How Do You Let Go Of Your Ex? 6 Key Breakup Insights.
Letting go of your ex when you still love them, or don’t want to let go of is a terrifying and helpless experience. When your ex chose the breakup and you know deep down you need to let go, it can be hard to know how to actually do it because it feels impossible and like you’ll never get there. It can also feel hard because you don’t actually want to let go, and it feels like the only solution to taking your pain away is getting back together. But the thing is, if this is what they want, it is so important to respect their decision, and put your attention on to you - handling it in the kindest, most patient way that you can with yourself.
So how do you let go of your ex? 6 key breakup insights:
Expect yourself to find it hard - you’ll protest and rebel against it
Don’t expect to wake up one day and you’ve magically let them go overnight
Relentlessly focus on your life and by default let them go
Decide that you’ll find a way even before you feel ready
Get perspective on why you broke up, often
Be patient with yourself, it takes time
In this article, I’m breaking down each key insight in detail, so if you’re struggling to let go of your ex after your breakup, you’re in the right place - read on!
6 breakup insights that help you let go of your ex
1. Expect yourself to find it hard, - you’ll protest and rebel against it.
When you’ve gone through a break that you didn’t want, and are now trying to let go of an ex you still love, of course it is going to feel hard. It isn’t unreasonable that you would struggle with this. Something that I observe in conversations and questions, is a kind of confusion as to why this is such an emotional and distressing experience. Why do I feel so sad? Why can’t I stop thinking about them? Etc.
I suggest that you expect yourself to feel emotional, all over the place, upset, hurt, in pain. Expect yourself to not want to go through this, or have all the answers when you’re feeling so hurt and heartbroken. It’s just not easy. Giving yourself some grace and accepting that you don’t feel good can be the first step to feeling better. Otherwise you can end up feeling sad, and then feeling frustrated with yourself on top of the sadness.
I remember when my ex chose to end the relationship, I felt the denial, the shock and this kind of protest of ‘no I don’t want to go through this, I can’t do this’ it felt like I was protesting. And I’ve later learned that this is all scientifically studied and explained. I’ve enjoyed reading about Helen Fisher’s research - she’s an anthropologist who studies human nature relationships. I really recommend checking her out, but here’s a summary about her research on ‘protest behaviour’ that I’ve broken down for you.
Helen Fisher’s research on protest behavior after a breakup reveals that when romantic love is rejected, the brain responds in ways similar to addiction withdrawal. This leads to obsessive thoughts, attempts to reconnect, and emotional turmoil. As Fisher explains in her article ‘Dumped’, “When romantic love is thwarted, the lover just loves harder” (New Scientist, 2004). The intensified emotional response a person feels when they have been rejected, or dumped is driven by heightened activity in the brain’s reward system, particularly involving dopamine.
The rejected person often becomes fixated on restoring the relationship, engaging in behaviors like constant messaging or showing up unannounced. These protest behaviors are a natural, biologically driven reaction to loss, making it feel almost impossible to let go.
So, what does this mean for you if your ex broke it off with you and now you have to let go when you don’t want to? It means what you’re feeling is normal, so give yourself grace and acknowledge that what you’re going through is also to do with a chemical reaction in your brain. If it is impacting on your wellbeing and day to day ability to function, I do recommend seeing a therapist or some one to one support. Therapy helped me a lot during this phase - I didn’t go for this reason, but I was having it anyway and it did help.
When you expect to find it hard, it can feel less intense because you can be kinder to yourself and reassure yourself that what your going through is common, natural and there is nothing wrong with you.
2. Don’t expect to wake up one day and you’ve magically let them go overnight
Don’t expect to wake up one day and you’ve magically let them go overnight
That being said, don’t expect yourself to just wake up one day and realise you’ve let them go and everything feels great. It does just take time and I will get into how you can speed along the process of letting go in a sec.
I often get asked ‘why has it been X months and I still feel sad?’. If you’re thinking this, I want to redirect your focus, away from the time frame and on to what you can do, regardless of time. It’s an impossible task to set yourself and a huge pressure to expect from yourself, to just be over it by now, or just wake up and not feel sad, or just not think about them any more.
If you’re just waiting to feel better, and wondering why you aren’t yet, this is a good opportunity to switch things up a bit and regroup on what you’re going through. In my experience, letting go of someone doesn’t just happen. A breakup is a huge life change, it impacts everything, it needs your effort and attention more than ever.
I’m not saying you need to make yourself a project, or that you need fixing, or that you have to be in constant analysis about yourself. But it’s the new simple tweaks to your routine, the movement, nature, the sleep, the stopping the doom scroll, the removing them off social media, the not letting yourself read old whatsapps. Slowly discovering yourself again and thinking about how you want your life to look. It’s the little things that all add up. Read ahead where I’ll go in to this in more detail.
3. Relentlessly focus on your life and by default let them go
Relentlessly focus on your life and by default let them go
If you want to let go of your ex, you’re going to have to see the process of letting go as something that happens as a result of what you’re doing in your life. I’ve already hinted at some things above, but I suggest to start simple, really think about what you’re doing now that’s working, and what isn’t working, and what you can do to change this. Do something that helps you every day, no matter how small and simple it is.
For instance, you might think work is good and you’re turning up, but at night you come home, don’t have plans, isolate yourself, and scroll until 3am on their social media. Maybe having the alone time after work is helpful as you’re exhausted, but maybe you know deep down it would be helpful to give yourself a push to start making some plans, joining a class, seeing a friend, turning off your phone at 9pm so you can sleep at least just a few times a week.
