You and your significant other are out on your typical Friday night dinner date. Everything is going wonderful, then out of nowhere he or she drops the heart wrenching words, "I think it would be best if we weren't together anymore," or "You should find someone else who really deserves you." Excuse me?
It is the ultimate blindside that hits hard and hits deep. Instead of serving your favorite go-to dish at dinner, they have served you the unexpected let down flowered and primped with petty and well-thought out adjectives.
It is insulting to be let down easy because it doesn't provide you with a reason to openly and rightly hate them. It just leaves you alone and with a lot of unanswered questions.
Fast-forward a year from that breakup, are you still emotionally invested? According to self-professed love scientists and magazines, it takes half the time you were together to get over your once lover. OK... whoever invented this formula has clearly never had their heart ripped at the seams and left alone at a dinner table.
Everyone experiences breakups and the emotions that follow in a unique and personal way. Everyone deploys their own tactics in overcoming the overwhelming feelings that consume and well up inside of them.
Moving on from the one you once loved is the ultimate goal, but how does it happen? Recognizing one of these four reasons can help you in the process of getting over that one person.
1. No closure
Maybe all you are looking for is an answer. An explanation for why things happened the way they did and when they did. The motion of talking through your unsettled feelings and pinpointing the exact moment when their emotional connection was severed provides you with the knowledge and understanding you have been searching for. It helps you finalize your emotional involvement and sets you on a path to move on.
Psychiatrist Abigail Brenner advises, "Closure means finality; a letting go of what once was. Finding closure implies a complete acceptance of what has happened and an honoring of the transition away from what's finished to something new. In other words, closure describes the ability to go beyond imposed limitations in order to find different possibilities."
2. Emotionally dependent
Do not allow another individual to be the source of your happiness. This form of dependency leads to a loss of self-worth and individuality. Take the time to get to know yourself again.
In fact, date yourself! Find what you like- maybe it's hiking, pottery, running, singing or writing. Whatever it may be, allow its appeal to consume you and excite you. Take the time to work and become the best you can be at what you like. Take the time to develop new friendships, bake new foods and see new things. Get out and live!
3. Rose colored glasses
Take off your light pink stunner shades of false reality and try to see things as they really are. Avoid rosy retrospection, seeing things in a brighter and happier tone than what is actually happening in reality from leaking in and persuading your judgment.
Rosy retrospection is the phenomenon people experience when they go to Disneyland. Everyone is excited to visit Minnie and Mickey Mouse before they actually step foot in the park. But once they are in the park they are bombarded with pestering kids, long lines, extreme heat and under par food. But I can assure you, if you then asked them if they enjoyed their experience after they have left the park, nearly everyone would answer with similar joy and pleasure because they were in fact in "The Happiest Place on Earth."
It is all in perspective and too often in retrospect people remember things as a better version than what they were actually experiencing.
"Rosy mechanisms may help to explain why people often seem to repeat the mistakes of the past," the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology states. "[Rosy retrospection] may suggest some reasons or circumstances where people learn less from experience than they could or should. Constantly rewriting the past in a favorable light may mean we don't adjust to the demands of the future."
4. Familiarity
Change is hard, really hard. Breakups disrupt more than your Facebook status. They break up your weekend plans, your daily goodnight texts, your weekend dates, your late night phone calls and all the rituals you have created together.
Regardless of whether your relationship was ideal or not, you became accustomed to a life together and now that it is gone. As you are search for something to fill the void, remember you are extremely vulnerable and may not have clear judgment. Be careful as you search for past memories of a time you felt better than the way you feel now.
Do not allow yourself to fall into the familiarity trap. Although you may have powerful memories and experiences together, please remember there was a reason you split.
