Today, I’m publishing an article about something that I really struggled with. Something that really destroyed me for many months as I struggled to over come it.

The Problem: Forgetting an ex and moving on from an ex-partner that you loved.

Why it’s a big deal: We’ve all had that one partner. The one that made you want to wake up for them and never fall asleep so you could spend as much time as possible with them. But sadly, with the way life works, some people will come and go in your life. For the majority of people, it is easy to move on after some sadness, where they can look for another person to become the love of their life (or even just for that night).

However, for some, myself included, you can never forget that person. You can’t move on from the girl or guy. While you are focused looking backwards, you don’t see the opportunities amd options for a new romance, career, that are opening up in front of you.

Sadly too many people change when they get into a relationship. They change by becoming more like the person that keeps their partner happy rather than the person who attracted their partner in the first place. Eventually, the partner gets fed up of you being this weaker version of the person they first fancied and the attraction goes. A break up of some form happens and you are left all over the place. Should you chase your ex? Should you move on? How do you move is a better question? How do you move on by watching a film? Read on and find out …

Film to watch to help: ‘A Million Ways to Die in the West‘

Character to look at: Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane). Albert is like your average guy. He lives in a place he doesn’t feel he belongs in and can’t seem to find his place in the world. He’s dating Louise (Amanda Seyfried), a girl who seems to be merely putting up with him until a better offer. Eventually one does, in the form of  Foy (Neil Patrick Harris). The film follows Albert trying to win back Louise, dealing with the breakup and how changing how you take on life may affect the road you take and what happens to you as a result.

What should I be looking out for?

If you’re the first version of Albert, than change. In the movie, Albert stays with Louise as he is happy with her. He seems to think all he needs to do is not to do anything stupid and she will stay with him, which in turn will make him happy. However, no one else in this world can make you happy. If you tie up your happiness and future on whether someone loves you or not, you will fail. All it takes is for that person to leave, for your source of happiness to end. Never tie up your happiness in another person, find an internal source of happiness, one that doesn’t rely on another. Look for a project that you can get your teeth into, look for a more challenging job, look to learn a new skill. Find something that relies solely on yourself and only you can affect your happiness, no one else. So even if your partner leaves, it can’t hurt you.

Sometimes better to let go than try to cling on. In the film Albert stays with Louise for the happiness she provides for him. He’s not exactly sure why he loves her but just that he feels like he does. Albert is staying with Louise for all the wrong reasons. He is staying with her as she provides a happiness in a world that he doesn’t feel like he belongs into and is the one area of his life that he can draw happiness from. This is wrong. You can’t stay with someone just because they make you happy or pretend you are. Worse, Albert has changed who he is. He tries to please Louise and reacts to her whims and moods. He isn’t being himself, which is very attractive to a girl. You shouldn’t change yourself if the partner can’t be attracted to the real you. Life is too short to spend your life pretending to be someone you aren’t or to be with someone who doesn’t value the real you. You can’t live just for someone else. Albert tries to win Louise back by saying he’ll change to whoever she wants him to be. This is silly. There is over seven billion people in this world. I truly believe that there is someone for everyone in this world. Just because one person can’t see the true value in you, it doesn’t mean that no one else will. As painful as it may seem, sometimes the best action is simply to cut that person out of your life and find that person or more likely persons, who will love you for the real you. Become the best version of you not the person that your ex wants you to be.

Deal not dwell. In the film Albert moans about the breakup to his friends. He hits the drink, sleeps all day and follows around Louise and her new boyfriend all the time. He dwells on the breakup rather than deal with it. I know this is very wrong from personal experience. I didn’t stalk but I used to sit and over analyse everything that happened, everything that was said and apply it as a value to me, regardless of the mood that she was in when she said (e.g. angry, spiteful etc). The more I thought about what had happened, the more I kept living in that moment. Every time I thought of that time, I was living at the time of the breakup. I was looking at time that I couldn’t change and using all my energy to try and believe I could and think what I would have done differently. As you can imagine, this left me with no energy for meeting new people, no energy for social skills to woo another, no energy to even bother about keeping groomed and dressed properly to impress future partners etc. Basically, my dwelling on the breakup caused a personal black hole for me. All my attention, energy and focus was getting sucked up into this black hole of despair that I had created for myself. As much as I loved my ex, I finally realised this wasn’t healthy and needed to change.

However, you will need to come to that realisation yourself. Your friends and family can tell you that it is silly to think about it and only focus on her and long for their return but it won’t matter. Until you pull away from your own black hole and refocus on navigating a new star path, it doesn’t matter what others say. You must do it for yourself, for your sanity and for your own happiness. It will be tough and it will take time. What worked for me was to create a buzzword in my head. Whenever my thinking turned to anything to do with that breakup, I said my word in my head and immediately aimed to change what I was thinking about. It slowly begins to work. Your thinking is like any other muscle memory. If you think about something a lot, it slowly begin to get burnt stronger and stronger into your memory banks. So when something reminds you of your ex, your brain goes to the strongest ex memories and unfortunately for you, it’s your ex memories you don’t want. To break a strong memory routine – in this case stop thinking of your ex – and one that you want to change, you need to reinforce a new thinking patterns and strengthen the memories muscles to use this one instead of your old painful memories. The buzzword for a change in thinking really helped me and the following actions did too.

