Whether you broke up or got dumped, heartbreak is one of the toughest things you can go through. It can feel like the feelings of emptiness and bottomless grief never end – and you wonder if it was really the right thing to do? But according to experts, there’s a best before date for this feeling!
When you go through a break up, you may feel that all the emotions and love you experienced were for nothing. You miss your person in a way that feels physical in your heart and find it hard to see how you will ever be happy again. But according to relationship experts and psychologists, these feelings have a certain time limit.
Being in love is not just a fuzzy feeling but a chemical state. Your body is filled with a host of hormones like dopamine and oxytocin, which are linked to your brain’s reward system and signal that you want more of these so-called love hormones. It becomes an addiction just like any other, and when you have to get over a person giving you these love hormones, you can become like an alcoholic without alcohol – you go into withdrawal.
Psychologists says that these withdrawal symptoms usually disappear after six months and you start to get back to yourself and create a more social life again. But the time to stop grieving someone who has disappeared from your life is individual and depending on how long you were involved with your then partner, the time you were together affects how long it takes to fully move on takes. So even if the chemical love state has subsided after six months, it is possible that you still miss your ex.
To speed up the process, relationship expers says you can set up a few points to follow.
Ignore deadlines
Don’t set dates for when you should be over your ex or when you should be ready to date again, a deadline creates unnecessary pressure and causes you to take the focus off healing.
Trust your healing process
Your body, brain and heart are doing their job properly. Whether it takes a week, several months or years, no condition will last forever.
Notice the day you didn’t think about your ex
The day you notice that you haven’t thought about your ex in a long time, pay attention to it to put it in your reward system. If you managed two days, one day you will manage a whole week and so on.
Get professional help
If it feels difficult not to lose your footing, consult a psychologist to get tools to deal with the process of actually getting over someone. Alone is not strong.
So if you’re newly dumped or just out of a long relationship, know that in six months, what you’re feeling will actually have subsided and there will be an end to the dark tunnel you’re in right now.
