Watch This If You Can't Move On After a Breakup
In a Nutshell
Breakups hurt because you're grieving a fantasy version of the person and future you built in your head, not the actual relationship you experienced. The path forward requires replacing rumination with facts, breaking the chemical addiction by removing all triggers, and channeling the pain into rebuilding your identity instead of waiting for closure or their return.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
In the last week, three different people who were broken up with contacted the speaker, all completely heartbroken. Each person stated they didn't see the breakup coming, believe it's their fault, and wish the relationship would work out again. When someone breaks up with us, we immediately blame ourselves, ignore red flags, and lose self-awareness by taking responsibility for the failure of the relationship and all the accountability.
A breakup involves grief of what you thought you'd have with this person, grief of who you thought this person was, and grief of who you were with this person. There is a lot of grief wrapped up into a breakup.
The first step is to learn to grieve without the fairy tale filter. Many grieve with the fairy tale filter by grieving what they promised, what was wished for, the potential, and the dream state created in our minds. The first step is to stop idealizing what it wasn't.
Your brain is wired to romanticize the past, especially after rejection. This is called rosy retrospection, referenced from Gilbert and Wilson 2000. Rosy retrospection is nostalgia about the good old days, the beautiful first date, anniversaries, and birthdays. Your mind creates this rosy retrospection about simple moments that come flooding back.
You're not missing them. You're missing the version of them you hoped existed. You're missing the future they promised you. You're missing who you thought they could become. You're missing how you felt when you believed it was real. You're missing the illusion that they were right for you. This is painful to acknowledge, which is why we avoid it. We never want to accept that we have been sold a promise world.
The majority of people broken up with were more in love with the promise the person gave them than the reality they experienced. They were more in love with the dream they wished for than the reality they experienced. They were more inspired by the potential of that person than the reality of that person.
Write down what actually happened, what they actually did, and what they didn't do as well. See it clearly with no edits, no fantasy, just facts. Clarity is closure you give yourself, and you can only do that with facts, not fantasy.
Most people when asked how the relationship was will say they were going to move in together, get a dog together, get married. The response is to ask what the relationship was actually like. The answer reveals they argued every couple of weeks, felt distant, weren't connecting. That was the relationship.
The three most important things in a romantic relationship are to feel safe, to feel seen, and to feel supported.
To feel safe means having a foundation where the person makes you feel safe, reliable, and secure.
To feel seen means they are present, listening, curious about you, and you feel seen for who you are rather than forced to project another version of yourself.
To feel supported means feeling supported in your goals and search, and being willing to do all three for them.
When speaking to people going through breakups, more often than not, most people feel two out of the three were not happening.
When someone has gone through a breakup, they need to talk about the same thing multiple times. This is normal and how our mind processes. Sometimes we need to say the same thing in the same way. Our brain is almost washing it, like a washing machine where clothing doesn't just go in once and come out clean. The washing machine has to roll again and again and again to get the dirt out.
Repeating thoughts again and again out loud is the cleansing detoxing process, not going crazy. At some point, we have to interrupt the obsession loop. It's not based on timing like one month or one week. You'll know when to do it if you're present with the repetitive thoughts.
You're not weak for not moving on. You're chemically hooked. Breakups trigger the same brain regions as drug withdrawal. Every time you stalk their feed, replay a memory, or wonder what you did wrong, you strengthen the loop.
Stop looking at your ex's social media. They're not your future. Stop checking who they're with. It won't help you heal. Stop watching their stories like they'll suddenly make sense. Stop searching for signs they miss you. They don't post about their grief. Stop waiting for closure from someone who walked away without it. Stop decoding their captions, even if you think they're written for you. Stop giving your peace to someone who already chose to lose it. Stop stalking their life like they're still in yours.
Break the cycle. Block, mute, delete. Remove triggers, playlists, photos, even scents. All of the scents, their clothing, the photos, the places you hung out have to be off-bounds because there is a chemical connection to all of those things. There's a mental emotional memory in all of those places which keeps us stuck in the obsession loop.
We have to learn to change our chemical connection. Replace that rumination with a new routine. Moving your body, engaging your mind in new ways, changes the chemicals. Don't wait to feel better. Break the loop to get better.
