The Real Reason You’re Not Over Your Ex That You Won’t Admit To (Until Now)

8:30AM Saturday morning you awake to a migraine and pizza taste in your mouth. Last night got wild. Too wild. Too much tequila. Phone? Check. Wallet? Check. Keys? Check. Phew! Looks like you made it back in one piece. You pick up your phone to confirm you didn’t Instagram anything embarrassing or call your mom again. Nothing. Great.

Just when you start to think you’re out of the woods, you decide to review your text messages from last night. Then you see it. You texted him. Him. 3:22AM. “Hey”. No response. Read receipt at 7:30AM. Shit. What were you thinking? You thought you deleted his number. Why didn’t he respond?

They say it takes half the time you dated someone to get over them. For example, if you date someone for a year, it should take about 6 months to move on. You, on the other hand, know this just isn’t true. You’ve waiting months and months and yet you still can’t stop thinking about your EX. Even when you tell yourself you’ve moved on, you get reminded by small things like restaurants, smells, movies or street names.

You’re just not quite ready to forget the way you felt with him. Hand-holding at movies, cuddling at the park, cooking dinner together, laughing at each-others jokes. You miss good morning texts. You miss picking up the phone when you’ve had a bad day and knowing you can call him. Sure he wasn’t perfect, but you keep telling yourself that being with someone flawed is better than being alone.

Remember Christmas morning when you were a child? Remember how excited you were? Whether or not we like it, that feeling is never coming back. Not in the same way. The more you try, the worse off you’re going to be.

The feelings you had with you EX are gone. You’re not the same person anymore. He’s not the same either. Sure, you can drunk text him. Maybe he’ll respond. Maybe he won’t. You can try to fix things. You can try to date him again. You can try to relive all the moments you had together. You think that maybe, if you try hard enough, you can get that feeling back. You’re wrong. And you’re better than that. Here’s the secret: just because you don’t feel that giddy excitement Christmas morning, doesn’t mean you can’t find other ways to be excited.

Find other ways to be excited. Be excited to date someone who’s completely not your type. Move. Find a new hobby. Explore a new part of the city. Ask a friend out for coffee who you’ve been meaning to get to know better. Be excited because one day you’re going to be with someone who gives you a kind of happiness you’ve never experienced. Someone who completes you. You’re going to look back and realize your EX could’ve never given this to you. Be excited you’re not with him anymore. Trust that the world has a plan.

Time can do a lot of things. It can sooth and dull.

When you start to think about the past, or the way your past made you feel, stop. Instead think about the future. Think about how amazing it is going to be. How amazing you’re going to feel. Think about how one day you are going to look back and laugh at how long it took you to get over this one.

And chill out with the pizza and tequila. You only have one body.