How to Forget Someone and Move On From Heartbreak

When it comes to romantic relationships, the best and the worst things often go hand in hand.

At your happiest, you can believe in the power of love and how two people can be destined for each other. But when your heart gets broken, you can also end up desperately trying to figure out how to forget someone and move on as quickly as possible.

While it’s not always easy to deal with heartbreak, you can still give yourself a chance at a smooth road to recovery when you learn to understand your emotions and develop healthy coping mechanisms.

How Long Does Heartbreak Last​?

One of the first things broken-hearted people usually ask is how to get over a breakup fast.

When you’re forced to let go of someone you once thought was your forever, you want to find out how to stop the pain right away. You don’t want to keep on remembering everything that happened, both the good and the bad, because of how much those memories are hurting you.

But in reality, no one really knows how long a heartbreak is supposed to last.

There is no formula that dictates how long it takes for a broken heart to heal or how much time people need to accept the fact that they can’t be with the person they love anymore.

Nevertheless, it does help if you have a good grasp of your feelings and situation. If you’re aware of what went wrong and why your love wasn’t enough to have a successful relationship, then healing can be a little easier, if not faster.

A Broken Heart Can Come in Different Forms

Learning how to forget someone begins with you examining your motivations and looking into the reason for your heartbreak.

Instead of just wishing for your memories of someone to be erased, you have to get to a place where the thought of them no longer hurts you because you’ve been successfully healed.

It’s important for you to remember that not all broken hearts are created equal. To come to terms with what happened and begin moving on, you need to confront all the things that went wrong and what lessons you can learn from the whole experience.

You still love them

Case #1: How to Forget Someone You Still Have Feelings For

A common possibility when figuring out how long to get over a relationship breakup is when you’re dealing with unresolved feelings.

It’s difficult to handle a heartbreak when your heart still yearns for the person you clearly still love. It can be even worse if there’s no closure and the separation was one-sided, with you as the one who wanted to stay and keep trying.

Now, you want to forget your ex because constantly remembering that they don’t love you anymore makes it hard to live your life. You’re also banking on the idea that to erase them from your mind means you can also erase the feelings.

Sadly, that’s often not what ends up happening.

Instead of forgetting, your denial will make your emotions resurface all at once and overwhelm you. It can even make the recovery process longer and that much harder.

You may not be able to control your feelings and fall out of love with your ex right away, but you can give yourself the best fighting chance. It starts not by suppressing your feelings but by acknowledging them and allowing yourself to feel the love you have, along with the grief and heartache that come with it.

With this acceptance, you can recognize the best way to move forward. It usually has to do with not blaming yourself for feeling the way you feel, but by admitting to yourself that what you had is really over.

You can then focus on looking for other outlets for your emotions, like strengthening your connections with other people and taking care of yourself.

Yes, you may still love your ex, but that love will no longer control your thoughts and actions.

They caused you so much pain

Case #2: How to Forget Someone Who Hurt You

Another reason why people with broken hearts keep on asking how to forget someone is because the person they loved deliberately hurt them.

Sometimes, the reaction to this kind of situation is anger. You’ll want to take revenge and hurt them the way they hurt you.

But sometimes, you can also just end up wanting to distance yourself and forget everything that ever happened.

Just like when you’re dealing with still being in love with your ex, unresolved grief and betrayal can also hold you back from a healthy recovery. You can have a hard time moving on because you just buried the pain instead of acknowledging it.

Exacting vengeance is, of course, never the answer, but neither is running away from what happened and wishing for everything to just go away, pain and memories alike.

What you should do instead is face the pain and learn to forgive. You should forgive and stop blaming yourself so that you can someday find it in your heart to forgive the one who hurt you.

Only then can you truly come to terms with what they did to you.

They never loved you back

Case #3: How to Forget Someone You Love Who Doesn’t Love You

It’s one thing to ask about how long it takes to get over a breakup. It’s another matter when there isn't even any breakup to get over.

That’s the distinct kind of struggle when you want to move on from someone who never really felt the same way about you. You’re caught between trying to justify your heartbreak and knowing that the person you love doesn’t really owe you anything.

The urge to figure out how to forget someone you have unrequited love for is understandable because of the shame that comes with your feelings. Compared to all the other things you can do, letting them go entirely seems like the most logical thing to do.

But before you get there, you still have to process your emotions properly.

You need to accept that there's nothing wrong with loving someone who doesn’t love you back. You’re not a bad person for how you feel, and you also deserve to receive the same kind of love you’re willing to give.

Just because your feelings aren’t reciprocated doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve to be expressed, even if it’s sometimes just for your benefit.

As long as you don’t make your love the other person’s responsibility, you’re still allowed to feel what you feel.

So How Long Does It Really Take to Get Over a Breakup?

The fact is, no one can really tell you how long you're supposed to deal with the broken heart that comes from someone leaving you or not loving you anymore.

There are also no guaranteed ways of learning how to forget someone in exactly the method and timeframe you want. It will all depend on the factors that led to your heartbreak and how committed you are to actually move on in a healthy manner.

You don’t want the memory of someone to keep on hurting you? Then you better be prepared to go through the process of coming to terms with all the pain and grief and heartache that they caused you.

It’s the only way to come out on the other side stronger and wiser, both as a person and as a lover.

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