When a relationship ends, the pain can shut you down and make you unproductive. The ‘why and how’ keep going on and on in your head. It is harder since you know that there is no mechanical way to fall out of love with someone or eradicate them from your memory.

So, what do you do to get over someone that once made your heartbeat so fast? How do you forget the joy that bubbled in your heart every time your favorite song comes on?

It is harder to move on when everything around you reminds you of them.

Nothing prepares you for the pain wave that is about to hit you when the person you love leaves.

So, you try to protect yourself mentally with either a defense or offense mechanism.

Its either you do not care that they left or you do care, but it was their fault and not yours.

These mechanisms may help you cope for a while, but they really would not last in the long run.

You’d be back in that place of devastation in no time, questioning your decisions and seeking for help on how to get over the person you were once in love with.

Now, the question remains how do you move one?

Well, you have to first identify why you have been holding on and why you need to let go.

Getting this closure makes it easier to take the steps that will be mentioned later on how to get over the one that you deeply love.

Fig 1: Breakup Chart. Source: HuffPost

WHY CAN’T I LET GO OF THE ONE THAT ONCE LOVED ME

We hold on to lost love for a lot of reasons.

Most often, they are attributed to memories. There is always that ‘make me feel good’ memory that pops up anytime something reminds you of them.

Those memories still trigger a feeling of hurt, knowing that they are no longer there.

Many other factors contribute to the reason why you are still holding on. So let us build different scenarios and find the category into which you fall into.

Let’s say you catch your partner cheating, and the relationship ends. Could you possibly be holding on to them because you just cannot fathom the fact that they cheated on you?

The questions you ask yourself when a partner cheats may place the blame on your doorsteps and make it hard to move on.

What if you were ghosted? In this era of social media, it isn’t hard to wake up one morning and find out that the person that you were so deeply in love with has become a ghost.

You may just have to find out that you are single from a Facebook relationship status update that reads-Single.

When your partner ghosts on you, you question your value to them, and it hurts that they didn’t even have the decency of looking you in the eye and telling you the cliché line of “it’s me not you.”

It becomes even harder if you lose a loved one to the cruel hands of death. Moving on feels like a betrayal to their memories. Falling in love again begins to feel like a luxury you dare not enjoy while they lay in the morbid hands of death.

Also, we might add the defense mechanism you may likely put up if you were betrayed or had to move out of an abusive relationship.

Reconciling the two characters of the person who you loved to the monster they might have become may be challenging to process.

You may begin to create an excuse for their actions putting the blame on yourself or living in fear, not letting anyone in again.

You may also be living in a mirage refusing to let anyone in because you have set a standard with the person you used to love, and no one else can beat that standard.

CONSEQUENCES OF HOLDING ON TO LOST LOVE

There is always a scientific reason for why you act the way you do.

The brain reacts in different ways of losing love, and this means that individual reactions will differ from person to person. Your brain treats emotional pain the same way it would treat physical pain.

It also treats losing love as an addict would react to withdrawal.

A study of young adults, who experienced a recent breakup, showed that in the face of a breakup, the brain produced dopamine. Dopamine is a neurochemical that signals the brain to crave a person or object, which previously caused bliss.

If you consider it from the science point of view, your brain will continually send signals to your body when it perceives something to be a pain.

You will continually experience situational depression as there will be a decrease in the production of serotonin, a neurochemical similar to dopamine.

Your mind is not the only thing that suffers.

Holding on to a love that no longer exists will affect your sleeping and eating pattern, and you may display psychosomatic symptoms that can affect your overall health. You may also suffer from high blood pressure.

Fig 2: How to identify a heart attack. Source: Heart.org

You could die from the pain of a broken heart.

When you refuse to let go, you break your heart anew. This emotional stress can induce sudden chest pain, which can be symptoms of broken heart syndrome, also known as stress-induced cardiomyopathy. Broken heart syndrome can be misdiagnosed as a heart attack.

Also, you can have breakouts and acne as your body will be going through a lot of stress. Increased breakouts might lead to self-esteem issues. The truth is that your mind has a way of affecting the responses that your body gives.

Your social life will also suffer as you will find it difficult to go to the places you used to because of the memories they bring. This will affect your relationship with the people around you. You might even end up throwing tantrums or being overbearing without knowing.

Soon people will begin to walk on eggshells around you, and you might not only lose the love of your life but your friends as well.

What about the situation at your place of work? How focused are you? When you keep holding on to love, you may end up making numerous mistakes at work and end up losing your job, which is not something you want to happen.

Now that you know the effects that holding on to lost love does to you, we can now proceed to steps you can take to let go of them and move on with your life, dreams, and purpose.

Fig 3: Rules for getting over someone. Source: Pinterest

11 METHODS TO GET OVER SOMEONE YOU DEEPLY LOVE

1. Give Yourself Time to Heal

Sometimes you are in a hurry to move on and sometimes that might be very difficult. Instead of being in a hurry to get over someone you once loved so deeply, take some time to process the situation. Of course, love is not a switch.

You cannot just stop loving them overnight, so you need to give yourself time. Scream if you want to, cry and indulge yourself in chocolate or ice cream.

It’s a gradual process, and you will get there. Listen to music; it has a way of healing the mind. You can also take a ride on a bicycle to deal with pent up emotions.

2. Do not Hide from Shared Memories

There’s a tendency that you may want to bottle up your emotions or hide from the world. But it wouldn’t help you achieve your aim of moving on.

Let’s say you had a favorite park you visited as a couple. Now that you are no longer together, you cannot walk past the park anymore.

