You’re Making A Bad Breakup Even Worse By Doing These 13 Things

Breakups hurt like hell and sometimes you do things that just keep piling on the hurt. Instead of taking destructive actions, ditch those habits that are only bringing you pain and choose things that are a little kinder to yourself. Here are some of the 13 bad habits you may be engaging in:

1. Rebound hookups Sure, you may get some temporary relief from losing yourself in another human, but once that person’s gone you’re stuck with your feelings on top of some new feelings. It never bodes well to use another person to escape yourself. Inevitably you’re going to have to face your feelings.
2. Excessive drinking It can be tempting to want to drown out your ex’s face in your mind with a big bottle of wine. It feels good at the moment to be wine-drunk until you end up crying your eyes out and feeling worse the next day. Drowning your problems in alcohol is never helpful, no matter what your mind tells you.
3. Social media stalking your ex You’re used to looking at their profile, but newsflash: you’re not together anymore. You’ve broken up, so looking at their social media accounts is now considered stalking. Excessively browsing their accounts will only bring you more pain, not relief.
4. Calling or texting an ex You may want to find reasons to shoot your ex a text. Maybe they still have an old sweatshirt at your house or you’re thinking of them. Do both of you a favor and sit on that urge to reach out. They don’t need that old sweater and they aren’t interested in hearing from you.
5. Trying to find closure Sometimes you get lucky and get some kind of formal closure. But, more often closure is something that you have to create for yourself. You have to decide that you’re closing that door. Going to look for it by drunk dialing your ex to cry to them isn’t going to help matters.
6. Resentment Sitting there smoking cigarettes and venting with friends about how awful your ex is will only bring you more pain. Have you ever heard of the quote supposedly attributed to Buddha? “Being resentful is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” You’re the one with poison in your belly, not your ex.
7. Self-pity It’s so easy to ruminate in all of the things you may or may not have done wrong. Maybe you can’t shake the fact that you were a bit selfish throughout the relationship. I promise you, though, nothing was ever helped by wallowing in self-pity. There are many more productive uses of your time.
8. Certain music You’re sitting there listening to the saddest breakup songs you possibly can. Tears and snots are streaming down your face and you’re wondering what ever went wrong. Save yourself some unnecessary pain and shut off the old school Taylor Swift. It’s not doing you any good.
9. Trying to stay friends Ugh, you’re trying to stay just friends, but you end up sleeping together. Or, you do actually stay friends but you’re miserable trying to be anything other than lovers. This is a trap that many people fall into. It’s not going to be helpful for your healing. It’s going to be very hard to get over your ex if you’re still hanging out with them.
10. Isolating You’ve locked yourself in your room with the shades drawn, Netflix on an endless loop, and all the ice cream in the world. You’re not answering your friend’s worried calls and texts because you’ve decided that life is unfair. Isolating like this may be okay for a day or two after the breakup, but you’ve got to let the light in at some point.
11. Shutting down Similar to isolating, you decide that you just aren’t going to face anything. You block out your feelings in your mind. You don’t let yourself feel. Instead, you use tons of distractions and tell everyone you’re fine. This is wildly unhealthy because at some point your feelings will explode out of you and you’ll feel worse than if you just dealt with them in the first place.
12. Romanticizing the relationship You’re remembering the past as better than it is. You think of your ex as a knight in shining armor and you only ruminate on their positive characteristics, negating all of the bad things that happened. This is natural, but don’t let it last long because you’ll end up feeling like you made a mistake in the breakup when you really didn’t.
13. Revenge All of these ways of thinking, being, and acting aren’t helpful, but this one’s a doozy. Trying to get revenge on your ex in some way is only going to backfire and hurt like hell. Do yourself a favor, don’t try to sleep with their friends or mess with their car. Leave it alone and move on.