There Are Two Ways To Move On From Your Ex — Only One Is Right

Those who say moving on from an ex is easy are most likely haven’t gotten their heartbroken. Or maybe they checked out the relationship way earlier before the “official” breakup.

From time to time, you probably heard many different ways people used to get over their ex. But the common advice is these two:

Hook up with someone new so you can forget your ex
Stay single and take your time to heal

And from those two points, I can assure you that only one is right.

“Right” here means it doesn’t destroy your life, it makes you heal even faster and eventually will get you better love life in the future. I know this is true because I’ve been through a rough breakup and have tried both ways.

But to give you more perspectives, let’s get into it one by one to find out.

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Hook up with someone new so you can forget your ex.

A friend of mine here in Bali just found out her new husband cheated on her. She went bat shit crazy and filed a divorce the next month. It’s expected that she wanted to leave him right away. I mean, who wants to say with a cheater, right?

But what she did after her divorce surprised me.

She’s never been a party girl until recently. We used to go for a drink once in a while, but now she does it every night. The moment she signed up for Tinder, I barely saw her home.

When I finally got a chance to talk to her, she admitted she did it to forget her ex-husband. She got so heartbroken that she didn’t want to believe in love again. So to lash out her frustration, she actively hooks up with random guys from Tinder so she can move on faster.

But we all know that’s not what is going to happen.

Doing random hookups after a rough breakup is like adding more problems on top of the current problems you already have. It’s making things worse on your end.
Because you’re at your weakest emotional state when you just broke up, it’s even hard sometimes to find a good reason to live. And your mind is still in the process of accepting the new reality that you are no longer together with your ex now.

So jumping to another random human being and expecting them to heal your pain isn’t a practical thing to do. Let’s also not forget how unsafe it is to have sex with people you barely know.

I know it’s your body, and you can do whatever you want with it, but when you don’t even respect your body, what makes you think anyone else will?
Though I never did random hookups after a breakup, I did make a mistake by jumping into a new casual dating-ish with someone before. I knew I didn’t want to be alone, so I just took whoever wanted me at that time.

And as you already know, that’s the worst idea ever. This leads me to the next point.

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Stay single and take your time to heal.

I mean, what’s the rush?

You can take all the time to heal your broken heart. It’s definitely not an easy task, but if you do it the right way, then the result can be so rewarding.

I noticed most people who took their time to heal always end up with a better relationship. This is an expected result because when you’re single, you have some time to get to know yourself better.

You can also grasp some lessons from the failed relationship you had with your ex and finally learn from it.

Being single isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it can be refreshing, especially when your last relationship with your ex lasted for years.

Here are several things you can do during your alone time:

Dress up and take yourself out on a date. It might feel weird the first time, but you’ll also feel so damn proud of yourself.
Come back to the old you (way before you started a relationship with your ex). You might find something you liked or wanted to pursue, but those things got forgotten.
If you can afford it, book a flight and travel to somewhere new. Nothing beats the feeling of solo traveling.

So take the time all you want. It doesn’t matter how many of your friends have told you already to date — learn to say no.

Because trust me, the best relationship will happen to you when you’re fully ready to love someone without holding past grudges. But to do that, first, you need to learn how to give that love to yourself.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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