Breaking up is never fun. Two people don’t pour their heart and soul out to each other with the expectation things aren’t going to work out. Most people excitedly move into a relationship with the belief it’s going to work out.
Fact: Everyone that takes a stab at dating is going to experience a breakup at some point, and it’s important you understand all the rules when it comes to breaking up. This includes the effective no-contact rule.
Let’s start with a few concrete rules you should follow when you’ve got a broken heart.
Golden Breakup Rules
Golden Rule One: Give Yourself Time
We’ve all done it—rushed into another relationship prematurely, not giving ourselves enough time to heal enough to move on. Experts from Dailymail report you should allow yourself the same amount of time you were together in order to be ready for another partner.
This rule is in place as nature’s way of making sure you don’t try and pretend you are emotionally ready to commit to someone else when you simply aren’t. Let’s face it, if you were in a three-year relationship and think you are ready to date after 3 weeks, you’re setting yourself up for another ride on the heartache train.
Nobody wants to be the rebound; that’s just not fair to anyone, including you.
Keep in mind you can use your own judgment. If you were in a serious relationship for two years and feel you are ready after a year to date because you’ve met someone amazing, that might be a fair exception to the rule.
Golden Rule Two: Little White Lies Are Essential
You’re right, lying is wrong. However, when you are hurting from a recent breakup, you aren’t going to want to explain the details to all your friend and family, including your ex. That’s redundant and mentally tiring for you.
Yes, you should be honest about the details with your closest friends, but once is more than enough. Give everyone else the Cole’s Notes version just to save your sanity.
With the people you don’t know very well, you can put on your acting glasses and perform to show you are radiating happiness and couldn’t be in a better place. That will stop the questions in their tracks from manifesting.
If you really want to make it believable, you can gloat about your new beautiful love interest, compliments of your creative imagination.
Golden Rule Three: Cease Fire with the Shopping
Many people use shopping as their therapy, and it works. But shopping and heartache are never a match made in heaven. When your brain is distracted with hurt, you are going to make some major fashion mistakes you’ll regret.
Physiologically, emotion and logic just don’t mix. This means you aren’t going to have your head thinking straight right after a fresh breakup. Relationship experts suggest you wait at least 3 months after a breakup before you make any major buys.
If you don’t have the self-control to stay away from the malls, and you know you best, then give your credit cards to a close friend to keep them safe for now.
Golden Rule Four: Pondering Your Ex
Your brain needs to move into forward mode, and to do this, you can’t be reminiscing about your fresh ex. It will be tough at first because you are so used to being together. Mind over matter here. Work on consciously pushing thoughts of your ex out of your brain and thinking about anything but.
Of course, this world works in wondrous ways. Don’t be surprised when the minute you stop thinking about your ex-other-half, you bump into them. Make sure you aren’t wearing track pants, have washed your hair and don’t look washed up with no makeup.
Every time you leave the house, you want to look smoking hot just in case you do meet face to face.
That just feels good!
Golden Rule Five: Never Try and Heal Solo
One thing I’ve learned, no matter how embarrassing my breakup, is to never ever try and deal with these emotions on my own. It’s important to confide in a few close friends who are going to help you deal with your emotions, reassure you and focus you forward positively.
You need a gatekeeper to keep you from calling his cell phone just to hear his voice or to pull you out of the club after you’ve gotten yourself totally plastered in misery.
Focus on spending time with your girlfriends and strengthening your bond. That’s going to help you find yourself and smile from the inside out faster.
Moving onto the power of the no-contact rule!
So What’s the No Contact Rule?
It’s pretty much self-explanatory. It just means you have zippo communication with your ex-partner for a set amount of time. This means…
- No telephone contact
- No messaging via text
- No emails or instant messages of any sort
- No sneaky stalking
- No social media stalking
- No contacting your ex partner’s friends or family
- No meeting face to face
No doubt this is very helpful, particularly when you are freshly broken up. This strategy is also effective if you are leaving an abusive or narcissistic relationship.
Now, if you have children, of course you are going to have to talk about the kid arrangements. Just make sure you keep the conversations to a minimum.
If your situation allows you to initiate no contact at all, there are lots of benefits to be had.
Reasons to implement the rule:
We all know that no two relationships are the same. This means one person in the union is going to be more heartbroken than the other. Usually, one person winds up having a tough time dealing with their emotions. It’s not fun, but that’s reality.
Research confirms the hurt party is probably going to want to keep in contact with their ex.
