How to Get Over Your Ex

Most of what gets written under this title is a schedule and a set of rituals. Thirty days. A box of their things. A list of their red flags. A gym membership, a haircut, and by the end you're supposed to be free. It's popular because it takes something that has no shape and gives it steps.

This page doesn't have steps. What it has is a reasonably clear account of what getting over someone actually consists of, what it costs, and the specific ways people get stuck doing it — including the way this site, given the name at the top of it, is uniquely likely to have set you up for.

First: which of these are you?

Worth being straight about, because they need different pages.

One — it's decided, by you or for you or by circumstance, and you're trying to work out how to live in the aftermath. That's this page.

Two — nothing's decided. You want to stop hurting, and getting over them looks like the nearest exit. But some part of you is still holding the question open, and you're half-hoping that if you get good enough at moving on, the question will answer itself. It won't. You can't get over someone you're still negotiating with in your head — you'll do six weeks of good work and then relitigate the whole thing on a Sunday, because the work was never the point. If that's where you are, go and settle it first. Weigh Up What To Do is built for exactly that, and it's willing to give you either answer.

Three — and this is more common than either — what you want isn't instructions. It's permission. To stop trying. To stop waiting. To put it down without that meaning you gave up too early. You don't need mine, and I'd be flattering myself to hand it over like it was mine to give. But if it's any use to hear it out loud: you're allowed to stop. Nobody is scoring how long you held on. There is no threshold of suffering you have to clear before letting go counts as honourable rather than as failure of nerve.

What you're actually grieving

A breakup gets filed as losing a person, and that undersells it by a distance. You're also losing:

• a version of the future you'd already half moved into
• the daily architecture — who you text at lunch, what Sunday is for, who knows how your week went without being told
• a role you were fluent in, and that other people reflected back to you
• the only witness to a specific stretch of your life, which is now unwitnessed
• and the person you'd normally take something this bad to, who is the one person you can't take this to

That last one is why the size of it seems out of proportion to the facts. You've lost a person and your usual method for handling losing a person, at the same time, and the method was the person.

None of that is fixed by an insight. It's just a lot. The only thing worth knowing here is that what you're feeling is proportionate to what happened, rather than evidence that you're handling it badly.

There is no timeline, and everyone who gives you one is guessing

You'll find numbers. Half the length of the relationship. Three months for every year. Ninety days. They're invented. There is no study that produces your number, and if there were it would be an average, and you are not an average.

What's true instead is that it doesn't move in a line. You'll get a fortnight where you think you're through it and then a Tuesday in a supermarket takes you apart over a brand of yoghurt. That is not a relapse and it is not evidence the fortnight was fake. The good stretches tend to get longer and the bad ones tend to get shorter, and you only see the trend looking backwards — which is precisely why it's impossible to trust while you're inside it.

The honest version of "how long" is: longer than you want, not forever, and you will not be able to tell where you are in it from the inside. More on that here, including why the numbers exist.

Stop running the tape

The thing that keeps people stuck is rarely missing the person. It's the archaeology. Re-reading the messages. Checking what they've posted. Running the last conversation again with better lines. Building the case for the prosecution, then the defence, then the prosecution again.

This isn't weakness and it isn't a character flaw — it's your head doing what heads do, which is try to solve things. The problem is that there's nothing to solve. Every pass over the material yields the same material. You are not going to find the sentence that explains it, because there usually isn't one, and on the occasions there is, having it does not do what you want it to do.

So: stop looking at their stuff. Not so you'll look strong. Not because indifference reads well from the outside. Because every look reloads the thing you're waiting to settle, and nothing settles while you're stirring it.

Whether that's blocking, muting, or deleting the app off your phone for a month is a logistics question, not a statement. It says nothing to them and doesn't need to. Pick whichever one you'll actually stick to, and change it later if you want — it isn't a vow.

Getting them back to human size — without building a case

The person in your head right now isn't the person. They're a composite, and grief edits composites badly. Missing someone sands off everything that was hard to live with. Within a month you can be longing for a figure who is largely assembled out of the best six weeks.

The standard fix for this is a list. Three things that annoyed you. The red flags in hindsight. Write down why they were wrong for you.

Don't. That's the same edit run the other way. You'd be swapping a flattering composite for an unflattering one, and the unflattering one isn't more true — it's just better suited to the mood you'd like to be in. You'll believe it for a fortnight, and then you'll remember they sat with you in a hospital corridor once, and the whole construction falls over, and you'll feel like you're back at the start. You won't be back at the start. You'll just have found out that the list was a mood, not a finding.

What you're after isn't a verdict in either direction. It's the person at actual size: someone you loved, who had real virtues and real limits, and with whom it did not work. All three of those are true simultaneously and none of them cancels the others. The reason that's the target — rather than "they were terrible" — is that it's the only version that stays true, and you are going to need something that stays true for a long time.

You might still love them in a year

The place you're supposed to arrive at, according to nearly everything written about this, is a settled certainty. It was for the best. They weren't right for you. One day you'll look back and be grateful it happened.

You might. People do, and it's real when it happens.

But it's also perfectly possible that in a year you'll be living well, seeing someone else, glad about your life, and still get a specific feeling in your chest when a specific song comes on in a shop. That will not mean you failed at this. Getting over someone is not the same as concluding they were a mistake. Plenty of people carry a permanent, uncomplicated fondness for someone they are completely and finally done with.

