9 Steps to Get Over Your Ex

Move On After a Break Up

We carry so much baggage with us through life, it’s a wonder we can walk our path sometimes. The heaviest baggage of all is often a past love, an affair, or marriage or relationship that’s over, but we’re still stuck in it. Take heart! You can get closure and walk toward your future—head held high. There are ways to release a former love and allow your spirit to grow.

First, how do you recognize that you are trapped in a finished relationship and need to move on? Hold up a spiritual mirror, and watch your own behavior.

● Do you drive friends nuts because you will not stop talking about him? “I miss him.” “I hate him.” “I wonder where he is and what he’s doing.”

● Is your closet full of their things you failed to return? Are you planning to take them back one at a time as your neediness wells up?

● When you daydream, is it all about the hot sex you had two years ago?

● You just have to call him because the postman failed to forward mail—an advertisement for aluminum siding and a subscription renewal from National Geographic.

● Are you ticked off at him/her and everyone else. Is there a quick trigger on your anger?

● Do you cry at the thought of him? Did you get your hair cut the way she liked it? Did you wear blue because you wore blue on your first date?

● Are you 100% certain there’s something, no matter how bizarre, you can do to put it back together?

If you’re doing these things, you’re in dire straits and need to release this former love for good and for all. Here’s how:

1. Make a clear statement to the failed lover. “I need to move on, we’re finished.” Now, don’t answer phone calls. Don’t monitor their Facebook page. Don’t drive by their house. Act like an adult, and disconnect.

2. Pitch all their stuff and the stuff your memories are made of.

3. Clean your house top to bottom, and do three lovely things that are only about you. Hold a ritual – burn white sage, say a prayer in each room, ring prayer bells or make your own ritual.

4. Spend one whole day in your space pampering yourself—from bubble bath to meditation, to dancing in moonlight—but make sure your spiritual intent is to free yourself.

5. Grieve. Choose a time. Gather what you need—tea, incense, music, whatever, and get deep inside yourself. Admit the love is past. Touch your anger and sadness. Allow yourself to feel all the very bad, very difficult feelings and cry. Cry more. Cry it all out. Be done.

6. Have a party or dinner with people who adore you, whether or not they were connected to your past love.

7. Find your most trusted friend or mentor and tell them the entire story, leaving nothing out.

8. Say goodbye. Write a letter, record what you need to say, sit in a chair and talk to yourself. Say everything you should have said before your love left. Then burn the letter, destroy the recording. This is essential, do not keep it.

9. Find one pleasurable activity—not a new lover, yet—and immerse yourself. Think singing lessons, horseback riding, a new club, volunteer work.

Here’s the strangest advice: Think negative thoughts. You’ll have moments of mushy and sanguine memories of the good times. Some days, you’ll feel you simply must go running back. Conjure up all the bad stuff that was part of that relationship. Think it through. Dwell on it. Wallow in it. Remember it. Move on. Reinvent yourself, re-embrace your life and see what’s shining there in front of you. No looking back.