5 Steps to Move On and Let Go of a Past Relationship

Moving on… it takes time. And yet it isn't simply a matter of time. It's a matter of coming to terms with the person and the relationship you shared. It's about no longer living in the mental prison of the coulda shoulda wouldas and memories of the past. It’s about slowly finding a way to carry the experience without remaining emotionally trapped inside it, so that you can welcome newer and richer experiences into your life.

Here are 5 steps to help yourself move on and let go with gentleness and without force.

1. Acknowledge and feel your feelings.

The 1st and most important step to moving on and letting go is to acknowledge and work with your feelings. This includes feelings from the beginning of the relationship, the middle of the relationship, and the end of the relationship. All of these experiences and emotions can accumulate into lingering emotional weight that we carry with us long after the relationship ends — hurt, grief, confusion, fear, anger, regret, longing, shame, tenderness, relief, or unanswered questions. As long as we're tucking those emotional experiences away and pretending they’re not there, they will continue to rule our words, our actions, and our life.

Whatever you’re feeling deserves acknowledgment, care, and space and often, healing involves gradually allowing ourselves to experience emotions we may have been avoiding, suppressing, intellectualizing, or overwhelmed by. And if you don’t feel like you can do that just yet, be gentle with yourself. Oftentimes the feelings we harbor from our closest relationships can be really difficult to feel. They’re often rooted in present situations that have a basis in past experiences and they tend to be quite heavy- so it’s no surprise that you may not jump at the chance to feel them all right away.

There are many reasons why a relationship may not work out. From my experience with clients, here are a few feelings that tend to surface in relationships.

• Hurt about a partner who cheated/ dishonesty/ trust issues in the relationship

• Dealing with things from the past

• Partners who are manipulative, controlling, or demanding

• Partners who are unappreciative

• Knowing the partner is “no good for me” but wanting to be with them anyway

• Feeling confused about my partner… they’re a good match in some ways but not others

• Unhealthy communication or a lack of communication in the relationship

• The love in the relationship has faded/ we’ve grown apart

• Conflict in values/desires

• One partner doesn’t want to commit

• Lack of intimacy or sexual chemistry

• Conflict and arguments in the relationship that can’t be resolved

These are important life challenges, right? And it’s no wonder they can be quite heavy and difficult to feel and process on your own. That’s why I often say it's such a gift to talk to someone like a therapist or a coach during this time (and always, if you’re able), to give yourself space to fall apart a little if that’s where you are, to take time off of work if you need to in order to process what you're feeling, and if you need to be a mess for a little while, letting yourself be a mess for a little while. Sometimes we need to fall apart and be a little (or a lot) messy before we begin finding steadier ground again.

2. Get the answers you need.

Oftentimes we have trouble moving on from past relationships because we lack the closure that we hoped we’d get. There are things we wanted to say or things we wanted to ask and find out that we didn't quite have a chance to ask and find out. And so, sometimes part of healing involves expressing what was left unsaid, seeking clarity, or allowing ourselves to ask the questions that still feel emotionally unfinished — while also recognizing that not every relationship gives us the kind of closure we hoped for.

Depending on your situation this might take place in a number of different ways. You might start with journaling about the questions that you have for your previous partner. You might also vent to your friend about something that you really want to yet don't know about why your relationship ended, why your partner felt the way they did, or why things didn't work out when it looked like they were going to for a while.

Just as your emotions need to be expressed, your questions do too. So if your situation allows for you to have a conversation with your previous partner then consider when might be a good time to have a conversation based on how you're feeling and healing.

Keep in mind that the answer might come in many forms. When I think back to my former relationships, there have been answers that came in really beautiful back and forth conversations with a lot of care and love contained within them. There have also been answers in the form of silence. Either way, I gained a new understanding when I was ready to. I encourage you to do the same... be open to the fact that sometimes understanding comes through conversation. Sometimes through distance. Sometimes through patterns becoming clearer over time. And sometimes we slowly realize that another person may never be able to give us the resolution we hoped for.

If it comes in the form of a conversation, then you have a specific response to your question that you can take with you and that will contribute to your understanding. If your previous partner avoids your request for answers, that too can contribute to your understanding of what happened in the relationship and perhaps what led to it ending. Our behavior says a lot about how we're feeling and it's no different when we're seeking answers and hoping that someone will provide them. We get answers from reaching out, we get answers from the response that's provided and how it's provided, and we also get answers from the journey that follows us seeking and making meaning from the answers that we wanted.

Which brings me to #3…

3. Take the journey inward.

I often say that relationships tend to reveal us to ourselves in powerful ways. They often bring our attachment patterns, fears, longings, wounds, needs, boundaries, communication styles, protective strategies, and hopes into much clearer view. In many ways, they’re our main training ground for love, care, understanding, conflict management, and so much more. So when it comes to a failed relationship, it's really important that part of our healing is to take a journey inward into ourselves. Now that we've asked questions of the other person it's time to ask questions of ourselves.

Relationships are our main training ground for love, care, understanding, conflict management, and so much more.

What attracted you to your partner? What didn’t work out? What does this tell you about what you want more of and what you want less of in a future partner?

What qualities were you drawn to initially? What qualities and experiences caused you to stay?

What were the patterns that you brought into the relationship? What might you want to spend some time reflecting on before considering a new relationship?

What’s your self-esteem like? Were you able to set boundaries when needed? Were you able to be an individual within the couple?

What your answers to these questions will do is they will allow you to learn from the experience you just went through. And over time, this kind of reflection can help you understand yourself more deeply — what mattered to you, what hurt you, what patterns emerged, what you ignored, what you longed for, and what you may want differently moving forward.

4. Rebuild connection with yourself and your life.

One of the hardest parts of heartbreak is that it can slowly narrow our world. We replay conversations, revisit memories, search for answers, wonder what we could have done differently, and sometimes organize large parts of our emotional life around the loss.

And while this is so understandable, part of healing eventually involves turning back toward yourself and toward life again too.

So, notice whether and when you might feel ready to return toward your routines, toward your friendships, toward your body, toward small moments of joy and meaning, and toward the parts of yourself that may have gotten lost, neglected, or disconnected inside the relationship or inside the hardship of its ending.

And, this doesn’t mean forgetting the person or pretending the relationship didn’t matter. It just means coming back to yourself and allowing your life to slowly become larger than the heartbreak itself.

5. Allow healing to unfold gradually.

Moving on rarely happens in a day or a week or all at once. It often unfolds in waves, layers, and small moments we don’t notice right away while they’re happening.

One day you realize you went a few hours without thinking about them. One day you notice a memory without completely collapsing into it. One day you laugh again and actually feel present and good doing it. One day your future begins to feel imaginable again.

Healing from a relationship is rarely linear, and it’s important not to shame yourself for still feeling sad, confused, angry, nostalgic, attached, relieved, or conflicted at times. Relationships leave real emotional imprints on us — especially the ones that mattered in deep ways.

So, please be gentle with yourself as you heal. You don’t need to force yourself to “move on” before your heart is ready. Healing happens when we slowly create enough space, support, honesty, self-understanding, and life around the pain that it no longer defines our entire inner world, and there will be plenty of time for that to happen for you too.

With ♡,