Understand that if you keep seeing your ex or thinking about them, you aren’t giving yourself the chance to move on. Further still, even if you do find another partner, if you are still seeing your ex, you aren’t going to be fairly committed to your new relationships.
This also shouts out to the world you are still emotionally vested with your ex, and that’s not good any way you slice it. It shows you are somehow hoping to pick up where you left off one day, and that’s unhealthy.
Your ex is your ex for a reason!
Here Are the Basic Ground Rules
There are going to be some critics who think this no-contact rule is just a mind game created by messed up ex-lovers. Be careful you don’t take action with this tactic and have a hidden hope you might still one day get back with your ex.
To help you see this crystal clear, having no contact isn’t…
- About trying to make your ex ticked off or jealous
- About getting revenge
- A game
- Punishment
- A sick form of revenge
Advantages of Taking Action with the No-Contact Rule
Gives You Permission to Feel Sorry for Yourself
When you experience a breakup, you’ve got to give yourself the chance to get over it. This includes giving yourself permission to lock yourself in your house and watch sappy movies, eat lots of chocolate and perhaps down a few bottles of wine.
Do what you need to in order to get your ex out of your brain. Think of it as no trespassing!
Make sure you don’t go crazy here. Let yourself go crazy for a few days, but then you’ve got to knock it off and clean up your act. If you don’t, you’re only hurting yourself, and that’s not a good thing.
Allows You Ample Time to Grieve
Broken hearts are often a truly traumatic time. So, experts believe they can mimic the feelings of just losing a loved one. Raw emotional hurt is difficult to deal with, particularly if you’ve been wronged in the process.
What makes this process harder than a death sometimes is the fact that your ex is still alive and well, and that makes it difficult for some people to find closure.
When you are dealing with sadness, anger, humiliation, depression, betrayal, panic and surprise, that’s understandably very hurtful. Even if you are calm and normally emotionally sound, a tough breakup can leave you lost and out of control.
Truth: You can’t rush the grieving process. There are no shortcuts unless you want to linger in pain longer. When you break a bone, there are several factors to make a full recovery.
You will get medical care first. Perhaps, you might need physiotherapy after you’ve healed. Then you may need some mental counseling depending on the circumstances.
The same sort of process needs to happen when you are looking to mend a broken heart. Often, emotional damage hurts more than the physical.
Don’t expect to heal overnight. Take the time; you need to heal fully. Never let anyone tell you how long that’s going to take for certain. You need to be honest with yourself and do what’s right for you.
Here’s Some Insight on the Grieving Process:
Stage One: Numbness, Disbelief and Shock
Beware, this is the stage that’s the toughest, and it’s where you are going to be most volatile. This might be where your emotion runs right over logic and your heart makes you think about false hope. Stand strong here and let the flood of emotions happen.
Stage Two: Sadness, Fright, Frustration and Anger
Just like when you are dealing with death, you eventually realize the inevitable. If someone has died, they aren’t coming back. With a breakup, there comes a point when you understand it’s truly over.
Often, this is a dangerous or destructive stage for many obvious reasons. You might try and seek revenge or bad-talk your ex. Stop yourself now because you will eventually regret it at a later date. It will come back and bite you in the butt!
Harming your ex on any level isn’t going to help you heal and move forward, regardless of the fact the thought might bring you delight.
Stage Three: Recognition, Acceptance, Understanding and Forward Focus
No matter how impossible it might seem at first, there will come a time when you fully accept it’s over and you start to deal with your lost relationship. It’s natural to still feel sad about it. In fact, this indicates you are accepting the fact what’s done is done; it’s over.
Stops You from Talking Yourself Down
The worst thing you can do in a breakup situation is to make yourself feel bad; that’s just too easy to do and frankly way too destructive.
With this no-contact rule, you aren’t going to be tempted to jump back in with the texting and calling. Think of it as a wall that’s keeping you safe from yourself. You won’t be checking your messages and feeling bad that he hasn’t left you a message.
The mind is a powerful thing, and you don’t want to let it get the best of you by thinking your ex is out partying and having fun or worse yet, already out with another girl! By not allowing yourself to get in this zone, you are keeping yourself out of the destructive and depressed zone.
Give yourself space by taking a time out that allows you to deal with your temporary hurtful thinking.
A strong silence is going to save you lots of embarrassment when your emotions are in overdrive.
Allows You to See Life’s Potential
When you love someone, there’s obviously emotional connection. So, after a breakup, it’s perfectly normal to expect yourself to be mentally weak and emotionally exhausted.
