How To Get Over Heartbreak
Tips for Men To Recover and Move On
The quest for love brings with it the ever-present threat of losing someone you love deeply. This is an essential part of the journey for most of us, and we need the resilience to recover from these setbacks without carrying emotional baggage into future relationships.
Below I’ve shared my thoughts about moving on from losing the person you love based on my own experiences in my 20s and 40s of finding my world flipped upside down by women I trusted with my heart, whether for months or decades. Everyone’s circumstances are likely to be different, so take from it whatever resonates with you. On the other hand, some of the most profound breakthroughs I’ve experienced have occurred when I’ve followed advice that I didn’t necessarily identify with. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Face the Facts: Most Relationships End
The odds of relationships working out long term are very slim. Consider all the short-lived romances that fade quickly, combined with all the medium-term relationships that just don’t work out, and the massive proportion of marriages that end in divorce. In other words, enjoy the moments a relationship brings you joy, and don’t presume that the loss of a relationship is your fault, or worse, delude yourself that you can change yourself to recover the relationship. Face the reality: it’s over, it fucking hurts, it feels like you may never meet someone else that will inspire that same level of love in you again, and there is now a gaping void in your life where that person used to be. It will take time to heal, and sometimes you just need to accept the fact that life is going to break you more than once along your journey - the real test is whether you have the determination to come out the other side without lasting bitterness or despair.
Filling the Void
The following strategies have helped me to overcome the sense of loss and upheaval from these situations:
Build and stick to healthy routine:
Stock your fridge with easy-to-make, healthy meals. Avoid buying junk.
Exercise - walk, run, stretch, lift, cycle or whatever floats your boat. Just get of your butt, get the blood flowing, and focus on the sensations in your body instead of the misery in your head
Socialise - especially with other men. Don’t try to be the life of the party - be up front that you’re going through a rough patch and you’ll be amazed how supportive even men you’ve just met will be, so long as you adopt a survivor mentality rather than that of a victim
Become a regular at a local coffee shop and get to know staff and other regulars. (This makes it easy to be sociable without needing to coordinate with friends).
Meditate - mindfulness meditation helps you to acknowledge and accept pain and avoid reacting to it. In time, the pain will pass.
Sleep - the only thing worse than feeling miserable about your loss is feeling exhausted and miserable about your loss
Redirect sexual frustration into creative pursuits:
Doesn’t matter whether it’s music, writing, art, dancing, DIY, crafting, designing a new business, or whatever takes your fancy, just deliberately make time for creativity
If you don’t have any “creative” skills, take a course - preferably with other people, but if that’s not possible, you can learn almost anything for free on YouTube.
Learn from the experience, but avoid dwelling on what you did wrong:
You should learn from every experience, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that every hardship is some deep karmic lesson you need to learn from.
Do consider the question of whether your behaviour and experience within the relationship truly reflected the man you really want to be. Did you compromise your own wants and needs to please her? Did you act with integrity at all times? Did you fall into the trap of being a “nice guy” (read Dr Glover’s No More Mr Nice Guy to understand that in depth)? Did you allow yourself to become dependent on her (instead of your male friends) for your own emotional support?
Are you now feeling completely socially isolated? Was she your sole (or majority) source of social and emotional support? Now is the time to start building habits that will provide you better balance in future relationships.
These are the lessons to take forward. There are most likely a bunch of other reasons the relationship didn’t work that you’ll never know, and they don’t matter because they are about her, not your future partner. The relationship you want and deserve is with someone who is attracted to you in your most authentic state of being.
Cut all communication with her and her clique of friends until you regain your balance.
This includes social media etc.
This doesn’t mean you can’t have a friendship again in the future, but to regain your balance you will need to delay further communication until all embers of desire have been extinguished.
Lean on your mates:
Sharing your grief and fear with one or two trusted brothers and asking for a bit of help to get back on your feet is a humbling, but ultimately cathartic experience. It somehow lifts a huge weight. As a man you probably don’t want a shoulder to cry on, but it helps immensely to have a couple of mates who know what you’re going through and are willing to provide a bit of company and help guide you back to normality.
This may be your lifelong mates, but if you’ve never had this type of interaction with them you may find this really hard. In that case, you can always find compassionate, non-judgemental support within the “safe space” of a men’s group.
Expand your comfort zone:
Seek out things that scare you and conquer them. Ideas: dancing, singing karaoke, public speaking, sky diving, SCUBA diving, travel solo
Challenging yourself will shift your focus, expand your social circle, build your confidence, build new skills, and make you more interesting
It may help to have a mate help you with this, especially to keep you accountable for actually going through with the challenges.
Invest in yourself
Take advantage of the extra time you now have to pursue personal development (especially communication skills), learning new things, and pursuing healthy activities that bring you joy such as hobbies, sports, etc.
This is the perfect time to give thought to want you want from life - day to day as well as your bigger goals.
Read up on stoicism - the Stoics invested a lot of time and effort into working out how to live a virtuous life that yields an ongoing sense of fulfilment. We can all learn from this and embrace the principles in our own lives.
Consider whether it’s time to update your wardrobe. A style makeover and wardrobe refresh might help you make the mental and emotional transition to starting the next chapter of your romantic life.
Fight
Martial arts / combat sports are essential for building and maintaining a sense of physical power and exercising discipline. Find one you enjoy, and commit yourself to mastering it.
To be clear: I am not advocating for violence, but rather building the confidence and capability to step into violent situations if it becomes necessary. Developing this confidence changes the image you project to the world, as well as your mindset.
Nowhere in this advice do I suggest pursuing women. You won’t need to. Your first priority is to regain your emotional balance, and this is best achieved through the company of likeminded men. By focusing on this and the other items listed above, you are already elevating yourself above the vast majority of men who simply don’t understand the importance of authenticity and carry horribly flawed understandings of masculinity. Good women respond automatically to authentic masculinity in good men who clearly have their shit together. By following this path you should find that by the time you are no longer dwelling on the grief of your heartbreak, women will start to appear in your life offering you the potential for new relationships and romantic and erotic exploration.
Final Word
You’ve got this! Millions of men have endured far worse and not only survived, but gone on to enjoy amazing lives! This too shall pass for you.
If you’re one of Bed Bars & Beyond’s many female readers with a male friend you’d like to help through a difficult time, please check out:
Sensible advice. It is worrying how badly men respond to relationship break-ups, a known link to suicide. I've always thought young men are particularly vulnerable when their first big romance falls apart. All those years as a teenage boy with hardly any physical contact and suddenly they have known real intimacy which is then snatched away from them - no wonder they are devastated.