The Tug

The hardest part of a breakup is the tug. Those times you find yourself just sitting in bed watching TV, or walking down the street on a random afternoon, and suddenly can think of nothing else but the other person's absence from your life. That's the tug.

There are a few things you can do when you feel it. You can distract yourself and get busier. You can focus on the negatives about him. Or you can read what goes through other people's minds when they think about their exes on websites like this:

I still think we’re perfect for each other, even though I broke up with you. Where’s the sense in that?

I worked in a job I hated for eight years to support you. You repaid me by sleeping with your co-worker. I told you later that I’d lost my faith in people. The saddest part was, I hadn’t lost my faith in you.

Once that one person has become everything to you, the struggle is to take them off the pedestal and make them seem just like everybody else again. And believe me, it's a struggle. But seeing other people struggling with the same thing can help put your pain in perspective. When you think of how many people break up on any given day, and how your other past relationships have all evolved from regrets/mistakes/failures to just memories, you can give yourself faith that this, too, shall pass. And you will eventually let go of the rope.