Romantic Breakups
Here are some tips on dealing with romantic breakups, adapted from University of Alberta’s “Surviving A Relationship Break-Up – Top 20 Strategies” (Maertz, n.d.):
Don’t fight your feelings
A break-up is often accompanied by a wide variety of powerful and negative feelings including sadness, grief, loss, anger, confusion, resentment, jealousy, fear and regret, to mention a few. If you try to ignore or suppress these feelings, you will likely only prolong the normal grieving process, and sometimes get totally stuck in it. Healthy coping means both identifying these feelings and allowing ourselves to experience these feelings. As hard as it is, you cannot avoid the pain of loss, but realize that by experiencing these feelings, they will decrease over time and you will speed up the grieving process. Naming feelings is often the first step to taming them.
For more information about grief and loss, take a look at our infosheet
Avoid personalizing the loss
Try not to blame yourself for the relationship ending. Much of the pain of a break-up comes from seeing the loss as your fault and regretting the choices you made while in the relationship. This process of self-blame can be extremely damaging for your mental health. Do your best to see the ending of your relationship as a result of conflicting needs and incompatibilities that are no one’s fault. Each person in a relationship is trying to get their own needs met and some couples are able to help fulfill each other’s needs and others are not. Communicating and negotiating those needs is hard, takes practice, and is not always possible to achieve.
Give yourself some slack
Expect that you are not going to be functioning at full capacity for a time due to the distress you are experiencing. Therefore, it is okay to lighten your load for a while. This might mean allowing yourself a break from studying, or studying less than you usually would. It could also mean withdrawing from a class if you’re really struggling. Although some of these options may sound drastic, they will give you more time to adequately process your loss. It may also mean expecting that your grades will go down a bit and not judging yourself for this.
Reflect on what you can learn from the relationship
We can learn a lot from all the relationships we have been in. It’s very helpful after a relationship ends to spend some time thinking about and perhaps even writing down what you have learned so that you can take those learnings with you into your relationships in the future. However, don’t use this as an opportunity to beat yourself up or blame yourself for the relationship not lasting. Learning promotes growth, while self-blame (i.e. feeling you’re a failure) only extends your suffering.
Consider performing a closure ritual
At some point in the process of letting go and grieving the loss, it can be very helpful to have a closure ritual. This symbolic gesture can be very meaningful if it is well thought out and considered. This could involve such things as writing a letter to yourself or to your ex with your final words about the relationship, removing all of the photos you have of your ex, or burning some reminders of your ex in a ceremonial fashion.
