If you are missing/have missed your ex-girlfriend recently, this article is for you.
In it, I’m going to help you stop being paralyzed by how much you miss her. I’ll show you the real reasons why you miss her, as well as what you can do about it right now to start feeling better.
Almost every day I get a variation of “I miss her” or “I can’t stop thinking about her” in my email coaching program.
If that’s you, you’re in good company. There’s nothing wrong with missing her.
But, when it gets in the way of you getting your work done, dating new women or just enjoying your life in general, it has to stop.
It All Starts With How You Remember Her
The way you remember your relationship is very different from what your actual relationship was like. She’s not the perfect angel you’re remembering her as.
Before you get angry and tell me how you remember everything perfectly, let me ask you this: do you remember exactly what you were doing at this time yesterday?
Not “Oh I was eating”.
I’m talking about “I was on my 3rd bite of spinach salad, crunching on a garlic crouton while breathlessly watching Nick Folk send the Patriots to 3-5”.
Go ahead, try to remember.
You probably can’t. Most people can’t. Your brain can only remember so much each day, and it’s much easier to remember the general idea than the specific details.
Do you see the problem here?
The longer you are apart from your ex-girlfriend, the more your brain moves away from specific memories to general thoughts.
Over 1-2 months this isn’t a big deal, but as you stretch the time frame out from 6 months to more than a year, a lot of important details get left behind.
Over time you forget how she always wanted you to call her when you were tired, or that she used to drive you nuts with her jealousy. You also aren’t thinking about how she got drunk at brunch that one time and called all your friends losers.
Yeah. I bet you remember now.
As you forget the bad stuff, it’s a lot easier to see your former relationship through rose-colored glasses.
Then all it takes is you to see that hair elastic she left in your room or the painting she got for your wall to get you thinking about her.
Now that you don’t remember as much of the bad stuff, you start thinking about how great she was.
Your brain indulges you in all the happy memories like the vacation you took to Cancun or how she used to put you to sleep by rubbing your head just right.
Now add that to the fact that most people reminisce about things like this several times a week, if not more according to studies.
So not only are you thinking about her a lot, but you’re thinking good things about her.
When you think about it like that, it’s only natural that you’d miss her. Who wouldn’t?
As we’ll talk about a bit later, it’s extremely important to remember the bad things too, because they can help you refocus on the present instead of getting lost in the past.
Most guys I work with overestimate how good things were at first. It’s not to say there weren’t good parts, but the bad parts often get left behind.
Sometimes it can even be taken to the extreme.
But Wait, Jack Why Do I Miss Her When She Treated Me Badly?
Even if she treated you badly, you still dated her. Plus, there are always good things in even the most negative relationships.
At the end of the day, the fact that you miss her isn’t entirely rational.
Maybe she got you wrapped up in her web because of how beautiful she was, even if she was shitty to you. Or maybe she took you in at a dark time and gave you shelter, even if it was with constant barbs.
Guys with limited self-confidence around women or in general will often put up with unacceptable behavior in relationships. Ditto if you don’t have a lot of experience with women.
It can also be the case that you grew up in a negative environment where you didn’t get the love you needed as a child. When you grow up expecting to be mistreated, you can come to equate treating badly with being cared for because it’s what you know.
Remember, at the end of the day, feelings are just feelings. They aren’t rational. If you know she treated you badly and you still miss her anyway, give yourself a break for a little bit.
Because when things aren’t great, it’s much easier to escape to the past.
You Tend To Look Back On Old Memories When Things Aren’t Going Great Right Now
My sensei growing up always used to say “If you’re not looking forward, you’re thinking back”.
He meant it in more of a literal sense, to the point where he’d unexpectedly jump between sparring partners and deliver a flurry of blows. If you weren’t paying attention, you ended up on the mat, racking your brain to remember what happened.
You’re not going to get punched or sidekicked today, but I think you get a general idea.
If you are unhappy with the direction of your life, chances are you are going to be thinking about what you left behind instead of what’s coming next.
We’ve already established that it’s easier to remember the past as better than it was.
If you hate your miserable, soul-sucking job, you’re not going to want to think ahead to another day of paper-pushing and sitting in meetings that could have been emails.
You’re going to think about the job you had before that and how “great” it was.
Even though it was the same paper-pushing bullshit, you just aren’t having it shoved in your face every day like your current job.
The same concept applies to why you miss your ex-girlfriend.
A lot of times I see it where a guy comes to me after he’s been broken up with his ex-girlfriend for 6 months – 1 year and is missing her badly, but hasn’t made any effort to start dating new women.
If you aren’t meeting women who are at least on her level or better, it’s very common for you to think back about her fondly. It’s even worse when you are not meeting any new women at all.
This is just one example.
Maybe your social life without your ex-girlfriend sucks. Maybe she was your release from pain (even though that is a trained therapist’s job, not your girlfriend’s) and now you’re swamped by it.
Whatever it is, if your life and your women haven’t gotten better, it’s a lot easier to look back and miss what you had. Just be aware, your brain wants to remember the good things.
Not the bad ones.
Now that you understand, I think you’ll understand what you need to do next.
When You Miss Your Ex-Girfriend Badly, Here’s What NOT To Do
When you miss her, it takes a lot of intestinal fortitude and some big brass balls to say no to the urges it brings up.
You might think giving in will feel good, but I’m here to tell you that it won’t.
