Life can seem pretty grim in the days after a relationship ends. While it’s normal to feel this way, know that learning how to be happy after a breakup is possible. You won’t always be stuck with feelings of loss, pain, and sadness. Over time, you may even come to enjoy being single.
Right now, though, you probably just want to feel happy, and that’s completely understandable.
Although feeling happy after a breakup might seem impossible, learning to seek joy again is important to the healing process. While the road back to happiness is different for everyone, there are some helpful strategies you can lean on to guide your journey.
Explore and Embrace Your Feelings
Before anything else, it’s important to understand your feelings after a breakup. Suppressing your emotions only causes harm in the long run and can leave you feeling miserable. By contrast, getting in touch with your emotions and learning to embrace them and process them helps you move forward so you can start finding happiness.
Exploring your feelings might mean coming face-to-face with some negative emotions, and this is okay. Allow yourself to grieve your lost relationship. Let yourself feel sad or angry about the way your breakup happened. By acknowledging and feeling these emotions, you give yourself permission to move beyond them.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean you should dwell on negative emotions. Instead, use tools like meditation or journaling to process what you’re feeling, accept it, and then let go. Prolonged sadness or anger after a breakup can lead to negative health effects like anxiety, high blood pressure, and headaches. Learning to move past these feelings is essential for both your health and happiness.
Start Seeking Closure and Looking Forward
You don’t have to pretend like your relationship never existed to be happy after a breakup. In fact, you shouldn’t. Chances are, you learned a lot of valuable lessons while with your ex and grew as a person during your relationship. However, it’s important to put some distance between you and your ex after a split to give yourself room to heal.
Closure is an important part of any breakup, and not getting it can stop you from feeling happy. This doesn’t mean you should rush to the coffee shop for a chat when you miss your ex. Reconnecting like this only tends to prolong the pain of a breakup and can leave you with fresh wounds all over again.
Instead, think of ways you can find closure independently. One way is by writing a letter to your ex with all the things you wish you said (and not sending it). Putting your thoughts on paper can help your pent-up emotions escape and bring closure to your relationship.
As you look forward and seek acceptance, remember that even unsuccessful relationships can be a positive. Research shows that breakups often serve as a catalyst for even greater happiness than before, since you walk away with more life experience and (hopefully) some excellent new coping strategies.
Practice Self-Care (aka Treat Yourself)
The key to being happy after a breakup starts with taking care of yourself. Yes, this means showering and putting down the box of chocolates to eat a healthy meal.
Self-care can be one of the hardest things to do after a breakup, especially if you feel like you don’t deserve it. However, partaking in the things you enjoy not only boosts your mood but can also help you heal.
So, rather than letting yourself wallow in sadness, take the far more enjoyable approach and treat yourself. A few excellent ideas include:
- Taking yourself out to a nice dinner
- Getting a haircut
- Taking a yoga or exercise class
- Listening to your favorite music
- Redecorating part of your house
- Shopping for a new outfit
- Going on a trip
- Spending time with friends and family
- Enjoying a day at the spa
- Reading a great book
- Going for a walk in nature
Invest in Your Healing
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Start your journey to post-breakup happiness now with a free trial, and let Breakup Buddy be your helping hand.
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