jade green, just know that you are not alone. Breakups are so hard and it takes a lot of time and patience with yourself to be able to move on. Don’t beat yourself up for not being over it yet – it’s only been two months and he has been in your life for five years. Don’t feel guilty for still being attached when he has turned to someone new – you are still healing and becoming stronger.

First things first: block all ways for you to contact and see him. You’ve got to break off the part of you that identifies with him. There’s a quote from another Tiny Buddha article that I think holds true universally – you cannot write the next chapter of your life when you’re still rereading the last one. Let your emotions wash over you, and if what results is a breakdown, do it! Cry and let the grief of what has past out of your system. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but your separation when it happened is what is best for the both of you. Grief hurts so much, I know, but those are the same feelings that will ultimately heal you.

Don’t put yourself in his shoes and think about what he must be feeling – not only is there no way that you can really know how he is feeling, but the things that you tell yourself are just making it harder for you to love yourself because inherent in the phrasing is this feeling that there was something wrong with you, that you did the damage of what your relationship has become, and this guilt for not being over someone who has hurt you deeply. It’s okay to not be over someone who has become hurtful and I really believe that it’s even harder to get over someone who has betrayed/lied to/cheated on you because you must mourn the person you thought he was, the type of person who would never hurt you but has ended up causing you unspeakable pain. You doubt yourself and think that you should have known what you absolutely could never have known. All I can say is to be patient with yourself, journal, FEEL, don’t think. You are so strong, and every day you are a step closer to healing, even if it doesn’t feel like it, because every day is one more day that you have lived without the person you never thought you would have to live without.