Discover not rebuild. When you breakup with someone, you will feel terrible and your own self esteem and value of yourself will be very low. As you get over the breakup, you start to feel more like your old self and even that you are rebuilding yourself to be like you were when you first met your ex and where in the relationship. However, this is wrong. Rebuilding yourself makes it sound to yourself as if there is something wrong with you. There isn’t. The other person just doesn’t feel that way about you anymore. You can’t win/attract/plead someone back if they don’t want to be with you. It just won’t work and if you do someone how manage to persuade them back, it won’t last. There needs to be attraction and love or it will never last, regardless of how big and dramatic gestures you offer to make may be. So what should you do instead? Discover yourself. You need to discover who you are, the real you, not the you that you become when you try to keep your partner happy. Too many people in relationships simply fall into a ‘meh’ existence where they merely survive, formulating the belief that the relationship makes them happy, where in fact it is holding them back. By using the discover outlook, you look deep within and look to accomplish goals you’ve had that you’ve forgotten about whilst you were in a relationship. You find your boundaries by attempting new activities and partake in new experiences. Instead of trying to rebuild what you think you are missing, you turn the spotlight inward and look to see what you are capable of doing. As you progress further and further on your discovery journey, you will notice that you begin to change. Your views on life and where you are heading will change, you will notice old fears changing and most importantly, for the majority of people, your view of your ex will change. For many, you will see that they are not the person you thought them to be, instead they may have been the person that has been holding you back all this time. Why try to rebuild the old when you can discover frameworks to play with?

Your Discover Toolkit

So let’s look at some ways that you can start on the discovery path:

• Don’t stalk and follow her around just to keep her in your life. You can’t make her love you back anymore. As tough as it is, accept it and make no contact with her or her new partner (you don’t want them to sing the moustache song at you!). So if this means deleting her off facebook, deleting her number off your mobile, unfollowing her on Twitter etc, then so be it. You should initiative the 30 Days No Contact procedure. It is as simple as it sounds. 30 Days. No Contact from them or to them for 30 days. All is ignored. At the end of the thirty days, you decide if you want to speak to them or not. The need to have them back will have died down and in most cases, you won’t want to speak to them again.
• Don’t try to make them jealous. It won’t work and will just make you seem sad. The person who is trying to make the other person react is the weakest. Why would a strong person try to make someone jealous by pretending they are having a great life? Why would you care what they think of you after the breakup? Why waste your energy on them when you could be spending all your energy on fashioning an awesome new life and being amazing?
• Remember fun? Go out and have some! Those things that you wanted to do but couldn’t as you were in a relationship – go and do them. Those new activities, new bars, new clubs and meals out you wanted to try but your partner said no to – go and do them. Pick a sport or an activity that you wanted to try and go and do it. It’s not all about just doing new things. Do things that you enjoy and make you happy. Spend your new found time doing things that you enjoy and make you happy inside, not things that you merely did to make your partner happy. Make a list of fun things you want to do. Then go and do them. Start now … or after when you’ve finished reading this article and liking it first!
• Embrace the new as well as the old. Go out. Meet new people. Try new things with the new people. Learn new skills or just go out to have. How about Rock climbing? Maybe a Cooking classes. Whatever it is, throw yourself into it full on. It’s not about what you do or how much you do. It’s about finding new interests and discovering who you are. It’s time to find out who the real you is. Build your confidence and self-esteem by doing these new things. As you expand your horizons and boundaries, your confidence will soar. Slowly but surely, you will become the Next Level version of yourself. Become the guy you want to be and women will become more attracted to the real you rather than the diluted version you have been acting like whilst in a relationship.
• Find a new mission for yourself. If this is a new project at work, a career change, taking up a new sport or whatever, find a new mission that is solely for yourself and the betterment of yourself. The new mission will make you change, learn new skills and work yourself better to accomplish it. It will make you better solely for you, not your ex. You can then use that momentum to explode and better all other areas of your life. As you get better, you will meet better and better quality of women and your ex may become a distant memory as you go further and further along the discovery path. You may find that you can do a lot better!
• Be open to everything. New experiences. New places. New people. New partners. As tough as it may seem to think about right after a break up, there will be other women or men who can replace them and maybe better than your ex. By just focusing on one person, you don’t notice the other people looking to meet someone as awesome as you. Be open to love others as much as you are open to trying a lot of new things.
• Don’t grow a moustache. A lot of people will see them and fancy it after this movie yet the vast majority will look like grade A dickheads with them. You’ve been warned!

Read this article. Work with the toolkit above and you’ll move on from your ex partner quickly. I didn’t follow the advice above and suffered badly. I kept breaking my heart by reliving the good bits and being teary at the bad parts. I was deeply in love with my ex and struggled to move on. The stuff above works as it is what I used to move on from my first love. Have a read and try the toolkit. See how it works for you. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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