How to Get Over Your Ex, Heal Your Broken Heart and Find a Better Man

If you are a woman dating after 40, it’s likely you had at least a few breakups that have left you feeling brokenhearted. So…how DO you get over your ex?

Maybe you’re going through a breakup now. Maybe you broke up years ago. Maybe you’re still aching over that intense month-long “thing” you had with the hot guy, that ended abruptly when he disappeared.

Is there some man in your past who seems to be haunting you? The one that got away, or the one who you wish you could have back? You still care about him. You can’t figure out what you did wrong. You’re angry. You can’t shake the sadness.

You just can’t seem to move on.

I don’t care how strong or independent or confident you are, breakups can hurt like hell.

There is a lot of practical advice on how to get over a breakup, most which I agree with. Block him on Facebook, take a trip with your friends, remove his personal items from your home. These are all good ways to help you stop feeling the emotional pain. I recommend you take these actions, but they only help you avoid. They don’t help you truly get over your ex and heal.

I don’t care how strong or independent or confident you are, breakups can hurt like hell.

If you are going to move on to create a happier future – one where you can fearlessly love and be loved – you have to do some icky, scary work. You need to go deep. You need to learn from your experience.

Yes, I’m talking about digging in and reliving it – all of it. The meeting, the relationship and the breakup. The joy, the pain, the confusion…the feelings. It can be messy. It will challenge you. But I promise, this is what leads you to new love.

Almost every woman I know, both friends and women I coach, have some unresolved past relationship junk that is hovering in the background of her life.

What did I do wrong?

Why didn’t he want me?

How could I have made such a bad mistake?

Why can’t I forget him?

Will anyone ever love me?

Wow. These are some powerful questions! You can see why, when they go unanswered, we can feel unworthy, insecure, unlovable, even hopeless.

CLICK to Open Your Heart to FEARLESS Loving

There’s also the anger.

We have trouble trusting men.

Or even worse, we can’t trust ourselves.

If you are going to move on to create a happier future – one where you can fearlessly love and be loved – you have to do some icky, scary work.

Until these feelings get acknowledged. and the dynamics of your relationship get processed in a way that helps you understand your experience and learn from it, you are sure to keep repeating your patterns or simply remaining single.

Here is a summary of the three actions you can take to help you get over your ex, heal your broken heart, and love again.

1.  Choose to See the Relationship as a Positive

There are an endless number of steps on the way to your forever, grownup love story. The lonely super single days, the bad and boring dates, the fun dates, the childish mistakes you make feeling loved and, yes, feeling like your heart is broken.

Every one of these steps are rungs on your ladder to love. You can choose to look at them as failures and wasted time. Or you can choose to see them as requisite experiences leading up to your life’s ultimate desire.

The first step in getting over your ex is to agree to open your heart and mind so you can look for the positive in your experience. When you do, I promise you’ll find it.

2.  Learn How to Be a Better Man-Picker  

This man and this partnership wasn’t right for you. Ultimately it didn’t make you happy. (Understatement?) I’d even venture to say that, once you look closely, you’ll find you weren’t too happy while in the relationship.

One of the most positive aspects of your breakup can be that you learn how to make better choices and take better care of yourself. To do that, you need to start with knowing – really knowing – the FEELINGS you must have in order to be happy in a relationship.

Let me say that again: You want to know how YOU need to feel in order to be happy.

How you feel is the bar by which you can truly measure the value of your relationship with a man…especially one that you want to last a lifetime. It’s not about what he DOES. It’s not about how much he makes you laugh. It’s not even about how he feels about you.

This can be hard. Many women don’t even know what we want or need. We’ve never articulated it. We’ve never allowed ourselves to ask that question.

Instead, we go by some general sense, an intuition, a day to day thing. Today I’m happy and feel good. I like this about him, I don’t like that. We’re getting along. We’re not. He wants me so I guess I want him.

When I coach women in my 1-1 coaching programs, we work on my 6-Step Find Hope and Find Him system. Step 3 of that system is “Who is He: Getting Past My List.

Basically, the work you do with me here helps you “fix your picker.” It helps you understand the feelings that are important for you to have in order to feel fulfilled and whole in a relationship and then identify your must-haves.

Here are just a few of the common examples of what comes up for women:

I want to feel safe.

I want to feel special.

I want to feel understood.

You see? When you look at your relationship based on how you feel with him (and, btw, when you’re not with him) things can look quite different. This will be even clearer in your next step.

CLICK to Open Your Heart to FEARLESS Loving

3.  Process and Reflect on the Distinct Parts of Your Relationship

Relationships are made up three distinct elements:

#1 You

#2 Him

#3 The relationship

When you explore each of these elements separately, you can expose some really juicy learning.

The purpose of some exploration isn’t to find out who was right or wrong, or what mistakes you made. The purpose is to take a thoughtful, truthful look at this life experience, grab the learning, and forge forward in your journey to lasting, grownup love.

Sister, if you have a man who’s haunting you or a relationship you can’t seem to leave behind, I want to help you get to your positive takeaways…and move the hell on!

The questions here will guide you to clarity about how you can be a better partner, choose a better partner and better nurture a relationship.

And here is a biggy: You will also get clear on who and what it is that you are truly mourning. (This may surprise you, in a delightful way.)

If you feel reluctant to revisit the past, I get it. It may feel like you’re finally getting over him, and the idea of dredging it up again feels pretty sucky. But like I said earlier, it’s not enough to stop feeling the emotional pain because you’ve learned how to block it.

You want to heal!

With healing, you will see the positive in this relationship. You will be able to use the experience to ultimately make your life better. You will be so much closer to your grownup love story!

You can let go of the past and use the positive side of heartbreak to move on with lightness, clarity and a fresh start.

Click here to get your worksheet: How to Get Over Your Ex, So You Can Learn, Let Go and Love (for Real)

I’d love to hear from you. What comes up for you as read this post and as you work the process? What have you learned about yourself, him and your relationship? Let me know by leaving me a comment!

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