"Ending a relationship isn’t as cut and dry as we’d like it to be. Wouldn’t that be nice, though? To come to terms with what didn’t work, be grateful for the good times, and move forward with what we learned? Waking up and starting anew would be the dream, but the truth is that it can take months, if not years, to pick yourself up and start again. And once you do, you might still find yourself reliving relationships of the past, even if you’re in a new one that you’re happy with. I hate to say it, but that comes with the territory of dating. You date, you break up, you live, you learn, and you still shudder at the thought of that one time your ex made you feel like you weren’t enough. You’re not over it, and I don’t blame you.
Whether your breakup was amicable or not, some emotions are hard to shake and can affect the way we move forward with new people. But is there ever a way to truly let go of the feelings you’re harboring? Or do leftover negative feelings, like mistrust and insecurity, just create the same problems over and over again in new relationships? If you feel like your past relationships are getting in the way of your new one, you’re not alone. Luckily for you, there are ways you can move past it so you can foster a healthy, happy relationship.
Reframe how you think about closure
“Get closure,” to me, is annoying advice. It usually suggests that you do something like meet up with your ex to talk through all of your problems, and I don’t know how you feel about that, but I personally think it sounds horrific. (Plus, I can’t imagine your new sig-o would be cool with it anyway.) The idea that you need to close the chapter to move on holds some weight, though. It just doesn’t have to require a cringe-worthy, frustrating conversation with your ex.
In a podcast episode of Reimagining Love, host Alexandra H. Solomon, PhD, explains that when you think about closure as “doneness,” you may never truly feel like you got it. Instead, think about it as “wholeness.” Essentially, Solomon explains that “closure is a process that begins and ends with you.” You are whole now, and you were whole before. Your past partner didn’t take anything from you, so you don’t need anything from them in order to move forward. This reframing can help you feel capable of putting your full self into your new relationship, even if part of you still needs healing.
“You are whole now, and you were whole before. Your past partner didn’t take anything from you, so you don’t need anything from them in order to move forward.”
Take responsibility for how you let past relationships affect you
It’s so easy to think about what someone else did to sever a relationship rather than consider what we might have done. No one’s perfect. Not them, and not us. Recognizing our imperfections (AKA our humanness) and taking responsibility for our faults can help us let go of the past and be better people and partners in the future. For example, I once dated someone who wanted to keep our relationship hush-hush, and even though I didn’t like that, I went along with it because I liked him. I didn’t want to ruffle the feathers. But you know what happened? I started to feel like I wasn’t enough, and I internally questioned why he didn’t want other people to know he was interested in me. This made me upset with him, but in hindsight, it was me who allowed it.
Part of my insecurity in new relationships after that was due to something that I allowed in the past. I had to take responsibility for this, find my voice, and start standing up for myself in new relationships. Otherwise, I would continue to bring insecurities into new relationships where they might not belong. Sometimes, this is as simple as taking a hard look in the mirror and getting honest with yourself. Other times, it may take the help of a trusted friend or professional to help you see a different perspective and work through whatever you’re harboring.
Voice your fears
It is not unreasonable to fear that what ended your last relationship will end your new one, especially if you’ve experienced a toxic relationship or been betrayed (maybe you were lied to or cheated on). Those are real fears! But they can seriously affect the health of your new relationship. For example, you could be with the most loving, supportive partner who only has eyes for you and still get worried when they go out with their friends without you. Will they meet someone new, come home late, and lie to you about what they were really doing? I’ve had these thoughts, whether they were reasonable or not. But you can’t have a healthy relationship like that, and your poor partner who respects you doesn’t deserve for you to think they are doing something wrong automatically.
“Your new relationship is a whole new story. Allow yourself to experience it differently.”
The solution to this: Voice your fears. Whether you choose to talk to a friend, therapist, or your partner about what you are experiencing is up to you, but you have to get it out into the open. Recognizing them as fears, not hard and fast truths, can help you work through them and not let them affect your new relationship. Plus, the more you keep your fears to yourself, the bigger they will become on the inside, and that will only create a larger, more miserable issue.
Allow yourself to change how you experience relationships
You know what they say—comparison is the thief of joy. Don’t compare your new relationship to your last, and don’t compare your new partner to your ex either. This is a new relationship with a new partner. Your story is fresh. I know that recognizing this is easier said than done, but hear me when I say that if you spend your time comparing, you’ll just find yourself reliving your old relationship over and over again. You’ll miss out on the good of what you have now.
Maybe you’ve been burned a lot in the past, and you just assume it’s going to happen again. Or maybe you were with someone who you thought was the one and then life got in the way, like they had to move for their job or your schedules just didn’t align. I’m not going to promise you that this won’t happen again, but going in with these assumptions and worries doesn’t serve your new relationship. Your new relationship is a whole new story. Allow yourself to experience it differently, and you might just find that it’s exactly what you’ve been looking for.
Hailey Bouche, Associate Editor
As an Associate Editor for The Everygirl, Hailey Bouche oversees, writes, and edits content across various categories on the site. From the pitching stage through publishing, she works alongside the team to ensure that the content that our readers see every day is inspiring, relatable, and timely.