When Your Ex Can Make It Work With Someone Else And Not You

Breakups are complicated for many reasons. Sometimes it is mutual, and sometimes it leaves one of you more heartbroken than the other. Watching your ex move on with someone else is not easy. It is painful to see someone that you shared intimate parts of your life with, investing their time and energy in someone else. When this happens, you often find yourself second-guessing yourself, and your insecurities get the best of you. In today’s age of modern love, social media also contributes to these painful encounters.

This can happen at any stage. Even when you haven’t thought about your ex in a long time, or have already grieved the relationship, or are currently dating someone, sometimes seeing your ex with someone else might make you want to cry all over again. I have come across many people who reached the point where they confidently state that they’d never consider reconciling, yet the fact that their ex is with someone has a completely different impact where they frequently find themselves missing their exes and recalling happy memories. I’d be lying if I said, I am not one of those people.

But thanks to many Redditors and friends around me, I have learnt how to cope with these feelings to an extent. But there’s always the question: why could they not make it work with you, and why did the next person get to experience their better version? The answer is never simple, here are a few reasons why your ex could make it work with someone else but not you.

Displaced Feelings

The first question that comes to mind when you see your ex being happier with someone else is if their feelings for you were ever real. Is their new love really true and means more to them than yours did? Not really, if you know that what you felt was real, you don’t need validation from them or anyone else. They could simply be displacing the sense of intimacy they had with you onto the new relationship. This usually happens when people start dating right after breaking up, or while they are still in a relationship.

It might appear to them as if they found the one because they really did not have the time to grieve the relationship they had with you. In that sense, they’re not even in a new relationship with this new person. They are in a relationship with you, but you are not a part of it. That might give them a sense of happiness of being with you without really meeting your needs.

The Triggers

Believe it or not, every relationship has its own triggers. One of the reasons why your ex can make it work with someone else is because of fewer triggers. Everyone seeks peace and security in a relationship, but every relationship has a different set of triggers, and if these get out of hand, these triggers end up driving you apart. It is not anyone’s fault, this is one of the things you cannot do anything about. So, there’s a possibility that your ex doesn’t have as many triggers as they did with you with this new person which is making it easier for them to make it work.

Different Expectations

This is a very important reason why even the best of people cannot make it work together. Maybe their new person has different needs and these are the needs that your ex can meet easily. Sometimes, these needs change with time, you might have had different needs at the beginning of your relationship with your ex, and it worked well for you, but as your needs changed your ex wasn’t able to accommodate these needs.

It doesn’t mean that your emotional needs or any needs were too much, it just means that you weren’t the right fit for each other when it came to fulfilling each other’s needs.

They’ve Evolved

This one is not easy to make peace with. Particularly, if you got the unevolved, immature version of your ex. People change with every experience they have, sometimes the change comes too late and there isn’t a lot you can do about it.

But it is possible that being with you has led them to understand certain things about themselves that they should change in order to make a relationship work and they have put effort into growing into a mature person in a relationship and to make it work.

The Honeymoon Phase

The honeymoon phase is a beautiful phase where two people are trying to get to know each other, and everything around seems positive. But it can only last for so long. When the honeymoon phase fades off couples don’t need to be on their best behaviour and can truly understand if they are actually compatible.

So, one reason why your ex and their new partner seem happier with each other could be because they might still be in their honeymoon phase where they are distracted by each other and aren’t focusing on what their relationship is like in reality when the rose-coloured glasses come off.

P.S — Every relationship is different from another in multiple ways, yet seeing your ex having found their person isn’t an easy thing to digest for most people. But it is important to understand the boundaries that come with calling someone your ‘ex’ and try to focus on moving on to better things in life.

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This post was previously published on rohia.medium.com.

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