What to Do When Your Ex Has Moved On...and You Haven't

We’ve almost all been there before. (And if you haven’t, consider yourself lucky!) Your ex starts dating someone new...and, man, is it ever painful!

No matter how the relationship may have ended, and whether you dated the person for 5 weeks or 5 years, it definitely hurts your heart to see the other half of your previous relationship move on. Feelings of being replaced, left behind, or inadequate often show up and it’s easy to lose hope.

If you find yourself in this unfortunate predicament, I want to encourage you with these 5 steps to help you process and move forward with hope:

1. Grieve.

Give yourself permission to grieve. Sure, you likely already went through the Adele music and ice cream phase when the break-up initially took place, but this might feel different. Oftentimes a break-up is accompanied by varying degrees of hope that you may get back together. Seeing your former significant other move on can feel like a nail in the coffin of what was your relationship, and it’s important to take time to grieve it.

Acknowledge and give space for your feelings of sadness, despair, or whatever you might be feeling. But don’t dwell in it. Allow yourself to cry, move through the grief, feel the feelings, and then decidedly move along. Sometimes I find that giving yourself a decided amount of time (the next week, one month, etc.) can be helpful to bookend this time of grief rather than allow it to go on endlessly.

2. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Take some time to reflect upon what you learned and the lessons from the relationship you can take with you as you look ahead. Perhaps you learned to set clearer boundaries early on, or that location isn’t a compromise, or not to take yourself so seriously. Doing so can help facilitate a sense of purpose or a “why” behind the relationship. To make meaning out of something—particularly something difficult—is healing and allows us to integrate the experience and move forward. 

3. Fight the temptation to stalk your ex-beau’s new beau.

In other words, stay off of social media all together, or if you must be on it, fight the natural curiosity to find out everything you can about the new guy or gal in your ex’s life. Why? Because it serves nothing other than to foster comparison, which we know is the thief of joy.

It does you no good to wonder if you’re prettier, stronger, more accomplished, etc. than this new person. Doing so will only give you an inflated self-esteem or make you feel inadequate—both of which make it hard to move along and put your best foot forward in a new relationship.

4. Close the door.

God works in reality. If they are dating someone else, then they are not available nor wanting to date you. So let the door close. I realize that may sound harsh, but I phrase it this way to serve as a wake-up call. I often work with clients who claim the need for “closure,” justifying why they reached out with a text, sent a letter, continue to follow their ex on social media, etc.

I don’t buy it. Sometimes closure might not happen the way we want it to, but when the door is closed, accept that as your closure. It’s a natural tendency to dwell on a former relationship, but if we are looking out for our own best interests, we can see that for what it is—a waste of time and emotional energy. 

5. Allow the next door to open.

One of my favorite analogies for God’s grace and gifts to us is the child who has their first clenched on a small toy, only to be missing and unable to receive the better one that their parent wants to give them. By accepting an old relationship as over, you open yourself up to receive something new. And perhaps, something better.

After grieving, taking the lessons learned, detaching yourself from your ex’s new relationship, and allowing the door on that relationship to close, take advantage of all of that hard work and look towards the future with hope and expectation. God has a plan for your love life, I promise! Your responsibility is to make yourself available to it. 

Again, I want to acknowledge that watching an old relationship truly end as your ex moves on is a hard thing to do, regardless of how the relationship ended.

Rather than assuming that you messed up in a major way, or that something is inherently flawed in you, or pining after them as the “ideal one,” allow yourself to let go, move along, and trust that there is someone else out there for you. As painful and as up and down as it can be, you are the only one with the power to decide to move forward, and you won’t regret it if you do! Time is a great healer, but we can also learn to be our own best advocates.

Let go of your ex so that not only will they have moved on, but you will, too.