There’s nothing more painful than an ending. Books end, movies end, seasons end, and sometimes, relationships end. It’s those relationships that are most important to us that affect us the most, and it’s these relationships that will make or break you. When a relationship ends, it’s not always a bad thing – especially if you are the person that decided it should end. When the relationship ends because someone else ended it with you, it’s harder to cope with and you need to know how to cope with it!
Below, we’ve put together some tips to help you to move on when a relationship ends – even when it sucks and you’re hurting.
- Acknowledge the pain before you do anything else. There is nothing like the grief that comes with a relationship ending. You grieve the years past and the time spent and the time you no longer get to have, and you grieve the moments you wish you had and the things you should have said. You need to acknowledge that this is painful and don’t try to run from that pain. If you want to move forward, you have to feel the feelings until they’re not there anymore.
- Think about what you need to do and try to be logical. If you have a house to sell, you need to look into the logistics of it even if you don’t want it to be sold in the first place. You need to get your ducks in a row, from selling a house to arranging a new place to live. This is the hardest bit as you are extracting yourself from a life that you built and inserting yourself into a path you didn’t envision.
- Avoid repressing your feelings – talk to someone. A friend, a parent – anyone you have – can be there for you to talk those feelings out with you. Bottling them up only leads to an explosion in the future and this can be damaging to those around you as well as yourself. A relationship ending is much like a cut in the skin: it’ll hurt a lot as the blood seeps out. Then it will begin to heal and scab – remaining tender until new skin grows. Eventually, that cut isn’t even visible on the surface anymore. Slowly let the pain go as you heal, and you will see how it will be better for you to embrace your feelings.
- Make a list of all the things that you want to accomplish for yourself. From the smallest of things like a bubble bath, to the big things like where you see your future going without the person you thought it would be with. Once you make this list, start ticking off each individual thing on it. You want this to be a good thing for you and you can better move on when you know what your steps and goals are. Mapping out a plan will enable you to be more aware of where to go next – it’ll help. Endings aren’t always bad things, remember that.