Breakups of any kind can be arduous and painful. Ideally, moving forward and healing from the emotional wounds that come with the end of a romantic relationship would be straightforward and clear-cut. However, in reality, moving on from an ex is sometimes an agonizing process that can span over months or even years.
If you’re someone who feels stuck and unable to move forward from or untangle yourself from the emotional tie to your ex, we’ve got your back. We reached out to experts to explain what causes some people to take an extraordinarily long time to move on from particular relationships:
1. You’re focused solely on positive memories.
It’s called euphoric recall, explains Patrick Wanis, Ph.D., a human behavior expert and author of Get Over Your Ex Now! and it refers to the recalling of past events or people in a positive light while forgetting or ignoring the negative aspects. “Although it is referred to as ‘recall,’ it is actually an immediate reliving and re-experiencing of the positive aspects, the pleasure of the past event or person,” Wanis tells mbg.
Wanis explains that this same phenomenon occurs in addiction and is directly related to the pleasure or reward centers of the brain.
Euphoric recall is kryptonite to being able to move on, says April Davis, owner and founder of LUMA-Luxury Matchmaking. If you only remember the good times you shared together, you’ll have a very difficult time moving forward. “It’s good to keep in mind that they’re an ex for a reason, and it can be good to remember the times that were not so great as well,” Davis advises.
2. You truly think the ex was the best you could get.
According to Cherlyn Chong, a transformational coach who specializes in breakup recovery, if you find yourself thinking that your ex was the best you could get and you’ll never find someone after them, you’ve adopted a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset. “This is when you’ve taken the relationship to mean much more about you than anything else,” Chong explains, and your self-esteem is essentially reliant on your ex. In this mindset, “if the relationship fails, it’s because you weren’t good enough, and therefore, you’re not good enough for other relationships either.”
Unfortunately, explains Chong, if you continue having this fated mindset, then that’s precisely what you are going to get in life. The reality is that there are many people in the world each person can be compatible with, and nothing is stopping you from accessing that love—except your own self-defeating attitude.
3. You secretly think that you should suffer.
If you have unresolved negative beliefs stemming from your past, whether those come from emotionally immature parents or other ex-partners, Chong says you may be stuck in the mindset that you deserve to suffer and are inadvertently prolonging your own healing process post-breakup.
“Suffering might actually be so familiar to you that you might even be addicted to it, in the same the way one becomes addicted to smoking,” Chong tells mbg. And sometimes, suffering might be the only thing left from the relationship, and you’re afraid that if you let it go, you won’t have anything of the relationship left.
In other words, it feels good to feel bad.
4. You still follow your ex on social media and/or maintain contact with them.
“If you still maintain contact with your ex and/or follow them on social media, it can be a constant reminder of what you lost,” licensed clinical psychologist Roxy Zarrabi, Psy.D., tells mbg. “Simultaneously, [this could] increase hope [of] one day reconciling.”
Ultimately maintaining contact, being in the same social circle, and/or following your ex on social media can exacerbate your distress and prevent you from moving on.
5. You lost your identity in the relationship.
According to Dr. Zarrabi, if you lost your identity and/or your support system while in your prior relationship, it can be particularly difficult to move on because you may not know who you are anymore without your ex. Focusing on restoring your sense of self during the grieving process and building a new, strong support system that isn’t dependent on a romantic partner could help you move past your ex and the successive traumatic feelings that are haunting you post-breakup.
6. You haven’t properly grieved.
“When people experience a loss, there is a tendency to want to avoid or push those painful feelings away, but ultimately doing so will prolong the healing process,” Zarrabi tells mbg.
On that note, drowning your feelings only lengthens the amount of time it takes to get over a breakup, says John Kahal, a mental health and addiction expert and founder of Capo by the Sea Rehab in San Juan Capistrano, California. “When dealing with a breakup, one of the most common ways people cope is by drowning their sorrows in alcohol or self-medicating in other ways,” he tells mbg. “It can become a comfortable way to numb out and avoid feelings of sadness or loneliness while the pain of a split is fresh.”
Instead of trying to push the feelings away, drowning them out with alcohol, or falsely pretending to be fine, both Kahal and Zarrabi emphasize the importance of processing and confronting post-breakup feelings. “Perhaps try a little detox from alcohol, and take some time to let yourself feel and process the emotions the breakup brought on,” Kahal suggests. “This can bring about some much-needed closure and allow you to gain some fresh perspective, which is essential to the process of moving on.”
7. Your breakup triggered old trauma.
Emmy Crouter, LSW, a therapist at Emboldened Counseling in Denver, Colorado, notes that one’s own history is a major part of the breakup process.
“If you come from a childhood of abandonment, abuse, or even just feeling misunderstood, especially by one’s parents or caretakers, you may be triggered by the loss of a relationship as it brings up old feelings regarding your most important attachment figures,” Crouter tells mbg. “Sometimes the breakup [itself] is not what is bothering someone—it’s the meaning behind the breakup and associated early memories that beg to be addressed.”
In this case, Crouter suggests therapy as an effective way to explore one’s patterns of relating to significant others and how they connect to our earliest relationships and experiences.
What now?
Bringing awareness to why you might feel stuck in old feelings from a past relationship and unable to move on from your ex is already a considerable first step in moving forward. The next move, then, is to take action and regain autonomy over your own healing process. In addition to addressing the specific reason you’re stuck missing your ex, there are concrete methods that you can begin implementing into your routine such as setting boundaries on social media, beginning a daily meditation practice, or processing through your feelings via journaling that may help provide you with the clarity you need to mollify the prolonged anxiety of your breakup and thus allow you to move on with your life.
- Georgina Berbari
Author’s Note:
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