When there's no closure, the brain creates one, and it usually turns against you. It's called negativity bias. Your mind will fill in the blanks with worst case self-blame.
The biggest mistake after a breakup is blaming everything on yourself. You keep replaying the moments you wish you said something different. You keep thinking about all the things you got wrong and they got right. That is a mistake because you're not giving yourself grace and you're taking accountability and responsibility for something that existed between two people, but you're making it all about you.
Don't make something you shared all about you unless you're willing to also look at their challenges, their flaws, and their mistakes. Don't get lost amplifying yours.
Relationships don't end because of one thing. They end because of many things: mismatched timing, misaligned values, misaligned character.
Write this down and say it until it sticks: I can take responsibility without taking all the blame.
When coaching people, they start to share all the red flags, notice all the mistakes of the other person, notice how their intuition knew. People ask how to learn to trust other people. The truth is to learn to trust yourself. You'll never know whether you can trust someone or not. But if you trust yourself, you'll know when to stay and when to leave because you'll know what behavior you'll allow and what behavior you won't.
The challenge is you ignored the red flags because you didn't want to start over. You ignored the red flags because being chosen felt better than being alone. You ignored the red flags because they said all the right things, just never did them. You ignored the red flags because your timeline liked the photos. You ignored the red flags because they had potential and you fell in love with that. You ignored the red flags because they apologized just enough. You ignored the red flags because you were afraid this might be your only shot. You ignored the red flags because you thought love was supposed to hurt.
All of us ignore red flags because we're trying to trust the other person, not realizing we should focus on trusting ourselves.
Waiting for them to give you peace is giving away your power. Waiting for them to give you closure is leaving you unclear. Waiting for them to fix you is leaving you broken. Waiting for them to help you is leaving you unhealed.
Create a closure ritual, something symbolic that tells your nervous system, "This chapter ends here." You can write them a letter, don't send it and burn it. You can bury a photo. Delete the last message thread, then go for a walk with no phone.
Closure isn't given, it's created. They won't give you closure. You have to give that to yourself. They won't own the mess they made. You just have to stop standing in it. They won't meet you where you are. You just have to keep walking.
A ritual could be a new commitment to yourself. A ritual could be a new commitment to a friend. A ritual is something that is changing your chemistry, changing your emotional space by adding something new to your life.
You're missing an old emotion, and your body and mind are dragging you to want that person back in your life. We often think we need a new person to replace an old person. But what we actually need is a new emotion, a new experience, a new connection to replace the old experience, a new set of chemicals, a new set of movement.
Just because you feel pain from a breakup doesn't mean you're meant to be. Just because you think you miss that person doesn't mean you're meant to be. Just because you think that they'll come back around doesn't mean they will. And while you're waiting, you don't grow. You don't become more attractive. You don't become the person you want to be.
You hurting doesn't mean they were your soulmate. It means you felt deeply. It means you have the capacity for love. It means you have the ability to give and you're human. Pain isn't proof it was right. It's proof that you cared.
Studies show emotional pain activates the same brain regions as physical injury. One study said that when you feel left out of the group chat, it feels like you broke your leg.
Just because it hurts doesn't mean it was right. Love isn't about what feels the most exciting. It's about the person that makes you feel safe, seen, and supported. Someone breaking your heart open, ripping it out of your chest is not safe, seen, or supported.
Heartbreak gives you access to a fire most people never touch. Use it, channel it, move with it. Redesign your space, take a course, start lifting weights, get a new passion, write like your life depends on it.
Psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson calls this productive aggression. Instead of turning it inward, transmute it. Breakdowns make incredible fuel when you don't waste them on breaking down. You use the breakdown for a breakthrough.
You're not just getting over them, you're rebuilding you. After a breakup, your brain experiences an identity gap. You don't lose the person, you lose who you were with them.
Pick one thing that's yours. One thing they didn't influence, one version of you you want to grow into. Start acting from that place now. Not next month. Not when you're healed. Now.
If you're going through a breakup, you're not trying to get back to who you were before them. You're becoming someone who they never got to meet. You didn't get closure, so give yourself something better, a new start. Take everything you learned. You don't need a blank slate. You actually want a slate filled with wisdom. Not because they moved on, but because you decided, so will you.
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