Breakups are painful. That is an indisputable fact that, unfortunately, some of us can confirm from experience. Unless you are of the few lucky to have had “amicable” separations or “conscious uncoupling”, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Separation is a truly challenging emotional time where you must let go of the past, face the reality of what you thought you had and embrace that you now have to write a new chapter of your life…starting with an unknown blank page. And we know that, by nature, human beings don’t do well with the unknown. That’s why we tend to go back and unearth a known ‘comfortable’ past because it’s less daunting than the fear of not knowing what’s coming next: Will I end up with another wrong guy? Or will I just be…alone?

As much as you feel the temptation of picking up the phone and calling him, don’t. You can’t continue bouncing between the fantasy and the reality of what your relationship was. Remember, there’s a reason he is your ex. Everything happens for a reason, and there was a reason behind your breakup. Accept the fact, stop living in fantasy and move one. Because it’s the only way to heal. If you had a bitter breakup, texting him just creates an imbalance of power: he knows how much you care and how much you want him back in your life. He, therefore, knows his power over you because a single word from him and you’d come back. Because you couldn’t obviously let go of him. If you were in a relationship with a narcissist, you’d only feed their ego and his power over you. Love is blind, but you might be even more.

And no, it won’t bring you closure either. A breakup often leaves you with unresolved questions, especially if you are the one who was left. Why did it happen? What went wrong? What did I do wrong? You often feel you need answers to close this chapter and move on with your life. But the truth is, you don’t need any answers from your ex and questioning him won’t get you closure. Because closure is not a dialogue; it’s a monologue, an inner journey between you and you. It’s about you accepting the facts and letting go. It’s about you finding yourself again. It’s about understanding why you didn’t see or ignored the signs, why it was so important to make it work with him? Even in a marriage, there’s a limit to how much you can work to save it. If he wanted to invest time to make it work, he would have said so instead of leaving.

You also prevent new relationships from forming. If you are busy reliving the past, you cannot live fully in the present. Revisiting that past relationship keeps an emotional bond to it, preventing you from building new valuable ones. Which is what happened to me.

I knew he wasn’t good for me. But we kept going back to each other: me because I was too scared of the alternative, and him because, as much as he was afraid of commitment, he wanted to feel he could have his cake and eat it. I eventually left for good. The time that followed the breakup was one of the hardest but also the most productive of my life. I came to my own personal closure, and it wasn’t closure about the relationship but rather about myself: I had closed a chapter and the person I was during. It wasn’t about accepting the end of the relationship but rather realizing that I deserved better than being in an unfulfilling and futureless relationship just because I was too scared of the alternative: loneliness.

I left because I started loving myself more. Because I realized I would be fine alone, not only because I knew I deserved better than being with someone who stayed with me because it was “convenient”; but also because I wasn’t really going to be alone in the end: I had myself and, for the first time, I actually enjoyed my own company.

Without this personal journey, I would have never left, never changed and never married my husband. The irony is that I met my husband at a time when I had left my ex. However, I was still so emotionally attached to him and that pointless relationship that I didn’t even notice someone was interested in me. Thank God we met again; this time, it was a match made in heaven.
Without this shift in myself, I would have never met and married a man that, every day, makes me feel like a source of joy and blessing in his life and vice versa. Because that is what good relationships are supposed to look like.

Let go of your ex. Stop thinking about him. Stop texting him. He is part of the past that was sometimes good, sometimes bad. Accept that this is now in the past. Realize that you cannot waste your life living in the past. Learn to love yourself a little more.
Because you won’t be able to let anyone sincerely love you until you heal enough to love yourself.