How to Cope than Mope after a Break-up

So, you had a bad break up with your spouse, boyfriend or partner. Life goes on…for him…or her…except for you. Your bedroom suddenly becomes your whole world. Your bed has become your best friend and your pillow becomes the best shoulders to cry on. Suddenly you’re afraid, of what you might ask yourself. You don’t know, just afraid. The feeling is like one minute you were walking in this enchanted, magical forest and the next minute you are in this dark, humid, creepy, haunted place…alone.

Isn’t that the strangest feeling? For many days, months or years you are this beautiful, wonderful creature loved by another and then in one flash you suddenly feel ugly, forlorn, like a war remnant, like a mouse released in deep water. And didn’t you swear you wanted to be that mouse and just drown? Nothing means anything anymore. It feels like the world has come to an end and Superman is in another galaxy saving a micro-organism…and no one is going to save you, except yourself.

You feel totally lost. And you keep asking yourself, “What am I going to do?” Of course, you have to do something about it unless your ultimate dream in life is to become a hermit, which if you look at yourself in the mirror, you are starting to become one already…messy hair, swollen eyes, pimpled face, the works! You can’t even walk straight to the dresser without crying. This is your grieving phase. Congratulate yourself for going through this and coming out alive.

Today, your mirror becomes your best friend ever! Kiss the reflection in it and say to her, “You brave little thing, look at what you’ve done to yourself.”

• Pick it up!

Look around the space you occupy. How does it look like now? How your space looks usually reflects the mood you are in. So if you are down, doesn’t it look like the Titanic after it has sank? Now start picking up your things as if you are picking up the little pieces of your life, putting things in its proper place like you are putting yourself together again, dusting off like you’re clearing your past in preparation for a better you, rearranging things like you are rearranging your life. These mundane things that you do will make your mind busy, directing it towards doing positive things. Since you already realized that you were left alone to pick-up the pieces, you might as well gift yourself with a new interest. Do you remember the yoga class you really wanted to go to but don’t have the time to before? Well, now you have the world at your fingertips.

• Open up!

For some reason when you are brokenhearted light scares you. You just want to be in the dark, and I guarantee you, you will be unless you open that window and let some sunshine in. Call your friends and go out or get together with your family. Think of this as your freedom time. Spill your heart out to them, if they are real friends, they will sympathize and talk some sense into your brain and probably expand it after it has shrunk from so much self-pity. Drown yourself in the company of good and positive friends but never in any form of vice or you might not be able to swim out. Celebrate singlehood!

• No!

Unless there are children involved don’t see him, talk to him, send him a text or email him. It would be for your best interest that you don’t communicate with him at this stage. Remember that things ended up sourly between you. It could be his fault or yours but communicating with him will put that sour taste back in your mouth. Something triggered the break-up, keep that in mind. Until you have sorted things rationally, opening the communication line will prove to be more devastating than what you have intended it to be. You might fall in the very same situation that brought on the break-up. You didn't want to get out of the crocodile's mouth only to get in it again. Be brave.

• Stop telling the story!

You wanted to spill it out and get all the sympathy from your well-meaning friends and family, which is okay…for a while. After you told it several times to every human you meet, it is time to STOP. Re-telling it will relive every sequence, every pain, and every hurt that you felt but it will get you nowhere. It’s like you got stuck in the same chapter and had never turned the pages of what could have been a wonderful book. This is a good time to practice self-discipline and discretion. Once you have overcome, those traits will boost your self-esteem. It’s like charging your gun with ammo until you are ready to take your next shot at love.

• Avoid the pitfall!

Oh yes, there is a pitfall…and that is rebounding by falling for another person while grieving. Get through your grief first and all the other feelings that come with it. Recognize that the feelings that comes after a break-up, anger, frustration, loneliness, sadness and confusion, is normal. It is easy to fall for the most available person who is willing to listen to you. Give yourself some time to go through the process until you are really ready to accommodate another person in your life. Be fair to yourself first. A decision made in haste is waste.

It did not just happen to you, it happened to anybody that has undergone it. If everybody who went through a break-up will fall so easily, can you imagine how salty the world will be with all those tears?

• Single again!

Have you ever thought that being single again is quite a liberating thought? Think about the possibilities that you can now do with your time. You can now form new friendships or go to anywhere you want without explaining why. Remember that book that you bought but didn’t have time to read because your boyfriend finds it melodramatic? Now you can read it 10 times if you want to. The important thing is, now you can do all the things you really wanted to do because now you have more time to be REALLY YOU. It was not that you were not yourself when you were with him it’s just that sometimes when we are in a relationship we forget who we are to give way to an "us". After awhile, you’ll start thinking, the break-up really was a good thing for your self-improvement.

• Time is your ally!

Don’t rush anything while you are still coping. Repeatedly tell yourself that there is no rush…to talk or see him again…to fall in love again...or to decide on anything. Sometimes we are so overwhelmed with emotions that we decide to do some things that can have permanent consequences...and that we’ll probably regret later. If you are tempted to do anything that is irrational, HOLD IT! Let that thought linger for a while. Write it down and then check on it after a week. Do you still want to do it? Do you still feel the same way about it when you wrote it down? Time is on your side now. How many people will give up everything just to have more time in their hands? You have a precious commodity in your hands, invest it wisely.

• Be Kind to Yourself.

You received enough beating already with the break-up that the next plausible step is to let you heal. You don’t want it to end but it ended. A break-up will not happen unless two parties had agreed to it, consciously or unconsciously. One acted and the other one reacted. End of story, or rather a love story. If you beat yourself some more by blaming yourself or telling yourself that it was your mistake, you are not going to heal. Forgive yourself. Everything happens for a reason, as the cliché would tell. Honestly assess what happened, what you did wrong and why you fell in love with your partner. The new perspective will give you more knowledge of who you are as a person, your behavior and choices, and will help you to become a better partner in your next relationship.

A break-up no matter how bad it is, is not the end of the world. It is a new beginning, if you handle it well by healing and then learning from it. There are endless possibilities awaiting every person, heartbroken or not, who is willing to discover it. Love is a wonderful and good thing; a broken relationship cannot stop it in its track of luring people into its web. Be thankful for the relationship because it made you a stronger person. Believe me, in time when you look at that mirror again, you can finally say to yourself, “You brave thing, you thought you can’t make it but here you are and you made it.”

Now you can say with conviction, “I am happy, with or without a partner.”