How to Break Up With Anyone

by Jamye Waxman

  Mourning a loss via break up may feel worse than if the person you broke up with were actually dead. And that’s because they’re not dead. Their life goes on without you. But your life goes on without them too.

  Because break ups can be emotional rollercoasters, aftercare is super important. It allows us a chance to prioritize our own needs and show ourselves that love, positivity, and the desire to get better are things that help us move forward. Aftercare carves out a space for mourning and reflection. It’s a chance to look back at the relationship and make sense of our role in the story. It gives us a way to get creative and express ourselves better, and it provides us the room we need to grow. On the other end of aftercare is a newfound freedom to be truer to ourselves and to enjoy more good relationships in our life.

  Take a moment to give yourself credit for going through the break up, whether you feel like you handled it well, poorly, or somewhere in between. Because going through the break up took a lot, and now you are breaking on through to the other side.

  “Do not expect to get from the break up what you did not get from the relationship. You can’t break up with somebody as a move to try to make him or her change. It’s not sustainable.”

  —MARCIA BACZYNSKI, RELATIONSHIP COACH

  Getting Over the Humps

  You have to engage your mind and body in getting over a break up. You’ll need to continue to work on moving forward until it becomes a natural act. You have to think yourself to a place where everything is going to be all right, sometimes months before you actually get there. When you come to a place of understanding the situation, or accepting you will never completely comprehend how it all went down, then you are slowly getting over the hump. From there you can decide if you’re going to move on to a place of freedom, forgiveness, forgetting, or “fuck you.”

  YOU ARE WHERE YOU ARE

  Welcome to the here and now. Whether you feel invigorated by the break up or as if you’re actually broken, when you can accept where you are, you can just be there. Even if you’re the kind of person who thinks a lot (I am) and sometimes finds that beating yourself up feels pretty comforting (I do), when you stop beating yourself up, you can just be.

  It’s not easy, but it’s simple. It doesn’t take a lot to just say, “I’m here right now,” or whatever words work for you. And if it’s not a place you want to be, then it’s okay to work toward going other places. You’ll get there in your own time or you won’t.

  YOU AREN’T BROKEN

  You are not the only person who has ever broken up with a family member, a friend, or a business partner. Yes, you may feel alone. Yes, you may feel angry or sad. Odds are, you’ll get over it. Right now, you need to remember there’s nothing wrong with you, and you are strong (which has been proven by the fact that you took action around the break up). You are not broken; you are fixed.

  FEEL IT

  No matter what you’re feeling, it’s important to feel it. Whether your emotions make you feel like you’re flying on top of the world or barely breathing at the bottom of the sea, you want to explore all of your feelings. Scream into a pillow, or get some of your best feelings out on paper. Try meditation or some other form of self-expression. However you choose to handle the loss, it is a loss and your emotions needs to be dealt with. If you can feel your way through your break up, you will be able to be more honest about how you’re doing.

  Check in with your body. How does it feel? Do you feel lighter without the burden of this other situation (and person/people) riding on your back? Are your muscles tense? Do you feel a sense of freedom that’s allowing your limbs to move more loosely? Are you ready to find the highest hill and sing “The Sound of Music” from its peak?

  Or are you surprised that it feels like you had the wind knocked out of you? Are you devastated about the end of the relationship? Have you fallen down a pit of despair so deep you don’t know how you’re going to climb out?

  Maybe you’re somewhere in between, teetering on the edge of euphoria and depression. Of course you can be nowhere near either extreme, instead just moving along in your life, doing it in your own time and at your own pace.

  Wherever you find yourself, there’s no map that gives you the most direct mourning strategy. If any of these feelings become obstacles, you will find ways to get through them. Feelings are all temporary, even the ones we wish could last forever. Remember that, and use some other tools to help you get by. Whether that means talking to a therapist, doing yoga, getting out of your house so you can get out of your head, or listening to your favorite band, you can navigate your way over and around the humps by facing your feelings.

  FOLLOW YOUR GUT

  Intuition is an amazing thing. It’s free, and it generally speaks loud and clear. It’s something we should try to listen to because we know it’s right. It reminds us that only we know what’s best for us. While this or any book, person, or podcast can tell us how we “should” feel, we are the only person who knows how we really feel.

  Listen to your gut; it really is telling you something. It doesn’t mean you can’t ask for opinions or advice, but it does mean any advice or opinions you ask for should be processed through your internal system. Hear your heart, but listen to your gut. Because while the heart wants what it wants, your gut knows what is best for you.

  So, as you move through the break up, reflect inward. What is going on inside of you? What is your instinctual animal self telling you? How does what your brain says differ from what your heart wants? If you can tap into your “organ” ic relationship, you will find you are in the best position to help yourself. That may sound exhausting, and it may sound exhilarating. You get to decide.

