You need to become your ex to get over them.
Relationships happen and relationships end. For years and years, theorists, writers, playboys, philosophers, therapists, comedians, neuroscientists, mums, dads, teenage girls and more have attempted to come up with ways to rid your ex out of your life and move on.
But rid them out of your life?? Did the last 5 years… 2.5 years… 7 months… 9 weeks… or 4.78 days not matter?
Sometimes when we fall in love with a person, we fall in love with everything about them so deeply that the our brains cannot comprehend the break up. This is called attachment system dysregulation, a term coined by psychiatrist John Bowlby and indicates the disorientation that can occur when our everyday life changes and the person we see everyday becomes “mentally present but physically absent”.
Even if we can accept the fact we have to detach from the person themselves, we may not necessarily be able to detach from everything we loved about them. When we get into a relationship with someone in our early life, they play a large role in how our world around us is shaped. For part of our early years (or the time we were together) we begin to see the world through their eyes.
When you become so familiar with how one person views the world, and then that person is gone, our brains can become so confused. It can feel like a withdrawal. Even if you are the one that did the dumping.
So how do we cope with the withdrawal? Maybe the solution isn’t what Taylor Swift said in “Now That We Don’t Talk”. Maybe instead of keeping the man/women around, keeping small parts of how they viewed the world around you can help with withdrawal symptoms. It might also give you a sense of purpose and growth for the relationship, aiding with feeling of hopelessness and depression.
When the person we loved talks about anything they love, we see the love for it too, even if it was the worst movie or most boring hobby before we met them. And then when we pour so much admiration and time listening or learning about these things, we must develop some sort of attachment for them ourselves.
So when that person comes time to leave our lives, where does the love for these loves of theirs go? I mean I didn’t like cars before I met my ex now I do, where is that interest supposed to go? If I get rid of it, it is just going to add to the mental confusion and withdrawal I was talking about earlier.
Maybe this is the biggest blessing our past loves can give us.
Often when the time comes to end a relationship we find it easier to get over the person if they have significantly hurt us in some way. The disrespectful outweighs the comfort of memories. But hobbies and interests don’t hurt us, they don’t cheat, lie and steal. So their memories and love sticks around like some sort of attachment connecting us to the person that taught us so much about it.
This is why adopting the hobby comes in.
When we are dealing with the confusion of “mental presence and physical absence” of someone, we are inevitably going to attempt to replace the physical so that our inner world matches our external world. But in doing so, we may try to replace the familiarity of our ex partner by unhealthy means, new boys and girls, partying, alcohol, drugs, work. Each of these fills the void in one way or another.
New partners account for the physical presence
Partying, alcohol and drugs etc may give us the dopamine hit that the physical presence of our partner was providing
Overworking may account for the physical amount of time we were spending with an ex partner
Instead of these unhealthy means, why dont we just replace the physcial presence of the person with THE PERSON. No, no, not them actually. But everything we loved about them. Why don’t we just keep that person in our hearts by being like them.
Now I am not saying abandon yourself and be like this person you broke up with. I’m saying allow yourself to do things that remind you of them until your mind stops withdrawing and begins to heal and these amazing hobbies become apart of ‘you’ not ‘them’.
Replace the physical presence with:
Listening to their favourite music and discovering a whole new set of artists
Going to the restaurants they introduced you to by yourself
Reading their favourite book that you always wanted to read
Learning how to surf way better than they can
Trying anything you genuinely loved about them so that you can genuinely love it about yourself too
Because this isn’t about clinging to someone that isn’t good for you. It is about recognising that since your love for these things about this person cannot go to them anymore, why not put it into you.
“In fact, the phenomenon of being an ex is sociologically and psychologically intriguing since it implies that interaction is based not only on current role definitions but, more important, past identities that somehow linger on and define how people see and present themselves in their current identities.”
If you loved the fact that your ex played guitar then why not get onto FB marketplace and start guitar lessons. Now what is there to miss? You do it too.
If you loved going to your ex’s house because of their perfect garden, then you guessed it. Buy some plants. Because now why would you want to go over there when you have a better garden.
I am not suggesting you change yourself fundamentally. I am also not suggesting you post about your garden on Instagram and tag your ex. But most of the time when we can’t get over an ex, it is because we miss something about them or we don’t have enough trust and confidence in ourselves. So prove to yourself you can also do whatever was so intriguing about them, instead of filling the gap in an unhealthy way.
Maybe leaving the relationship with a new found love for art or a favourite footy team with give you a sense of purpose for your heartbreak. And most importantly, growth.