Your relationship came to an end and the only thing you want to do is hide under the covers and cry. A part of you hates yourself for feeling so much pain, because you don’t want to give your ex the satisfaction of being able to hurt you like this, especially when they’re no longer around.
But the grieving process is exactly that: a process. And there are certain steps that we need to go through to get over someone. By speeding up those steps and taking yourself through the process, you can get over your ex faster than normal. It will always hurt, but at least it won’t hurt longer than necessary, and you can even become stronger and wiser in the process.
Here are the 10 important steps to take if you want to know how to get over someone fast! Well, as fast as possible while still being healthy and real.
10 Steps: How to Get Over Someone Fast
1) Grieve Like Hell – Get It All Out
No one wants to feel the pain of a broken heart. It doesn’t matter whether you broke up with your partner or your partner broke up with you, or if it was a mutual agreement that everyone knew was a long time coming.
A break up is a breakup, and when the words ‘We’re done’, ‘This is over’, ‘We can’t do this anymore’ are said, your heart feels the impact deep in your chest. And you often keep feeling that for much longer than you’d like.
So feel it. Getting over someone fast means getting done with the hardest part as soon as possible, and that hardest part is the first wave of pain that you need to feel.
Take it like an injection of hurt that needs to happen, and it will happen whether you like it or not: the pace at which that first wave happens is totally up to you and how much you’re willing to let it out.
Rip that bandaid off instead of peeling it slowly and feeling it pinch every bit of skin.
Grieve like hell in whatever way makes the most sense for you (without hurting yourself, of course). Get drunk, eat junk food, sleep around, throw away a week in the dark binge-watching sad movies and playing video games, or drown yourself in your work.
Do whatever you need to do to get yourself through this period as fast as humanly possible, and recognize in every moment that the pain you’re feeling is a result of the end of your relationship.
Don’t trick yourself into believing otherwise; be honest with yourself, if no one else.
And remember: grieve and grieve and grieve, and then stop. Take a deep breath after you’ve had your weekend or your week or longer if needed, and then start working on your life again.
2) Accept That It’s Done and Never Coming Back
It’s done. Your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, fiance: your partner is gone.
A voice in the back of your head will be telling you to wait, hold on to that hidden compartment of love stored away in the invulnerable corner of your mind, because you’re going to need it when your partner comes back, as he or she is bound to eventually do.
But they won’t. Even if they will and even if you end up getting back together, you need to believe that they won’t.
Why do they deserve any part of the love tucked away inside of you? You deserve your own peace of mind more.
3) Rewire Your Associations
After so much time with your partner, everything good in your life has been associated with them. Your favorite movies, restaurants, hobbies, and even friends: everything that brings joy to you is dominated by mental associations with your ex.
Getting over someone fast means forcing a process that usually happens organically: rewiring your associations from your ex to new memories and mental connections.
It might hurt, but force yourself to go back to the restaurant or the beach or the park where you have a thousand memories with your ex, and then make new ones. Find new pockets of joy in those places without them in it and reclaim those spaces!
4) Release Your Ex, Symbolically
Get their things out of your room, during the grieving process or immediately after. Write the last letter with everything you want to say to them, holding all your final goodbyes and well wishes, and then never send it.
Pile everything expendable into a corner and throw it away, or better yet, find a safe place where you can toss them into a small bonfire. Breathe those ashes in and watch the flames lick the night as the last physical reminders of your ex burn away.
5) Start Writing Your Next Chapter With New Things
Your life was full and complete when you were with your ex, with hobbies and activities and goals and dreams, but you need to accept that things are different now, and you need to start creating a new chapter just for you.
Just like a new chapter in a book, there needs to be something more to this ‘new you’ than just the absence of your ex.
Commit yourself to different personal development goals; learning a new language; start joining a new class; dive headfirst into an activity you always didn’t have the time to do.
Make the new you better than the previous you. Make your ex’s absence the reason you get to finally experience the positive things you held yourself back from doing.
6) Stay Healthy Throughout All This
It can be so easy to let the grieving process eat you alive. The fatty food and the sleepless nights can turn into addictions and bad habits that, if you’re not careful, become parts of the Post-Relationship You.
This leads to a downward spiral of convincing yourself that your ex dodged a bullet by leaving you or by being left by you, as you see your mental and physical health slowly deteriorate over the next few weeks and months.
So grieve, but don’t give up and make your own health a priority throughout. For all we know, this is the only life you’ll ever live, and this is the only body you get. So look after it in the process.
7) Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Take a break from the noise. When we lose someone we deeply love, we become terrified of the quiet, because it forces us to confront our thoughts and emotions head-on.
Give yourself that head-on, whiplash collision with your deepest thoughts every day, until you become intimately familiar with exactly how you feel.
The simple act of doing it means you’ve stopped running from the one thing you can never outrun: yourself. End the chase, face what you need to face.
8) Hit the Gym
We don’t often like to admit it, but our bodies are little more than biological machines. Our thoughts and our emotional states and our feelings may feel like huge problems that we have to deal with, but most of what we feel is just a product of chemicals in our mind and body.
Giving ourselves the right chemicals and forcing the mind to release the feel-good stuff, endorphins through exercise, is the best way to lift ourselves up from that pit of despair.
And if nothing else, you will feel good seeing yourself in the mirror after a few weeks of hitting the gym, and seeing a stronger version of yourself looking back.
9) Get Laid (Or Don’t!)
Sex is a huge part of relationships. For some people, sex is this incredibly intimate act that you reserve for only those you deeply love, for others, sex is something you do for fun with (preferably) attractive people, whether it’s strangers or romantic partners.
We all know the classic line, ‘you need to get under someone to get over someone’. And that’s definitely true for a lot of people. Finding another person to have sex with can help when it comes to dealing with a bad break-up.
But the important thing to remember is that it’s not the end-all-be-all solution, having sex with a hundred people won’t make the pain go away. Whether sex works for you or not, the important part of this is confronting yourself. Ask yourself: do I want to have sex?
And whatever that answer may be – yes or no – you need to make sure that the answer has nothing to do with your ex.
You shouldn’t have sex to spite them, and you shouldn’t avoid sex because you still feel loyal to them. Release yourself and answer this question, and all others like it, with only your needs and wants in mind.
10) Keep Going, Every Single Day
Here’s the hard truth you don’t want to hear: no matter how fast you want to get over someone, it will always take longer than you think.
Your partner was your partner, they were your best friend, your closest confidante, the love of your life. They understood you in ways that no one else ever will, and you have memories together that you will forever cherish. They helped shape the person you are today.
And you lost them. For whatever reason, what you once had is now an impossible place to return. You will feel pain, and it will hurt. And that’s okay. Just don’t give up. Keep going, every single day, every morning and every night.
Feel the pain when it comes and then you wipe away the tears, sigh, and tell yourself, “Let’s go again.”
When you’re trying to discover how to get over someone fast, remember life goes on and the world continues to spin, and you’ve still got a million more memories to make. There is a new and exciting future awaiting you. As you process the grief, be patient and be kind to yourself, learn to make new memories count and in time, your heart will heal. We promise.
Lachlan Brown is the founder of Hack Spirit, a blog on mindfulness and relationships. He loves writing practical articles that help others improve their relationships and live a more mindful life. He has a graduate degree in Psychology and has spent the last 6 years reading and studying all he can about human psychology and practical ways we can better ourselves. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.
