5 Breakup Mistakes that keeps you from moving on from your ex
Letting go of a relationship is never easy. I’m a licensed therapist specialized in breakup recovery. Learn my top 5 factors that can make a breakup more complicated, painful, or drawn out.
1) Vague and unclear breakups
It is common that breakups often evolve over time rather than all at once, marked with periods of relationship separations, breaks, and the undefined “it’s complicated.” At some point, it will be important to clarify and confirm the relationship status for closure.
This can be hard to accomplish, especially when occasional texts, late-night calls and sleepovers feel harmless and dampen your loneliness in the moment. However, by continuing the undefined connection with your ex, you risk re-opening an emotional wound without allowing it time to heal.
Tip: Develop boundaries for your breakup process. Boundaries help give us structure in a stressful time of uncertainty that goes along with the breakup process. For instance, if you have decided to take a “break” from your partner, mutually decide on a time when you will revisit a conversation about the status of your relationship and make a firm decision to stay together or break up.
Try to discuss what level of communication (if any) you feel comfortable with engaging with your ex. Allow yourself the opportunity to change your mind and modify the boundaries as needed. For instance, you might decide that late night calls from your ex when they are feeling lonely are not ok, but a text on your upcoming birthday would be a welcome outreach.
2) Breaking up over Text
While it’s not a hard and fast rule that breakups shouldn’t happen over text, you need to really think about the context of the relationship before immediately resorting to text to have a difficult conversation.
After a few casual dates, a text might be a totally appropriate way to communicate you are no longer interested. But with a partner you have established a shared understanding of your relationship being exclusive and serious, texting no longer matches the level of intimacy created in this partnership. As hard as it might be to say goodbye out loud, this likely deserves at least a phone call.
A live conversation versus a text is not only respectful of the person you are breaking up with but is also more effective in creating a more concise, clean closure of the relationship. Texting breakups leaves the door open while you anxiously await their response and sometimes can linger on for hours, sometimes days as you both carefully craft texting responses, rather than setting aside a set time to address the breakup with a clear beginning and end.
3) Impulsive Decisions
It’s normal to feel the urgency to make significant changes in your life after a difficult breakup, but this is not the time to make life-altering and permanent decisions in your life. Decisions made directly after a breakup can be emotionally driven and not always be the best for our well-being long-term.
You may feel the desire to do something extreme to distract yourself from the pain of the breakup, but this is not the time to make the decision to get a new tattoo, change careers, move to a new city, or post all your grievances about your ex on social media.
Tip: Be mindful to give yourself a bit of time to reflect on big decisions before acting on them. Try asking yourself these questions to better analyze your decision-making process during this vulnerable time:
a. How long have I been considering this decision for? (Have you been thinking about this big move, new job or adopting a pet for months, even before your breakup? Or is this a brand-new idea since the breakup?)
b. Have you asked 2 trusted people for their feedback about my decision? (You don’t have to agree with their feedback, but have you considered it?)
c. What are the long-term consequences for this decision? (Will the consequence be temporary and minor, or life-changing and irreversible?)
Try on temporary changes with an easy exit plan if things go awry or you change your mind. For example, taking an extended vacation to a new city before you make a big move, or getting a part time gig to explore a new career interest before quitting your job.
4) Obsessive thinking
Thinking about your ex a lot after a breakup is not necessarily a red flag, but if your ruminations about the past relationship are disruptive to the responsibilities and activities of your everyday life, it’s time to reflect on what is getting in the way of moving on.
Obsessive thinking about an ex is usually a sign that you are not yet ready to let go of some aspect of what the relationship signified to your own identity. If you’ve already tried to redirect your thoughts without success, this is the time to consider the help of a therapist to identify what might be holding you back from moving forward.
Tip: Get outside perspective: Not sure if your thinking about the breakup has crossed the line to unhealthy ruminations? Ask yourself a few questions to get some perspective:
· Are your friends and family members noticing that conversations with you always find a way back to the topic of your ex?
· Do you find it hard focusing at work or school because you are distracted by your thoughts of the breakup?
· Are you having trouble sleeping at night because you are distracted by these intrusive thoughts?
· Do you find yourself often anxious, stressed, or upset by the thoughts of your ex when you don’t want to be thinking about them?
Still struggling? It’s worth working with a therapist during this time to clarify and resolve the unresolved issues of your relationship breakdown that is causing the intrusive thinking. A trained therapist might be able to pick apart and better analyze the pain points that are keeping you stuck in the breakup process. This might include trauma triggered from the relationship dynamics, attachment/abandonment concerns, and other mental health concerns such as depression or anxiety.
Being curious and open to reflect on this relationship with a clinical profession to gather the important information about your relational patterns will allow for future healthy and happy relationships.
5) Distracting from your feelings:
It is easy to try to distract from difficult emotions that arise after a breakup with a rebound relationship, substance use or pouring yourself into work, but that doesn’t take away the pain, rather it just delays the process of healing for another time.
The longer you hold onto grudges, resentments, and grievances about the breakup, the harder the process of healing from your breakup will be. Breakups are not a game of winners or losers, and it doesn’t make it the process to heal any quicker or easier by analyzing the scoreboard of who made more mistakes in the relationship or who is more at blame.
Tip: Rather than viewing the breakup as a failure, people who recover from breakups in a healthy manner acknowledge their feelings, ask for support when they need it, show themselves self-compassion, and refocus their life on areas that bring them joy and sense of purpose. This can be achieved through therapy or counseling, getting connected with your social support systems and finding areas of life to reconnect to through hobbies, volunteering, sports, and other engaging activities.
Get help from a Breakup Therapist
If you, or a loved one is struggling with a difficult breakup, separation, divorce or other major relationship disruption, there is help.
I’m a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice based in Santa Rosa, CA but provide therapy virtually to individuals all over California.
I take a different therapeutic approach to recover from breakups, based on a therapy modality called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
I help get you unstuck, deal with the anxiety, anger and overwhelm, and take steps forward in your new life.
Contact me to schedule a free consultation so we can chat about what’s going on and how I can help.
Angela Sitka, MA, LMFT, is a licensed therapist with a private practice in Santa Rosa, California. She specializes in all types of relationship turmoil and change, including breakups, divorce, toxic relationships, and family estrangement.