And notice that "you'll see this was the best thing that ever happened to you" is structurally the same move as "don't worry, they always come back." Both are somebody closing an open question in the direction that's easiest for you to hear. Neither of them knows. You don't know either. What you have is this week, and this week is enough to be getting on with.

The version of getting over someone that actually holds isn't I don't love them. It's I love them, and I'm not building my life around a door they closed. Those coexist without much friction once you stop demanding that they don't. If you're waiting for the feeling to go before you're allowed to move, you'll wait years, and you'll have it backwards: the move comes first and the feeling does what it does afterwards, on its own schedule, which it does not share with you. More on that here.

Build a life — and the trap inside that sentence

Everybody says build a life. It's correct and nearly useless as an instruction, because the hard part was never the building. It's what the building is for.

Here's the thing this site owes you, given the name at the top of the page.

Somewhere in this — maybe now, maybe in six weeks when you're genuinely doing better — you're going to have the thought. It goes: this is working. I'm out, I'm fit, I'm interesting again, I'm sleeping. And this is exactly the state they'd want me back in. A plan will assemble itself in about four seconds, fully formed, and it will feel like clarity.

The thought isn't stupid, and I'm not going to insult you by pretending it's false. Living well can genuinely change how someone sees you. It can also change nothing at all. Both happen, all the time, to people who did everything right. It isn't a trick in either direction — it's just true, and a page that refused to say so would be lying to you in order to keep itself tidy.

But the second it becomes your reason, you're not building a life. You're building an exhibit. An exhibit has an audience, which means the whole thing is still theirs — you've just signed a longer lease and improved the production values. You'll know it's happened because the question quietly changes. It stops being how am I and becomes how does this look. And you can run an exhibit for two years without noticing, because from the outside it is indistinguishable from recovery. Most days it's indistinguishable from the inside too.

One question tells them apart, and it's this:

If you knew for certain — actually certain, no crack in it anywhere — that they were never coming back, would you still be doing this?

If the answer is no, you're not moving on. You're waiting, in a costume, and the costume is very good.

That question is hypothetical on every other page of this site. On this one it isn't. This page is written for the version of your life in which the answer is no — they're not coming back. Not because I know that. I don't, and neither does anyone selling you a percentage. Because that's the only version in which any of this is actually yours.

That's the last this page has to say about them.

So what's the week for?

There's no clever answer to that, and the honest one is unglamorous: for a while you're going to have to do things that don't feel like anything. Feeling like something is the last part to come back, not the first. You'll cook a meal and it'll be a meal. You'll go for a run and it'll be a run. That flatness isn't a sign you've picked the wrong things — it's what the beginning is like when the thing that used to supply the meaning has gone. It doesn't stay like that, though I can't tell you when it stops.

A few things reliably matter. None of them are a method.

• Tell someone real. Not the internet, not a stranger, not this page. One person who knows you and will still be around in March. Say the actual thing out loud, including the embarrassing parts, especially the embarrassing parts. It's the highest-yield item on this list and it's the one everyone skips, because it's the only one that costs anything.
• Keep the body running. Sleep, food, movement, less to drink than you'd like. Not as self-improvement. Because grief is physical, and a body that's falling apart makes everything worse and then lies to you about how bad things are.
• Have somewhere to be. Structure outperforms motivation, and motivation isn't coming for a while yet. A standing arrangement you'd have to cancel on a person is worth ten plans you can quietly let go of.
• Let it be as bad as it is. Not as a technique. You just can't process something you're holding at arm's length, and a great deal of what looks like coping is a very sophisticated arm.
• Get help if you're not okay. If this has stopped being grief and turned into something that isn't lifting at all — not sleeping, not eating, not working, unable to see any version of yourself out the other side — that isn't a bigger version of this page and no amount of reading fixes it. Take it to a doctor or a therapist. Please do.

That last one isn't a disclaimer. Some proportion of people reading this are past what a web page can do, and it would be worse than useless of me to write as though they weren't.

The other thing

There's a version of this page that treats moving on as what's left over when the real thing didn't work out. This isn't that version, and not out of tact.

The other half of this stage asks you to rebuild something with a person: hard, but it comes with a project and someone to do it alongside and a reason to get up. This half asks you to do the same work with nobody watching and nothing waiting at the end of it except the work — and then to keep doing it past the point where anyone would have applauded.

Neither of those is the runner-up. They're just the two things that happen.

You're on this one. It's a whole life.

Common questions

How long does it take to get over an ex? Nobody knows, including everyone who gives you a number. It doesn't move in a line — the good stretches lengthen, the bad ones shorten, and you can't read your position from inside it. The figures you'll find (half the relationship's length, three months per year together) are invented.

Should I block my ex? Whichever of blocking, muting or deleting the app you'll actually stick to. It's a logistics decision about what you look at, not a message to them, and it doesn't have to be permanent to count.

Is it normal to still love them? Yes, and it can go on being true for a long time without meaning you've failed. Getting over someone isn't concluding they were a mistake. It's not building your life around a door they closed. Those two things coexist.

I've made a list of their red flags and I feel better. Is that bad? It's not bad, it's just temporary. The list is a mood rather than a finding, and it'll come apart the first time you remember something kind. Aim at the person at real size instead — loved, limited, and not workable — because that one stays true.