There are a few undeniable facts of life: the sky is blue, water is wet, and breakups suck. Even if it's for good, healthy reasons, breaking up can be incredibly heartbreaking and difficult. Because of how hard it can be to get over a broken relationship, professionals and everyday people have suggested several tips to help you move forward. However, there is one particular tip that many of the brokenhearted stand by.
People online suggest one way to get over a breakup is to do activities that you wanted to try or indulge in that your ex-partner wouldn’t do with you. This exercise can remind you what life can look like and be like post-relationship. It could remind you of a great pastime you once had or introduce you to a new interest that could help you form a new community.
@healbreakup Tips from another user. Hope they help! #breakupglowup #breakup
In the Reddit subforum r/LifeProTips, folks shared the post-breakup activities that helped them experience life without their ex:
“My ex f**king hated lemon pepper chicken and was so ridiculously judgemental over people who enjoyed it,” wrote one commenter. “I eat lemon pepper chicken at least once every two weeks now. That sh*t slaps and I DON'T EVEN CARE ABOUT WHAT ANYONE'S GOTTA SAY.”
“My ex hated metal as a genre, so I never played it out loud at home,” mentioned another. “I didn't realize how much I missed it until the first day she left our flat.
“I binge ate salads because my ex didn't really eat anything that didn't go from freezer to oven, and I went out to more social events,” wrote another person. “It was rewarding, helped me feel unstuck after a long, terrible relationship, and I got so much more confidence back.”
@inverness1106 After breaking up with my ex I don’t have to share anymore 👌🏾 #breakup #jokes #diddydidit #singlelife #life #tiktok #capcut #itsmylife
“I did this after my breakup. I went hiking, joined a pottery class, and even tried karaoke,” wrote another commenter. “Honestly, freedom never felt this good.”
While this seems to be helpful, is this behavior healthy? The experts that reached out to GOOD tend to agree that doing activities that your ex wouldn’t do with you can help a broken heart’s healing process.
“No matter if it’s to go out and dance, travel on a budget, sit at pubs and just read a book, or go shopping, by doing what you love but didn’t do because your ex didn’t enjoy it, you can rebuild the relation to yourself and get quality time out of the breakup quite short on,” says relationship therapist and author Sofie Roos. “It also helps to create new good memories, which gives you great energy and hope as well as beautiful moments that’s not connected to the ex-relationship, which of all are things that help you move on.”
“Loneliness is a major amplifier of post-breakup pain,” says licensed family and marriage therapist Daniel Moultrie. “This strategy directly attacks that isolation, reminding you that your support system is intact and vibrant.”
So, doing activities your ex wouldn’t participate in is healthy. However, the professionals warn that it may not be the end-all, be-all answer to remove the heartache.
“Doing activities that your ex wouldn't do is a useful pursuit, but be prepared to feel a range of feelings associated with these new behaviors,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Molly Burrets. “They may bring you a sense of freedom, relief, and possibility—but they may also trigger feelings of sadness as you reflect on the fact that you're building a new life that doesn't include them.”
“It’s always important to know that advice like this is never the gospel and may not work for everyone,” added Moultrie. “A breakup is an individual process, and no advice is a one-size-fits-all solution."
@moniquexramirez id say that breakup saved me 🤍 so proud of myself <3 #fyp
“As long as the activities you engage in are a part of your healing, rather than a way to avoid your feelings, they are likely to gradually help you feel aligned into your new chapter,” Dr. Burrets concluded.
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.