For me, after my breakup I couldn’t sleep. I would have a few hours and be up at 5am just crying. One day I thought ‘ok I’m up anyway, I need to take some control of my morning and feel more settled before work’. So I decided to start having a little morning ritual that I ended up really enjoying. I got up, made myself a drink, got back in bed, opened the curtains to see the sun come up (it was summer), wrote everything I was feeling in a journal, did some simple EFT (you can learn this in the successful breakup guide tutorial video), and went out for a walk.
I ended up loving my mornings, and having this space for myself before work became a habit. I felt healthier, calmer and more ready for the day. It was a simple tweak to my routine that helped me build a new relationship with myself.
You might think that after a breakup, changes to your routine are pointless, and when you’re feeling so lost and emotional, how will doing something simple help you. This is the point, it’s the simple, small things that help you. It’s you, showing up for you. Listening to what you need and honouring it. Consistently, relentlessly being committed to yoursefl and your happiness. It helps more than you realise.
By default your mind is on you, you’re keeping the promises you make to yourself and this is also building up trust and self reliance. Doing these things for yourself is a practical way to give yourself a sense of control in your life especially when the breakup has made you feel so powerless. And as a result also beginning to let your ex go.
4. Decide that you are in the process of letting go before you feel ready
Decide that you are in the process of letting go before you feel ready
You don’t have to be ready to let your ex go to focus on yourself. In fact if you wait until you are ready, you might never really feel it. For me, a way I let go was through first making a decision that I get to be happy and I’ll do whatever it takes until I get there. I didn’t want to let go, I didn’t want the relationship to end, but he chose to leave and so there was nothing else I could do aside from let him and decide that my happiness wasn’t going with him.
I wasn’t ready to start moving on when I decided I would. I felt drained, sad, hopeless and the rejection just made me lose faith in myself. I wasn’t ready to make any effort and felt so exhausted at the thought of starting my life again. But at the end of the day, I realised nobody is going to do it for me, nobody was going to save me, or make me happy, I just had to pick myself up and decide I would find a way.
I didn’t really how how yet, or what it would look like and I didn’t even really believe it was possible to let me ex go, but I had no choice so it was either stuck or make a decision. I really encourage you to decide you’ll start picking up the pieces of your life, even before you feel ready.
A practice that felt a bit delusional but gave me a bit of direction at least, was writing a thank you letter as my future self. I just started every sentence with ‘thank you for’, and then filled in the gaps for all the things I hoped would happen, even if I didn’t believe it yet. I encourage you to do the same. I randomly found this letter last week, over 2 years later, and about 80% of the things I wrote had come true. See it as setting your intention and the beginning of your decision.
5. Get perspective on why you broke up, often
Get perspective on why you broke up, often
This is so important. You need to be realistic about what you are letting go of. You need to remind yourself often about the reasons you and your ex broke up. Because the reality is, there are reasons.
A lot of people say to me that they can’t move on because the relationship was perfect, but if the relationship was perfect, it would still be; it would be working. I know this sounds so harsh, but really try to understand where the faults were, and be honest with yourself about both your part and their part.
You’re not only letting go of the good traits, the memories, the future you thought you had (and this is so hard and a subject for another time), but you’re also letting go of the tension, the arguments, the ways you didn’t communicate, the gut feeling you got when something wasn’t ok, the needs you had that weren’t met.
And if you were totally blindsided, or betrayed, or cheated on when you had the impression things were going really well, get perspective on whether this is the person you would choose for yourself. Whether someone who keeps secrets from you is really the perfect person for you? Someone who lies to you?
It’s not about hating your ex, it’s about being real with yourself about the current reality and not just fixating on the perfect future you hoped it would turn out to be. It’s about being honest about the incompatibilities.
You don’t have to hate your ex to move on, but it does help to be honest about the reasons for the breakup. If you get angry, that’s OK, deal with it in a healthy way, talk it out with a professional, do what you need to do. When I let myself be angry, it moved me on because it just helped me to not want to go back, even though it was me who was rejected.
Being accountable for your parts helps too, the ways you didn’t show up the best way, how you could have communicated something different, ways in which you were passive aggressive, or whatever it was that you think could be done better next time. It’s not about hating yourself or blaming yourself, it’s about owning your part and having a good perspective. For me, writing about these things in my journal, often - like weekly, even daily sometimes, just helped me to stay grounded in reality.
6. Be patient with yourself, it takes time
Be patient with yourself,
it takes time
This is a short and simple one to read, but takes a lot of practice in reality. Because unfortunately, our default mode can be self hate, self judgement and negative self talk. It takes a lot of falling down and picking yourself up again just in this point alone but start it right now.
Remind yourself that you are in a ‘breakup process’, not just in a ‘when will I wake up and have let my ex go and not be sad anymore without doing anything magic trick’. There are things you can do, starting now. You can start by comforting yourself with your own patience, and grace for all the emotions you are feeling.
If it gets too much, ask for help. Go to friends who you feel calm around. Speak to a therapist so you can work these things through. Do whatever you think you need. You know what is best for you, sometimes you just need to practice being able to hear it from yourself.
There is a whole section on figuring out your needs in the Successful Breakup Guide, and you can get it here now, still on the intro offer of £25 (ends soon).
Let me know if tis helps!! Drop a comment or DM me!
