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Is it normal to second guess a breakup?

It is natural to have second thoughts about your relationship and to miss your ex—and some couples do get back together after they split. But if you want to move on, or if your ex has already moved on, there are some strategies you can employ to overcome your lingering positive feelings for your ex.

psychologytoday.com - 3 Ways to Manage Second Thoughts After a Breakup | Psychology Today

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My friend Zach recently broke up with his girlfriend of two years. He loved her, but he didn’t think they were heading toward the more permanent relationship they both wanted. They were fighting about his work and about her renewed friendship with a man he couldn’t stand. About two weeks after they broke up, Zach called me and said he was having second thoughts. He still loved his ex, he missed her, and he worried that he had made a mistake by breaking up. It is natural to have second thoughts about your relationship and to miss your ex—and some couples do get back together after they split. But if you want to move on, or if your ex has already moved on, there are some strategies you can employ to overcome your lingering positive feelings for your ex.

Our Thoughts and Feelings Are Not Necessarily the Same

After making the difficult decision to end a relationship, you may have conflicting thoughts and feelings. Zach’s thoughts centered on the fact that he and his girlfriend were fighting too much and they were not likely heading toward marriage, but he felt happy about the good times they had had together and he felt love for her. When our thoughts and feelings don’t match each other, we experience cognitive dissonance (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959). Although our thoughts about our partner or our relationship may be negative, if our feelings are positive, this mismatch can cause uncomfortable feelings of dissonance. After a breakup, one way to resolve conflicted thoughts and feelings is to focus on the things about your ex that caused your rift. (Whether you initiated the breakup or not, both members of a former couple tend to blame the other for the split; see Gray and Silver, 1990.) Focusing on the negative aspects of your relationship is referred to as “devaluing” and this process can help reduce the distress associated with continued positive feelings for a former partner (Geher et al., 2005). For example, in her autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi initially thinks about her ex with tender feelings: “I had just lost my one emotional support, the only person who cared for me” (p. 233). But upon further reflection, she realizes that her boyfriend wasn’t as supportive as she initially believed. She thinks, “How could I have been so blind? What relationship? What love? What support? What an asshole!” (p. 236). This anecdote illustrates that although we may initially regret breaking up with a partner, by focusing on the reasons we chose to split, we can resolve our feelings for the ex in a way that helps us to move on.

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Don’t Stay Friends

Many people think it’s a good idea to stay friendly with their exes, and in some cases, it may be. However, staying friends with your ex may perpetuate your positive feelings for your former partner and your desire to reunite (Schneider and Kenny, 2000). When we focus on the good things about a former partner, we may retain more positive attitudes toward them (Geher et al., 2005). This may help us stay friends with one another, but it may also make it harder to move on after a breakup. Sometimes, these positive feelings may not even be conscious, but they can still keep us pining for our previous partner. (Click here for a discussion of how our unconscious feelings for our ex-partners may keep us from moving on.) For example, Imhoff and Banse (2011) found that more positive unconscious attitudes toward ex-partners were associated with more distress following a breakup and a stronger desire to reunite. However, negative unconscious feelings toward an ex were associated with less distress and greater well-being following a breakup.

Find a New Partner

You may think it’s too soon to start dating again, but individuals who establish new relationships are less likely to experience breakup-related distress or lingering positive feelings for their ex (Imhoff and Banse, 2011). If it is too soon for you to actively engage in a new relationship, consider making new friends, or just flirting, to remind yourself of the options you have once you are ready to start dating. Spielmann et al. (2009) found that individuals who thought that they would be able to find a new partner more easily experienced less desire to reunite with a former partner. Maybe the knowledge of new possibilities help us overcome our attachment to our ex, or maybe the positive thoughts about potential new partners can help replace our positive thoughts about an ex.

psychologytoday.com - 3 Ways to Manage Second Thoughts After a Breakup | Psychology Today

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