Read This If You Still Love Your Ex After 5 Years

You still love your ex after 5 years because you still have an attachment to her that you haven’t healed and grown through yet.

It’s a hard truth to swallow, but if you find yourself still longing after your ex 5 years later, you need to make sure it goes down.

That’s the bad news.

But the good news is that you can take what you’re feeling right now and use it as fuel to build a better life for yourself with a partner who loves and values you as much as you still love your ex-girlfriend.

And I’m going to show you how.

5 minutes of your time for a process that can change your life if you follow it. If that sounds like fun to you, sit down, grab a sandwich, turn off the Netflix and let’s break this thing down.

Sometimes The Pain From A Breakup Doesn’t Hit All At Once

If you remember good ole’ Wile E. Coyote, you know that life comes at you fast.

Just like our boy Wile E. Coyote above, about 50% of guys get hit by the emotional freight train right after their breakups.

All the pain hits at once, and just like Wile E, the guys experiencing this get absolutely flattened. I’m talking everything from not being able to sleep, to losing weight, on top of how shitty you feel in general.

If you are one of these guys, your breakup recovery curve looks like this.

You break up, and your happiness falls off a cliff really quick, but once you hit the bottom you bounce back relatively quickly. You reach the same level of happiness you were at before the breakup and that is that.

But there’s also a lot of guys where it doesn’t hit right away. You might even feel better for a couple of weeks, to a couple of months before it all comes crashing down.

This is about 30% of guys. As you can see from the graph, once it eventually hits you, you tend to bottom out for a little bit longer before you eventually rebound and start feeling better.

But then there are the guys that never quite get over their ex-girlfriends. This is about 20% of men.

If it’s 5 years on and you still can’t get over your ex-girlfriend, you fall in this group.

There’s nothing wrong with that because…

It Takes Time To Get Over Your Ex, And Everyone’s Journey Is Different

Back when I started Men’s Breakup I took a survey of over 100 guys to see how long it took the average guy to get over a breakup from a long-term relationship.

I was expecting the answer to be around 2-3 years to fully get over everything.

The answer ended up being almost exactly 2.5 years (the exact answer was 2.38 years).

But here’s the thing, no relationship is average. Every relationship is different, and I went back to the data from that study to prove it.

Around 1 in 5 of the guys who responded told me that it took them over 5 years to get over their exes completely.

So you’re not alone.

Plus, no two guys handle a breakup the same way. If you’re a more emotional guy, it can be a long and drawn-out process.

And guess what? That’s okay! Going through the process of recognizing and making peace with your emotions will make you a better man.

There might be other things you have to deal with that make this take time. Maybe you’re deployed. Maybe you’re focused on building a business. Maybe you’re a father.

Whatever it is, it’s okay. If you practice what I’m about to show you, it doesn’t matter what your situation is.

Healing From A Painful Breakup Requires Growth

Now here’s the secret that most “gurus” who promise you a quick-fix don’t want to tell you.

The harder your breakup is, the more opportunities you have to grow and improve your life.

When it’s tough, you get tough.

So if you’ve been suffering for a long time, rejoice because once you tackle this head-on, you’re going to be able to feel the difference.

Getting over a bad breakup is a physical, mental, and spiritual experience.

It’s a chance for you to re-evaluate your life systems, and refocus on the things you really want.

The sooner you do this and get very clear about what you want in life, the sooner you start feeling better.

Now let me warn you, the tactics I’m about to show you require work. There’s no magic “hack” to getting over an ex-girlfriend. Anyone who tells you that is lying.

But this works – if you go into it with an open mind.

1: Make The Decision To Let Go

As a man, everything you do in life is your choice. It might not feel like it, but you control everything in your life.

You can exercise that power by making the decision to let go of your ex. You need to consciously decide that you’re going to let her go.

To do that, you’ll want to start by finding the things that are still hurting you.

2: Find The Root Of Your Pain

Your second goal is to find what emotions you still feel towards your ex-girlfriend and clarify why you feel them.

For example:

1. I’m still angry at her because she cheated and then left me with no explanation.
2. I still miss her because I’m convinced that I’ll never meet someone better.
3. I feel sad when I think about her because I still love her more than anyone else I’ve met
4. I feel jealous when I see her with another guy because I still want her back

Again, these are just examples. You’re probably thinking about her right now, yeah?