You may run away from it, but you can’t keep running away forever. Instead of running, create new memories there. Buy a dog, take it walking in the park. Join a yoga team on the park. Just create a new memory on that park instead of hiding.

3. Do Not Allow Your Emotions Torture You

The blame game is fun; the only problem is that you are the loser in this game. Do not go on and on about the things you could have changed. Do not let the anger boil over to a point where you are now living in anger, unable to move on.

Sadness can envelop your soul and make it difficult to move on as it becomes a sanctuary, and you are scared of feeling happy again. Fear can cripple yourself worth and make you feel undeserving of that love.

Silent that little voice in your ears that amplifies all the negative emotions. You are in charge of your emotions and not the other way around.

4. Remember the Relationship for What it Was

When a relationship ends, we tend to amplify the good qualities of that person and downplay their wrong sides. Seeing the relation for what it was will give you closure.

If you keep telling yourself, “we were so good together, why did he want to leave?” You have assigned yourself the victim role.

However, see the relationship for what it was. Always remember why the relationship had to end. If it was toxic, do not sugarcoat it.

If the person cheated on you, do not blame yourself. Even if you had to end it, always remember the way. Do not stay focused on the good side that you forget the toxicity.

5. Share Your Feelings with Someone Who Understands

We all need a shoulder to lean on. It might be the shoulder of a friend, a support group, or a therapist. Just ensure you share your feelings and let it all out.

However, you may not be able to talk to someone; maybe you are not confident enough to share your experience, you can write.

Keeping a journal will help you open your heart and write down things you may not want to say to anyone. Writing them will help you get over the feelings that you have kept bottled.

Fig 4: Do’s and don’ts of moving on. Source: TheMindFool

6. Invest in Yourself

When in love, you tend to build your life around the person you love.

Everything about your life gets lost in them. When they are no longer there, it becomes a problem to live on your own. To move on, you have to invest time into loving yourself.

Who are you? What do you like? Do you know the answers to these questions?

This is one way to get over the person you love; Find yourself and try out new foods and visit new places.

Try a new sport and join a group. Just do something that you love to do.

7. Do Not Keep Tabs on Them

Social media has made stalking easier. You can find yourself always keeping tabs on your Ex on social media. “What is he up to?” “Who is she dating?”

You want to know how quickly they moved on from you, and social media does not help as everyone appears happy there.

If you continue keeping tabs on them makes it hard to move on. You are still attached and do not want to let go. So, take the bold step, and delete the pictures of them you have on social media, block them on all social media platforms, so you do not have to keep tabs on them.

While you do not have to hate them, you can just avoid the notion of keeping tabs on time until you are mentally strong enough to handle seeing them again.

8. Find Meaning in New Sources

While it would not be a good idea for you to jump into a new relationship when you are yet to get over your previous relationship, you need to move on. Instead of focusing on lost love, move on to finding happiness in new sources.

Move out of the box, do something new, and try new things.

Also, look beyond yourself and focus on the needs of others. Find a worthy cause and move with it. Reconnect with old friends and do the things you wouldn’t have done before. The focus, however, should be finding new meaning in healthy sources.

9. Exercise, Yoga, and Meditation

Fig 5: Benefits of Yoga.  Source: VectorStock

One of the beautiful things about Yoga is that it comes with a sense of community. Also, it brings you in touch with your heart and soul. You will not have time to think of how to hurt you have been when you are trying to connect with your inner being.

Exercise is also good for your heart and will help you burn all the calories you have gained with eating chocolate in your depressed state.

It’s a win-win situation for your body and your mind. On the other hand, meditation brings you inner peace. The turmoil raging in your heart comes to a quit as you meditate.

10. There are Other People Out there for You

Sometimes we get the notion that no one can love us as much as our EX can. But that is far from the truth. As humans, we are embodied with lots of talents, creativity, and uniqueness, and somebody out there wants to experience this.

While it may be hard to get yourself to the point where your desire to date other people might be tasking, it is worth it in the end.

You just have to keep reminding yourself that you are worthy of being loved. You also have to be ready to give love as well. But then, you have all the time in the world to get ready.

11. Benefits of Letting Go

When you eventually get over the person you were once in love with, you see life in a different light. The tiny voice in your head that keeps criticizing you becomes quiet, and you see yourself change. And soon, you will begin to see the benefit of letting go.

‘Time heals all wounds,’ and this will be true of all the feeling of hurt. Generally, there is an increase in your health when you are no longer mopping about with a long sad face.

You are ready to take life by the horn, and your relationship with those around you blossoms.

You will also become self-aware. You are now more aware of yourself as an individual than focusing on the love that’s no longer there. The bottom line remains that finding yourself when a relationship goes south will help improve your world view.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Moving on from a failed relationship, the loss of a loved one or a broken heart is important to our health and purpose. It is also important to future relationships as you do not want to punish yourself and others for a lost love continually.

Although the chance that you might slide back into depression when you finally get over the one you once loved is high, letting go is still imperative.

This is why you shouldn’t set unrealistic goals for yourself. You shouldn’t make a deadline like “by next valentine, I will be in a new relationship.” You will only be setting yourself up for disaster.

So the motto should be “slow and steady wins the race.” Remember that your brain controls your body, so you have to take control of what happens to your body.

Also, remember that your value as a person is of utmost importance, and you must connect with it.

As you take steps towards getting over the one that you once loved, life will finally begin to appear in a clearer view.

How to Get Over Someone You Deeply Love

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