ASAP Breakup Guide

You’re hurting? Good. Take that pain, and do something good with it.

Before we get started, I’d like you to think about what a break up really is.

Devastating, yes. But it’s also one of the greatest opportunities you will ever have.

Yes, they are hard and hurt like hell but that’s what makes them so effective.

It’s important to understand how getting over an ex is a process, and not a destination.

And it’s during this process where you get to decide: what next?

Or as Rocky rightly says:

Remember that.

In this guide I’m going to run through everything you need to know on how to speed up the painful process of getting over your ex.

Seven chapters. Here we go.

It’s all to do with investment.

Relationships are big investments, and committing to somebody (or something) is a pretty big deal.

When we lose somebody who played a central role in our life, we’re essentially missing a piece of our own identity, which is why until we get our sh*t back together, we feel completely lost without them.

It’s the same feeling people have when they lose their jobs or a pet.

Bottom line is, if something we’ve invested a lot of time into is taken from us, we’re gonna feel like crap.

So what’s the fix?

It’s time to start filling the void and rebuilding our identity. Without them.

That’s what the rest of this is about.

Ever wondered why it physically hurts? Well, there’s an answer.

Back in 2011, a team at Michigan stuck people who’d just been dumped into a brain scanner and showed them a photo of their ex. Then they held something painfully hot against their arm.

The same bits of the brain lit up for both. The secondary somatosensory cortex and the dorsal posterior insula, which are the parts that deal with proper, physical pain.

So when you say it hurts, you’re not exaggerating. It actually does.

Helen Fisher’s lot found the other half of it. They scanned people who’d been rejected and were still in love, and the activity turned up in the ventral tegmental area and the ventral striatum.

Those are the reward and craving circuits. The same ones that light up in addiction.

Read that bit again, because it changes everything. You’re not weak. You’re not broken. You’re in withdrawal.

And withdrawal is something we know how to handle.

Everyone’s heard of the five stages. Almost nobody knows where they came from.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote them up in 1969, in a book called On Death and Dying, after sitting with around five hundred terminally ill patients.

So they’re about people facing their own death. Not about getting dumped.

They still work well enough, as long as you know what you’re looking at:

• Denial. This is just a break. They’ll come round.

• Anger. At them, at their mates, at yourself, at whoever’s nearest.

• Bargaining. If I just fix the one thing they moaned about, this is sortable.

• Depression. The flat bit. Nothing’s interesting and everything’s heavy.

• Acceptance. Not forgiving them, and not pretending you don’t care. Just the day they stop being the first thing you think about.

So how do you fly through them?

You don’t, not really. But you can stop dragging them out, and that’s what the next three chapters are for.

Closure is the biggest lie in the breakup business.

It sells you the idea that there’s one conversation out there that explains everything and switches the feeling off.

There isn’t.

There’s only a conversation that hands you a fresh set of words to chew on for another two weeks.

Closure isn’t something they give you. It’s something you build on your own, out of time and distance.

And remember the science. Every time you check their profile, that’s a hit. Feels like relief for about nine seconds, then it resets the clock.

Cold turkey only works if you actually go cold turkey.

How to not cave in

• Mute and unfollow. It’s not a statement, you’re just unplugging the fruit machine.

• Archive the thread instead of reading it again. You already know what it says.

• Put the photos somewhere you can’t casually open. Don’t delete them yet, that’s a decision for a calmer month.

• Tell a mate the rule, out loud. Somebody else knowing makes 1am a lot harder.

• Sort the practical stuff in one message, not seven. Keys, boxes, the joint account, done.

Pavlov rang a bell before he fed his dogs. Pretty soon the bell on its own was enough to make them drool.

The bell never changed. The association did.

You’ve spent years building the exact same thing. The pub, the song, the Sunday lie-in, the walk back from the station.

None of it is about your ex. All of it now reminds you of your ex.

There are two ways out, and most people only try the one that doesn’t work.

Avoiding it doesn’t work

Never going back keeps the association perfectly preserved. Three years later that song still does the same thing to you, because you never gave your brain a chance to learn anything new.

Going back does

Go to the pub. Play the song. Take the walk. The trigger keeps firing and the bad thing keeps not happening, and the link gets weaker every single time.

It’s grim for about the first three goes. Then it isn’t.

After that you overwrite it. The quickest way to stop a place meaning them is to make it mean something else, with somebody else, doing something better.

Back to chapter one. You’ve got a hole where an identity used to be.

You’ve also got time you didn’t have last month, and more energy than you think, because being angry and being sad both burn through energy you could be pointing at something.

Two things will compete for it. Distraction gets you through an evening. Investment gets you a year. You want a bit of the first and all of the second.

Distraction techniques that actually work

• Anything with a date on it. A race, a gig, a flight, a course that starts on the 14th. A deadline drags you along on the days you can’t be bothered.

• Anything physical and hard enough that you have to concentrate. Lifting, climbing, running, boxing. Concentrating is the only proper off switch there is.

• Anything with a syllabus. A language, an instrument, a qualification. Watching yourself get better is the cure for feeling stuck.

• Anything that puts you in a room with people. A team, a class, a shift volunteering somewhere. Sitting at home on your own is the one thing that definitely makes this last longer.

• The thing you quietly packed in when you got together. It’s still there, and it’s yours.

What about rebounding?

Getting under somebody to get over somebody does work, in the way paracetamol works.

It shifts the feeling for a night and it proves the world didn’t end. Costs you nothing, as long as everyone involved knows exactly what it is.

It starts costing the moment you use a person as a painkiller without telling them.

Be honest, be kind, and don’t build anything on foundations you poured in week two.

My last breakup hit me so hard I was borderline suicidal. Approaching 30, I was in debt, diagnosed with depression and homeless.

Nothing in life interested me. I was broken and ready to quit.

Was able to sign off work (a job that I’d previously loved), to work on myself.

The shake up inspired me to work harder than ever before.

My passion for learning new things became an addiction. I swore an oath I’d travel to a new city every month, and I’m writing this to say that 3 years and 36 countries later, I’m still going.

Would I go back and undo it? Not a chance.

So, what next?

Getting over an ex is a process, not a destination.

That’s not a consolation prize, it’s the good news, because a process is something you get a say in.

You’re going to feel like this for a while whatever you do. The only bit you control is what you’ve got to show for it at the end.

So pick the hard thing. Book the flight. Enter the race. Start the course. Take the pub back.

You’re going to get hit. Keep moving forward.