Write those thoughts down and identify the beliefs that are causing them.

These are the reasons you want to let her go so you can go back to being happy.

3: Change How You Respond

Remember: you control everything in your life. You can’t change what happened with your ex. But what you can change is what you believe, and how you react to things.

Instead of telling yourself “I’ll never meet someone better” swap that out with another, more positive thought.

You don’t need to go 0-100 on this either and tell yourself something like “I’m going to meet Kate Upton tomorrow”

Unless you are, in which case…

You can simply switch it with something like “I haven’t met someone better yet”.

That simple change in wording changes your whole perspective. And the first step towards changing your life is changing how you look at things.

When you change your perspective, the things you look at change. Let that sink in.

4: Clarify Your Purpose

If your life sucks, you’re naturally going to look back in time to when things were better.

If you want to let go of the past, your tomorrow has to be better than your yesterday.

The first step towards building a better tomorrow is clarifying what you want that tomorrow to look like.

I’ll write about that at some point if you guys want to hear it – but honestly, the best way to clarify your purpose is to pick up your copy of a book called Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy. Go read it, and build out your vision.

The reason clarifying your purpose is so important is because it gives you a framework to build your life around. Your purpose helps you make sense of where you’ve been, as well as where you’re going.

In all seriousness, when you’re working towards something that you find meaningful, it’s a lot easier to stay focused on the now. And guess what happens when you do that?

Your life gets better.

When your life gets better, you stop thinking about how things were while you get to enjoy how things ARE.

5: See It Through To The End (Be Patient)

Nothing happens overnight.

Once you get the wheels rolling by clarifying your purpose, it can take time for your reactions to your ex to change.

You need to build up momentum for the worst of it to fade. For some guys that might take a few weeks, but more likely it will take a few months or longer.

Granted you’ve been suffering this for 5 years. I’m sure you already know how to be patient.

If you want to accelerate your results, however…

Bonus: Date New Women

Everyone that’s had a beer here, raise your hand.

Now I’m willing to bet that those of you who raised your hand have had more than one beer. Because let’s be real guys, it’s never just ONE beer.

If you didn’t raise your hand, you’re just going to have to use your imagination for this thought experiment.

Imagine you’re 25 years old and the only beer you’ve ever had is plain Bud Lite. To you, beer means the yellow piss-water we know as Bud Light.

Your entire concept of beer is based on Bud Light.

Then one day, your buddy throws you a Miller Light and because of your duty to not bitch about the beer your buddy has on hand, you drink it.

And suddenly, you realize that Miller Light tastes a lot like Bud Light.

Ok, you tell yourself. You add Miller Light to your beer list.

Three weeks later you’ve expanded your pampered palate to include such delights as:

• Natty Light (And an obscene amount of chili-cheese dogs)
• Keystone Light
• Busch Light (After growing out your mullet and watching a few too many NASCAR races)
• Pabst Blue Ribbon Light
• Old Milwaukee Light (If you know, you know)

At this point, you’ve tried a lot of beers, but your whole concept of beer is limited to light beer.

You still prefer Bud Light even though you’ve tried all kinds of other light beers because it’s the one you’ve had the most time with.

If someone asks you about beers, the only thing you can tell them about is your experience with light beer.

Even though there are hundreds of other types of beer that all taste very different. In fact, many of them may taste better than light beer to you.

But light beer is all you know.

Until one fateful night where you and the boys find yourself out and about at night.

And then you try a Guinness. A wonderful, frothy Guinness.

At that moment, Guinness becomes your new favorite beer.

And though Bud Light may still hold a place in your heart, you find it easy to choose Guinness whenever you’re at the pub.

Guinness becomes your tomorrow even though Bud Light was your yesterday.

See where I’m going with this?

If you’ve only ever really dated your ex-girlfriend, it’s going to be a lot easier to get hung up on her because you haven’t seen any alternatives.

The same is true if you’ve dated a few women, but only for a short time. Same goes for if these women were like her.

Having new experiences with new women is one of the quickest ways to move on from your ex.

Do that, and I’ll raise a Bud Light (Lime) to your success.

Talk soon my friend,

Coach Jack

PS: Need help processing the breakup so you can get back to feeling like yourself again? Click here to learn how I can help you.