By staying away from your ex on all levels, you are allowing yourself to focus on purging your feelings for him and opening your mind to thinking clearly and positively.
Maybe you will want to write down your thoughts in a journal so you can find perspective and life vision clarity.
You definitely don’t need outside external factors hindering your healing process, namely your ex-partner.
Here are a few questions that might help you get your head on straight so you can move forward…
- Write down the names of the people who are important to you.
- Write down the pet peeves you had about your ex.
- Write down the people you can count on the most.
- What did your relationship keep you from pursuing?
- What doors can you open now that you are out of your relationship?
- List ten things you want to do.
- Write down ten things you are going to do for you.
Keep up with this question process, and you will find it will naturally get more specific over time. Often, seeing is believing for many.
Show yourself you have lots to be thankful for and use the no-contact rule to help you get back on your feet stronger than ever. You deserve to reach your dreams; you deserve to be happy.
Dangers of Not Staying Away from Your Ex
Flipping back and forth between fantasy and disappointment is never a good thing.
Relationship experts report a breakup has the power to turn your life upside down in the negative. Part of you might be denying it’s real and another part of you might want to talk it out and fix it.
Compromising or settling is never a good move. By immediately stopping all contact with your ex, you open the door to healing. Don’t talk yourself back into trying again or convince yourself you’ve learned from your mistakes and this time it will work. It won’t.
If you keep in contact with your ex, here are three walls you are building around yourself.
Wall One: You Won’t Have the Means to Heal
You know you are going to have to go through the emotions when you face a breakup. Remind yourself frequently these feelings will eventually dissipate. When you are focused on reaching out to touch your ex, it’s impossible for you to heal.
If you are trying to put out a fire, you don’t add more wood!
No contact forces yourself to heal and get on with your life, no matter how tough that seems in the moment. You will have no choice but to face your difficult feelings, and that’s the only route to getting your life back on track.
The sooner you get yourself in healing mode, the faster you are going to feel good about yourself and life.
Wall Two: Negative Energy Will Dictate Your Life
This one is a little more difficult to spot. If you are still in contact with your ex, you are continuing to give your energy to your past relationship, and that’s not useful for you any way you look at it.
That’s sort of like putting money into a closed bank account. What’s the point?
Every second you spend communicating or even thinking about your ex is wasted energy. Never mind the fact you need as much energy as you can muster in order to move forward to bigger and better things.
Wall Three: Living in Dreamland
The sooner you accept the fact your relationship is over, the better. You can never get back what you had, no matter how much you try and tell yourself you can. The relationship is damaged goods.
If you continue to avoid the no-contact rule, a part of you is living in La-La Land, and that’s never a good thing. This opens the door to living off the good moments, and it won’t take long before you convince yourself there is a chance you will get back together. You will focus on the one or two positive things instead of the ten zillion things that led to your relationship failure.
Get off this roller coaster before it leaves the station.
Wall Four: Reliving Past Mistakes
Rinse and repeat is exactly what you’ll get if you decide to keep in contact with your ex-partner. One of the hardest issues in a breakup is the hurt party starts to take the blame and believe they can fix things.
Try looking at a broken relationship as a chance to learn and grow yourself—an opportunity to gain strength and ensure your next relationship is the one that’s going to work. At least throw that out to the universe.
Tell yourself if you try and get back with your ex, you’re going to feel the same hurts you are already all too familiar with. If you are still connected with your ex on any level, there is zero chance you can truly move on.
Thinking about your fears and hurts from the past isn’t going to get you to that happy place.
Wall Five: Can’t Fall in Love
If you are still contacting your ex, you erase your chances of falling in love again. It’s morally wrong to date someone else if you are still involved on any level with your ex. That just means you are still thinking there might be a chance or you wouldn’t be doing it!
Use the no-contact rule so you open the door at some point to letting in your perfect match.
Final Thoughts
Breakups are emotionally exhausting and, in some cases, totally devastating. It’s even worse when you weren’t expecting it because that forces you to deal with all the painful raw feelings out of the blue.
By understanding the reasoning behind the no-contact rule, you empower yourself to push through the grief of a broken relationship with hope there is light at the end of the tunnel.
When you are mentally prepared to deal with a breakup, you set yourself up to better understand what you need to do for you in order to find your happy.
It’s time for you to stand strong and understand you deserve to have what you truly deserve. Now, all you’ve got to do is go get it!