  CREATE TIME-LIMITED OBSESSING

  After a relationship ends, there is usually a certain amount of time we spend obsessing over its demise. To help you get over the part where you constantly beat yourself up, marriage and family therapist Dr. Sheri Meyers advises going on an “Obsession Diet.”1 To do so, she recommends allotting yourself a set amount of time (i.e. five minutes per hour) when you can throw yourself into the negative feelings the break up is causing. Set your timer, and once five minutes is up, your obsessing is over until the next hour. Each day you reduce the time. So if you start at five minutes, then you go to four, to three, and you get the picture.

  Not only is this a good way to learn you are in control of your thoughts, but you are also still giving yourself permission, as well as the time and space, to have said thoughts.

  You can also practice time-limited obsessing by actually throwing yourself a pity party. Invite over some of your closest friends, and have one night where you get to cry if you want to (after all, it is your party). Have friends bring you gifts that can take your mind off of the break up, like board games or offers to hang out, and create a sign-in book where guests write inspirational messages and suggest fun activities. And then, even after your pity party is over, you have a resource of helpful words and activities to move you through this challenging time.

  CONJURE UP A CLEARING RITUAL

  It may sound too hippie-dippie for you, but it can be nice to take a specific action to clear out old energy. On a vacation on an island off an island (yeah, I was pretty remote), a friend and I made a sacred circle to help me get past the sadness of a friendship break up. As part of our ritual, we saged each other as well as the circle we had created.

  I saw it as a way to acknowledge that I needed to move forward. I used the sage as a symbolic object to help guide me toward clearer thinking. It was also an act symbolic of freeing myself from the thoughts that were beating me down.

  If saging isn’t your thing, you can still find a ritual that is. Perhaps it’s taking all the old photos of you and your ex-bestie and burying them in your backyard. Or maybe it’s cleaning your house so you can remove any leftover bad energy from the last time your sister-in-law visited. If you’ve broken up with a business partner, it could be burning all your old documents (assuming you won’t be needing the
m).

  A clearing ritual can give you something to reflect on. It can be a way to remember that you are free to go and do your own thing.

  IT’S ABOUT LOVE

  In her book Love 2.0, Dr. Barbara L. Fredrickson explains how non-romantic love is important for human growth and survival. She writes, “Love is the essential nutrient that your cells crave: true positivity-charged connection with other living beings.”2

  Love is like sunshine: we need it to grow and be healthy. And now that you have even more room for love in your life, you can grow bigger and stronger. Yippee!

  Hear the Music

  Music has the power to move us in many ways. It can heal us with its melodies and change our mood in an instant. Are there certain songs that make you feel like you can take over the world, or that at least move you into a good emotional place? Make your own playlist of songs that lift you up and listen to it every time you’re feeling down.

  Don’t Think About the Unbreaking Up Part (Yet)

  It’s challenging to keep your mind from wandering to the hope of reconciliation with the person you are broken up with. Even if you hate them right now, you may have an instant reaction to the fact they are no longer around by needing them around more. (Like cupcakes on day one of a diet.) Or you may wish that they could just change this one thing they do that really pisses you off. You could be dreaming of the time when this can be all behind you and you can both see the errors of your ways. We all want things to go well in our lives, and sometimes the break up is what puts us back on track.

  BREAK UP PLAYLIST

  Need help compiling a post–break up playlist? Here’s a thirty-song feel-good-post-break up playlist I created with some help from my friends.

  1.“Survivor” — Destiny’s Child

  2.“Happy” — Pharrell Williams

  3.“Hayling” — FC Kahuna

  4.“Feeling Good” — Nina Simone

  5.“Freedom ’90” — George Michael

  6.“Back to Black” — Amy Winehouse

  7.“Shake It Out” — Florence + The Machine

  8.“Albert’s Shuffle” — Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper

  9.“I Will Survive” — either the Gloria Gaynor or CAKE version

  10.“Fistful of Love” — Antony and the Johnsons

  11.“Wake Up” — Arcade Fire

  12.“Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” — Bob Dylan

  13.“I’m Not Crying” — Flight of the Conchords

  14.“Fighter” — Christina Aguilera

  15.“Groove Is in the Heart” — Deee-Lite

  16.“Thrift Shop” — Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (feat. Wanz)

  17.“Beautiful Day” — U2

  18.“Shake it Off” — Taylor Swift

  19.“Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” — The Stars

  20.“Solsbury Hill” — Peter Gabriel

  21.“Somebody That I Used to Know” — Gotye (feat. Kimbra) Tiesto Remix

  22.“Rolling in the Deep” — Adele

  23.“I’ll Rise” — Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals

  24.“You Get What You Give” — New Radicals

  25.“It’s My Life” — Bon Jovi

  26.“Loser” — Beck

  27.“Boom Boom Pow” — The Black Eyed Peas

  28.“Don’t Stop Believin’” — Journey

  29.“We Found Love” — Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris

  30.“Run the World (Girls)” — Beyoncé

  Before you can get to that place of moving forward, you have to get past the place of hurt. Time is such a necessary part of the healing process, and only after a significant amount of time has passed can you decide your next steps with clarity.

  While it’s generally not advisable in romantic relationships, in non-romantic relationships, people can, and do, reconnect later on—especially close friends and family members. If you get back together after a break up, things are generally better, or at least different than before the two of you took a break. A reconnected relationship can mean the connection is less enmeshed (which is a good thing when the drama was high) or more casual. But a break up doesn’t mean you can’t have relationship 2.0. It all depends on what happens when you have some time and distance.

