How to get over an ex fast: 12 tips to move on quickly

You’re still hung up on your ex, and you hate it.

You know that you’ve already wasted enough time and tears on someone who doesn’t seem to care for you anymore.

Well then, it’s time to set yourself free.

In this article, I will give you tried-and-tested hacks on how to move on quickly after a break up.

1) Allow yourself to grieve properly

It’s normal and healthy to go through the five stages of grief after a break-up. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

It will take you ages to move on if you continue to hold yourself in denial. So welcome your emotions as they come rushing at you. Give yourself the time and rest to process those emotions.

You aren’t being “strong” by pretending you feel nothing. If anything, you’re only holding yourself back.

You have to grieve properly. So go ahead and cry your heart out, and scream into a pillow if you have to.

It’s alright to be sad. In fact, it’s a must for you to move on.

Emotions are not things you should be afraid of, and suppressing them will only make it harder for you to recover.

2) Quit your ex cold turkey

Having your ex within reach will make it harder for you to get over them.

If you can still see, smell, touch, hear, or talk to them, then it’ll be so much harder to move on. Having this “easy access” to your ex will, you will always be reminded of the times you had together.

Sure, there are people who can break up and see no issues with staying in touch.

But if you’re a regular human being like me, then you’d find it extremely hard to just “deal” with it even if you see them and talk to them every single day.

If you really want to get over your ex, you need to cut them off completely.

You can start with removing their number from your phone, blocking their social media profiles, and then avoiding places that you used to go to together.

Your relationship is over, and it helps to remind yourself that being around your ex will only be like a drug dragging you down ever deeper.

You need to cut them out totally to move on faster.

3) A bold countermove—give it one last try

I know it seems like I’m giving you the opposite advice. Why go back to your ex when you’re supposed to be moving on already, right?

Hear me out. This can actually help you move on faster!

You see, sometimes, it’s hard for us to move on if we know things could have worked out. So give it one more try to find out.

If you see it’s clearly not working or you can see your ex’s disgusted face when you come knocking on his door to reconcile, then that would kill all your hope.

You’re not sure if this is a wise idea?

Get advice from experts.

While this article will shed light on the moving on, it can be helpful to speak to a relationship coach about your specific situation.

They can help you assess your relationship and whether it’s worth another try or if moving on is what’s best for you.

Relationship Hero is a popular site where highly trained relationship coaches help people work through complex relationship issues.

Why am I so confident that they can help you?

Well, after recently experiencing a tough patch in my own relationship, I reached out to them for help. From the moment I got in touch, I was given genuine, helpful advice, and was finally able to see my relationship issues with real clarity.

I was blown away by how kind and smart my coach was.

Within minutes, you could be receiving life-changing advice on whether you should give your relationship another shot or move on for good.

Click here to get started.

4) Get out of your little world

Time heals all wounds, they say. And while that’s true of course, there’s a way to make time move faster.

One of the best ways to do this is by uprooting yourself from the “little world” that you’ve created with your ex.

Not only is it good to be away from the places and people and things that remind you of the life you had while you were still together, you’ll also take in new experiences…which is what you need right now.

If you’ve always wanted to visit Peru, now is the time to do it. If you can afford it, you can move to a new apartment. If you don’t want to spend too much, you can just visit your friend on the other side of the country.

This move might seem ineffective for a while—you’d probably still miss your ex on the first few nights—but trust me, the memories of your ex will quickly be replaced by new experiences.

5) Say goodbye to your ex’s circles

Let’s say that you cut off all contact with your ex—blocked them on social media, deleted their number, and deleted all pictures and memorabilia of your time together.

That’s great!

But unless you cut off all their friends and family too, it’s just not enough. Your connections with them will remain a lifeline tying you down indirectly to your ex and making it harder for you to move on.

If you want to move on from your ex as quickly as you can, it would help you a lot to cut off all connections that lead back to your ex.

But of course, you might be worried about losing genuine connections. Perhaps you have truly befriended them and think it’s a shame to lose them simply because you want to get over your ex.

The good thing is that it doesn’t need to be final!

In fact, it would be good to make your wishes known and tell them that you’ll have to mute them and say no to their invites because you want to move on from your ex… and that when you’ve healed, you’d like to reconnect with them.

But for now, you need to make yourself feel that sense of finality and avoid everything that might tempt you to return.

6) Redirect all that energy

 Іt might seem a bit counterintuitive at first, because then you’ll be immersing yourself in your feelings. But something that really helps deal with volatile emotions is to redirect all of your emotional energy elsewhere.

People have turned their heartbreaks, their suffering into art since time immemorial. You can do the same, even if you don’t think of yourself as being particularly artistic.

You can try to write poems, pen songs, write stories, or paint.

Of course, this should be a project that you truly want. And if possible, go for something grand…something life-altering.

Use your breakup as your “starting point” to achieve the big goals you’ve set for yourself.

And if you really can’t go ambitious right now, you can just do anything where you can see small progress. You can take it out physically and go running or you can do some gardening.

When you’re doing things—and especially when you’re busy building the life that you want for yourself—your ex will slowly become insignificant.

What’s important is that you keep yourself busy. An idle mind is the last thing you want right now.

7) Unlearn what you know about love

Let’s be honest about moving on from a big heartbreak.

It’s not easy. It’s enough to make you want to give up on love altogether.

