humiliated that she is just going on with her life as if the two never dated. I think as a man, that kind of experience is nearly unimaginable, especially if your expectation of love, commitment and a relationship is very idealistic. So, let’s talk about how to deal with this pile of seriously messed up emotions.

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, ex-girlfriends who move on way, way too fast are just the worst. I don’t want to shame every woman who does it, but let’s be real, it’s borderline disrespectful towards the last man to move on to another relationship or just act all happy-go-lucky after a breakup.

Of course, women can go through the same rollercoaster, if they were with a man who generally didn’t care much about commitment and moved on right away… Probably because he was just trying to have some good sex. But I’d say on average, if they were dating properly, women are more likely to just go on with life early on after a serious relationship, whereas a man will really struggle with the breakup. Most of the time we just can’t move on quickly to the next woman. We don’t like to drown ourselves in a mountain of new experiences, or go traveling, go out to parties, and so on. It just doesn’t feel right to a guy to act as if it’s all rainbows and butterflies.

I think this is actually something important to reckon with. On one hand, I can sympathize with the point of view of a woman who’s done with a relationship and wants to move on quickly. After all, every person is allowed to do what they want with their lives. And after a breakup, your ex is free to do whatever she pleases, even if her choices may seem questionable. To be fair to women, I actually believe that this is something that many men need to learn. It’s OK to just not be happy with a relationship and if you are not too invested yet, not to attempt to fix or improve the relationship and move on with your life. And even do it relatively quickly. But that of course, doesn’t mean you’d have to blast it out on loudspeaker for your ex to hear. You should be very discreet about that kind of mindset and your behavior should be extremely low-key. Respect for the feelings of your ex is quite important, in my opinion. 

And, that’s the other hand of it. It is clear to see that flaunting your happiness, or worse, dating someone brand new after just a few weeks really makes an ex-partner feel terrible. Especially IF the relationship was a very long one, where both partners invested years of their lives into it, had made plans for the future, and expected to keep striving towards a future together.

Both sides of the coin have some validity, but at the end of the day, I consider myself someone who wants to act with an intact moral compass, and if I’d choose between moving on with my life quickly, or giving my ex-partner some breathing room to deal with the aftermath of the breakup, I would try to have the common courtesy to not act as if the breakup was the best thing that ever happened to me. Even if I would feel that way deep down inside, I wouldn’t want my ex-partner to know about it because I know that would only make the breakup unnecessarily more difficult for her.

So, long story short, if your ex-girlfriend is acting this way, I would recognize that to a certain degree, she may not be respecting the time that you had invested together as a couple, and honestly, that’s not cool. Yes, of course, she is free to enjoy her life, but still, everything in life should be done with common sense and a degree of decency. I believe that couples should be respectful towards each other even after a breakup, assuming that the ex was worthy of respect, of course.

You probably are extremely hung up on the fact that she is just moving on like it was nothing, and she’s already with both feet in a brand new life. That means she probably had it all planned out for a long time, and not just that, she probably already started to take the first steps to start her new life even long before the breakup. That should tell you something about her character. She probably should have left you months ago if she can just easily now let go and find herself another man, or at least, if she’s having lots of fun, when in reality, most people would be grieving and struggling immensely. So, it might actually be possible that was leading you on to a degree.

The fact that the relationship has ended is a good thing even if you don’t see it that way yet. It’s not a good sign if she was willing to replace you and then even flaunted her new life for you to see. It can be understandable that a woman may want to move on after a lot of unhappiness, but she could keep things more private and not broadcast every little thing that implies that now that she is single, all her problems are solved, and life is better than ever. That’s just horrible behavior in my opinion. 

It’s one of the most frustrating and disrespectful things that women do after a breakup. We should extend respect to our partners and not act as if no longer being with them is as if we’ve been freed from a prison. After all, it was her choice to be with you and stay in the relationship. So her being unhappy was as much her responsibility as it was yours. Not all women show this behavior after a breakup, but the ones who do, aren’t women worth missing or chasing after. I feel for every guy who has to see these kinds of posts after a breakup and if this is what you have to deal with, then hear me out:

The best advice that I can give you is to ignore what your ex-girlfriend is doing. Even if she is extremely happy, everything that she is broadcasting for everybody to see after the breakup has nothing to do with you. Her happiness after she’s no longer with you doesn’t mean that you were a terrible person, not a good boyfriend, a bad listener, or whatever. Even if perhaps you were frustrating her at the end of the relationship, it’s her who chose to be with you and not tell you that something needed to be changed to improve the relationship. 

This type of behavior is ultimately a form of not taking accountability for one’s own actions in the relationship. Sometimes women will act as if it was only the man who was at fault for the relationship deteriorating, and being away from that man is a blessing — when in reality, of course, you both played a big role together to slowly make the relationship reach a point where it was no longer satisfying for either or both of you.

I’m not saying she may not have some valid reasons to be happy. Maybe she does, I don’t know your relationship and what went down, but what I do know, is that you don’t deserve this kind of treatment. And yes, women act like as soon as the relationship is over, we have no responsibility to the other person… Sure, in theory that’s true, but man, come on… You spent months, or even years together. At least, be courteous enough to not make you feel worse than you already do, right? It’s common sense.

So, my advice is that you should let her go on with her life. Let her say all that stuff. There’s a reason why a lot of women say and do these things, and then later on, months or years later, reach out to their ex-boyfriends. You have to take these things with a grain of salt. The honest truth is… It’s probably more anger, immaturity, and just lack of decency, rather than her honest feelings. Because let’s be real, if you’d just genuinely be happy to live a more peaceful life after a breakup, you probably wouldn’t write a lot about it for others to see. You’d just be glad that you can finally catch a break.

I once had this extremely jealous ex-girlfriend. And when I broke up with her, maaaan… I was so done with her! She actually made my life really hard back then with the constant jealousy and essentially restricting my life a lot, or at least, making me walk on eggshells a lot. It’s not like she forced me to be home by 8 or anything like that, but she would just always bring up stuff that would imply I couldn’t be trusted. It was just painful! But when I broke up with her, it’s not like I acted like “Hallelujah! Finally, I am free from the eternal torture!”… Of course, that’s how I felt, but I didn’t need to emphasize that any further. She already knew that I had enough by breaking up with her. I don’t even know to be honest, if I posted about her at all. I just was glad that it was over, and that I could finally take a rest and no longer had to deal with our problems.

So, when she posts about these things… Who knows what’s really going on? Whether she’s truly fulfilled and happy after the relationship or not, it doesn’t matter! But what matters is what you focus on now: You need to focus on finding your own pace to feel happy again. You need to process the breakup, the relationship, the pain, all of it in your own way. If she wants to just move on and act as if moving on is easier than buying a meal at a fast food restaurant, then that is her choice.

In the end, I think it will always be better to take your time to heal, to be respectful towards your ex-partner, and to not take it lightly to live life again and find happiness. Breakups are meant to hurt. They are meant to set us back. They are meant to teach us that we aren’t perfect, that we have room for improvement, and that we need to change some of our behaviors if we want to have better relationships with our friends, family, and our partner.

I don’t want you to be heartbroken forever and sulk endlessly either, but if I had to choose between you acting all positive right away, or struggling for a few months and really thinking what the relationship and the breakup meant to you, then I would always encourage you to take the path of the bigger resistance, because just like resistance training at the gym, this is what’s going to help you grow and become stronger as a man. So don’t think too much about why your ex-girlfriend is moving on and take your time to think through what the relationship and the breakup meant to you and see what you can learn from it for your life and for the next relationship.

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