  I have reconnected with two ex-friends and one family member, and two out of those three times, the relationship got better after the break. In the third situation, the relationship was just different. We were no longer best friends—okay, we were barely friends—but to this day, we still enjoy catching up on the rare occasions that we see or hear from one another.

  When it came to getting back together, it was never planned. It just happened when the time was right. And even though I was looking for a way back in, I wasn’t expecting I would find it right away, if ever. There is no quick fix for a broken relationship, except to stay broken up. So, while it’s fresh, keep the Band-Aid off and let the relationship hurt heal. Then see how you feel after your boo-boo is all better.

  To Forgive or Not To Forgive—That Is the Question

  “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

  —MAHATMA GANDHI

  Forgiveness is ingrained in us, both as a religious and a cultural act, and we spend a great deal of time (and money) focused on asking for forgiveness. Catholics confess and repent around Easter. Jews ask for forgiveness at Yom Kippur. Bulgarians apologize on a day they call Sirni Zagovezni (Forgiveness Day). Walk into any drugstore, and there are whole sections of cards that say, “I’m sorry.”

  But what about forgiving? How often do we focus on that? When’s the last time you saw a card that read, “I forgive you”?

  In some cases, like abuse, you can’t really ever forgive. (Or if you can, that’s a topic for another book.) In most cases, forgiveness is challenging because we closely align it with forgetting. But in almost any situation, forgiveness isn’t for them; it’s about us. We don’t even need to let the person know we forgive them; we just need to be able to forgive them in our heart, so that we can let go and move on.

  Forgiving someone else may be one of the most difficult things you ever do. By forgiveness, I don’t mean you necessarily have to forgive the person you’re breaking up with for what went wrong, but it helps if you can forgive them for not being who you needed them to be. You can’t turn them into someone they’re not, even though we often spend a lot of our energy trying to do just that. By forgiving them, we can let go of the expectations we held for them, and we can create new expectations for our lives.

  Being able to accept another person’s fallibility is a way to accept your own imperfections. We all make mistakes. When we can put ourselves in the position of the person who “screwed up,” we can accept that we screw up too. This may help us to let go of some of the anger and pain we carry around with us.

  Before you choose how and why to forgive, you can try asking yourself an essential, seemingly morbid, question: If the person you broke up with died tomorrow, would you be okay with how you let things end? Would you still be angry with them after they died? Or would you find a way to let them rest in peace? If you can get to a place of peace after they’re gone, perhaps you can find a way to find peace for yourself while they’re still alive.

  If you’re down to forgive (with no requirement to forget), you can try a program like Radical Forgiveness, which claims to help you get past relationship problems. I can’t guarantee that it works, but if you have some extra spending money and you want to check it out, there are online programs on forgiving parents, siblings, children, and coworkers. I believe, in general, if you really want a program to work for you, then you can make it work.3

  You can also do some sort of forgiveness ceremony, whether that means reciting something, releasing something, or dancing around your living room blasting Florence + The Machine’s “Shake It Out.” When you can find a way to forgive, silently or out loud, you are making life better for yourself.

  “Forgiveness is for you, not anyone else. Think of for
giveness as a process, not a one-time event. It is necessary to forgive repeatedly, every time you think of the wrong done. It helps you heal and move past the hurt. Forgiveness does not mean that you don’t want consequences for the person who hurt you, or that you still want that person in your life. It just means that you are stronger than that hurt and you are ready to take back the power you have over your own thoughts and feelings. Is it necessary for healing? I believe it is for complete healing. However, people function well in life without forgiving, but they still carry the pain of that wrong done.”

  —DR. LISA ANN POWELL, LMFT-S

  Now, let’s play devil’s advocate here. When we don’t forgive, we can place all the blame on the other person. And it’s a lot easier to be angry with someone else than it is to be upset with ourselves. Why should we own our part of the problem, if they can’t see the error of their ways? When we don’t make it about us, we can make it about how they hurt us. And if someone hurt us, why should we ever forgive them?

  Besides, if we forgive them, won’t we forget how they hurt us? Sure, research out of Scotland4 says that you are more likely to intentionally forget when you forgive. But depending on the seriousness of the transgression, does it matter if you forget, especially if it doesn’t change the fact that the relationship is over?

  Perhaps by intellectualizing the whole experience, you can forego forgiveness. You can accept them for who they are or aren’t and not forgive them. Or you can forgive them but disapprove of their actions. But often times, when we sit with the pain, we continue to reopen the wound. And if we can’t find a way to release the hurt, then the wound never properly heals.

  If you prefer not to forgive, ask yourself why. Are you reminding yourself of their flaws and faults so you never let them back into your life? Hint: you can forgive them and still never let them back into your life. Or are you holding on to feelings of bitterness and resentment so you still have something of theirs to hold on to? Maybe it’s just that you hate them and don’t believe they deserve to be forgiven. There’s no right answer, only your answer.