But I want to suggest a solution. You have all the tools you need to do this right now, right where you are.

I learnt about this from the modern-day shaman Rudá Iandê. He taught me how the lies we tell ourselves about love are part of what stops us from moving on from an ex.

As Rudá explains in this transformational free video, love is available to us if we cut through the lies that we tell ourselves.

We need to face the facts about love and break-ups.

The alternative is to end up being stuck in limbo. Or worse, to be sunk in stagnant codependency.

Rudá’s teachings showed me a whole new perspective.

While watching, I felt like someone understood my struggles to find love for the first time – and finally offered an actual, practical solution to finally move on and find the love that I deserve.

If you’re done with wasting your time waiting for an ex, I invite you to watch this short video and open your mind to new possibilities.

Click here to watch the free video.

8) Stop talking about your break up

Yes, you read that right.

If you’ve been talking to your friends and even random strangers about your ex and your break up like it just happened yesterday, it’s time to put a stop to it.

I know talking is therapeutic, but if it’s been months or years and you still haven’t moved on, it’s time to cut it because it’s clearly not a kind of therapy anymore—it’s a bad habit.

Talking about your ex—even if you paint them as the bad guy—will just keep reminding you of them. Yes, even if you talk about your “success story” of moving on from an A-hole or crazy b*tch, you’ll still be reminded of them.

This might be the reason you still can’t move on no matter how hard you try.

If someone asks you about your break up, politely say “Sorry but I don’t want to talk about it.”

I’m not against expressing feelings because that’s healthy, but I’m against scratching scabs until they bleed again.

9) Turn “moving on” into a challenge

I know I said that time heals all wounds, but you can make it faster with self-discipline.

Instead of just waiting for your feelings to work itself out, get more proactive by turning it into a goal.

Just like running or starting a business, treat “moving on” as just another project.

Find a “moving on” buddy if you can and set some targets. Or find an app that will help you monitor your progress.

Set metrics (how often you thought of your ex, how often you have the urge to contact, etc) and monitor your progress.

You’ll feel good doing what’s right for you.

It’s effective because it forces you to be accountable. Seeing how far you’ve gone, you wouldn’t want to do something to break the chain.

That means that if you’re itching to message your ex, it could help if you see that you haven’t texted them in three weeks. That way, you will not go back to zero again.

Quitting an ex is like quitting anything in life, and this is one proven way to do it. Give it a try!

10) Meet new people—but just as friends

Trying to find a replacement for your ex straight away is far from the best thing you can do after a breakup. You’re only going to end up hurting both yourself and whoever you’ll end up dating.

Unless you’ve healed, they will only ever be a replacement for your ex deep in your heart. And then you’ll hurt them, and they’ll end up reading this article with YOU in mind.

But getting in touch with new people does help.

First, it helps put things into perspective, reminding you that they’re just one more fish in the sea.

Second, being with people can be fun!

So for now, try to go and put yourself out there without any expectations but to make new friends.

It’ll be inevitable, for sure, for you to find people you’ll begin to have feelings for. And this is where self-discipline comes in. Ask yourself if you have actually healed and moved on. If the answer is no, then step back and keep things cool and safe for the moment.

11) Focus on their negative traits

The thing with love is that it’s very good at blinding you towards someone’s flaws. And no, this doesn’t simply mean failing to see someone’s flaws.

For example, you might know that they’re flawed, and can even name their flaws—that they’re verbally abusive, or that they ignore you when they don’t have their way.

But when you’re in love, you set these aside and make excuses for them. You might tell yourself things like “oh, he’s a jerk but he’s the sweetest” or “He shouts at me because he truly cares for me.”

And this is bad. Everyone has a good side and a bad side, and you shouldn’t trap yourself with someone who’s bad for you just because they have a couple of redeeming qualities.

So ground yourself and look at his negative traits for what they are.

If you can’t seem to think of any, think about the times where he made you feel bad, or you fought. When in doubt, think about the events that turned him into an “ex.”

Get a notebook, write everything that you could think of down, and read it back to back until you have committed these flaws to memory.

12) Rewrite your story

There’s no better time to reassess your life than after a breakup.

Pain forces us to do some self-reflection, but instead of focusing on your relationship with your ex, focus on yourself instead.

Take a hard look at your life as a whole and ask yourself the following questions:

• What were my childhood dreams?
• Did I stop pursuing the life I want when I got in a relationship?
• What kind of relationships do I want?
• What is my life purpose?
• What are the things that I look forward to?
• How do I define a life well lived?

Rewriting your life story will force you to focus on yourself rather than fixating on your ex.

It can also make you realize that your ex (or relationships in general) is just one part of your life. And not only that, they’re only in one chapter!

You have many other aspects in your life—career, purpose, hobbies, friends, family, pets. Many! But you seem to have forgotten all that because you’re too hung up on your ex.

Most of all, your story didn’t end when you and your ex broke up. What it does is just open up another chapter. You just have to be patient because something exciting is about to come your way.

Conclusion:

Moving on is painful, especially if you’re someone who loves deeply and with all their heart.

There’s always this urge to go back to the ex. And you know what? Some exes are worth one last shot. Just remind yourself that there’s a limit to how many “last chances” you can give them.

If they squander it, or your relationship fails, you should definitely move on for good.

Some of the measures you’ll have to take will be drastic, but in the end what matters is that you have freed yourself from them, and that you are free to find love elsewhere.