Those posts that Brandy and “X” shared really is great advice, especially that last one there at the top.

John, have you thought about doing counseling again? Maybe with a different counselor than you tried last time? I can’t remember if you said you were going again or not. You are definitely still ruminating on her almost daily, it seems, and you’re also still telling yourself things are hard that are really only hard because you keep telling yourself is hard… and I can say that because I’ve been through it too. My ex just contacted me randomly on Thanksgiving to say Happy Thanksgiving and that he thought of me. He didn’t even tell me Happy Birthday earlier this year. haha. I could’ve started overthinking/analyzing and let that put me into a spiral of “why did he bother contacting me? what is he thinking? blah blah,” but you just kind of have to not let yourself read into things like that because it really doesn’t matter if it’s not an “I miss you and want to talk about getting back together.”

Definitely DON’T contact her at all until you are completely over things. Otherwise, you really are likely to set yourself back, just like you said. It’s really important to keep resetting your focus on your current life at the moment, which she is not a part of. You will hurt a lot less when you do that, so you just have to make the decision to do it and be strong and determined about it.  I thought the month of October was going to be rougher than normal because that was the 1-year anniversary of when we broke up, but, thankfully, I made the decision early on in the month to just let go and focus on the now, and the whole rest of the month went really smoothly. Your holidays can go smoothly too, but you have to make the decision and then be strong about sticking to it.