Whether the end of your relationship involved a dramatic blowout or was more of a "conscious uncoupling," there's no denying that breaking up is hard.
There are plenty of obvious ways to avoid rubbing salt in your wounded heart, e.g. don't drunk-dial your ex, stop sleeping in their t-shirt, and back away from their Instagram feed. However, there is also a slew of more subtle slip-ups that could be sabotaging your healing process.
Here are a few mistakes you could be making when you're trying to get over a breakup.
SEE ALSO: 6 signs your partner is cheating — and it's with you
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You’re constantly trying to figure out what went wrong.
Would you still be together if they hadn’t taken that job two hours away? Or if you spent less time on your phone during date nights? If only you had done x, y, and z, maybe things would have turned out differently.
Endlessly dissecting a failed relationship is just feeding yourself a steady diet of guilt and self-pity. The reality is that it takes two to make a relationship, and it takes two to break one.
"Do the grieving you need to do," psychotherapist Tina B. Tessina told Bustle. "Figure out how you helped create the problems (or stayed around for them) and decide to change what didn’t work before."
Playing C.S.I. with the corpse of your relationship is only going to keep you looking over your shoulder at the past instead of building a better future.
You keep their number, "just in case."
What exactly is the emergency scenario that would require you to call your ex? Short of accidentally leaving your passport in their car or them being a perfect kidney donor match, there aren’t many situations in which "just in case" means anything but “I’m still holding out hope things might work out.”
There’s a lot of power in symbolic acts, and deleting your ex’s number can feel like exorcising a ghost. Cut those digital ties and free up space in your contacts for someone new.
You try to "win" the break up in unhealthy ways.
Maybe the end of your relationship inspired you to hit the gym, revamp your apartment, and get that chinchilla you’ve always wanted. If breaking up was the push you needed to chase your ideal self, that’s awesome.
However, if you start thinking that your new purpose in life is to post photos with the sole purpose of proving to your ex that you’re better off without them, that’s not so great.
"The only real winners are the people who don’t care how they look on social media, to their ex or to anyone," James Hablin wrote in a 2015 piece for the Atlantic about the trend of trying to "win" breakups.
Pushing yourself to do things before you’re ready or just to show your ex — or yourself — that you’re definitely, totally, completely fine means you’re not living your life for you, but for them. Don’t let your old relationship dictate the new you.
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