If you’re missing her right this second, do me a favor and visualize me appearing on your shoulder and whispering these holy commandments in your ear.
Thou Shall Not Tell Her You Miss Her
Just because you miss her doesn’t mean she wants to talk to you. Keep that in mind. If she wanted to talk to you, she would be talking to you.
If she is talking to you, and you still miss her, you need to read this article ASAP because something is going wrong.
Telling her you miss her will at best accomplish nothing, and at worst will make you seem needy and unattractive, especially if she dumped you because you weren’t giving her enough space.
Telling her you miss her is not how you get her back. What works in real life is not the same as what sells romcoms.
In real life, you get her back by fixing what went wrong the first time, not spilling your feelings to her. If you do really miss her, put in the freaking work to make things better! She will thank you for it!
That’s not to mention that the more you talk to her, the harder it is for you to beat your ex-girlfriend addiction – which should be EVERY man’s priority after a breakup.
Remember – no contact is the single most powerful tool you have in your arsenal. Talking to her is not going to make you feel better. No-contact will.
Thou Shall Not Give In To Reminiscing
You already know why I’m saying this, but I’ll say it again. What you are remembering is not what happened! There were good things about your relationship, but those also came with bad things.
The more you compare your current reality to an idealized past, the less happy you will be. Considering the goal of this website is to make you into an incredibly happy man, that’s not ideal.
Thou Shall Not Only Remember The Good Memories
Remember that time she ate cheese for a week and alternated between crying her eyes out and yelling at you for something you completely forgot about?
Or when she decided to wear her heels for a night out on the town and then complained to you the entire time even though you told her to wear her comfy flats?
Don’t forget how she had to interrupt you 16 different times during football only to avoid getting to the point of what she wanted to say.
Look, unless you were dating her for less than 3 months, I know that you can dig up at least one memory where something she did left you angrily scratching your head.
I recommend writing down 2-3 of these unhappy memories and re-reading them whenever you are tempted to wander down the yellow brick road of nostalgia.
They will snap you right back to reality.
Thou Shall Not Fantasize About Her
I shouldn’t have to say this.
If you are having trouble not fantasizing about her, read my article here about how to stop fantasizing about her for good.
Fantasizing about your ex-girlfriend will keep you from experiencing the joy of effortless relationships with no baggage.
Plus, I promise you there are hotter women out there. Your ex-girlfriend may have been the hottest girl you’ve ever dated, but even still she is not special.
Thou Shall Not Beat Thyself Up For Feeling Like She Doesn’t Care
If you aren’t together with her, it’s not her job to care. She doesn’t owe you anything, no matter what you did for her.
But that goes equally for you. It’s not your job to care anymore either. It’s your job to go out there, live an awesome fucking life where you have the kind of relationship that aligns with the future you want for yourself.
If she doesn’t see a place in that future, that’s her loss, not yours.
Because it’s in building that future that you’ll become a better version of yourself.
When You Miss Her, Get Busy
To stop missing her, you need to treat missing her as both a short and long-term problem.
To stop missing her in the short term, you are going to build a new habit.
The stop missing her in the long term, we need to focus on making your life better.
But as they say, you have to learn to walk before you can run.
To Stop Missing Her In The Short Term, Choose A Positive Interruption
A habit is a response to a stimulus. The stimulus is something that happens, and the response is how you react to it.
Missing her is a stimulus, which for most of you reading triggers an unconscious response. Maybe you get distracted or sidetracked. Maybe you just feel shitty.
In the short term, you can’t wake up and flip the off switch for missing her.
But you can change how you react to it.
In practice, you do that by doing something enjoyable whenever you miss her. Every time you start missing her, you distract yourself by doing the enjoyable thing when possible.
It doesn’t matter what you pick as long as it’s something you can do wherever you are, and it’s positive.
Another technique I can highly recommend is if you are in public, smile at someone else. Just the act of smiling will make you feel happier. Bonus points if it’s a woman you find attractive.
I promise you that you won’t be thinking about your ex-girlfriend when a beautiful woman smiles back at you.
To Stop Missing Her Long Term, You Need To Remove The Triggers And Accept Reality
It’s not as simple as just moving on if you want to stop missing her long-term. Your life needs to get better. If it stays the same or gets worse, you are going to keep thinking about her and keep missing her.
To start making your life better, you need to remove things that trigger you to think of her. I strongly suggest you read my article about how to break your ex-girlfriend addiction because it has a step-by-step list that will help you do that.
After you’ve refreshed your environment and removed the triggers, now is the time to build back better as Joe Beezy has said.
How you do that is really going to depend on you. That’s too broad a topic to talk about within the scope of this article.
The good news is, I’ve written an entire article on what you can do right now to start leaving behind the dead weight of missing her.
With that said, I do recommend the winning combination of establishing a solid routine, dating new women, hitting the gym, and learning to journal frequently.
Above All, Remember: How You Feel Right Now Is Not How You’ll Feel Tomorrow!
Sometimes it feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. It feels like you’re trapped in an endless nightmare where you are always missing her, and always wondering what comes next.
It’s normal to feel this way.
Millions of men go through it every year, some worse than others.
But I have good news. If you use the tips I’ve given you in this article, that light is coming.
Because here’s the thing: how you feel right this second is not how you’re going to feel tomorrow. All it takes is one small step to start you on the path to getting better.
One small step to miss her a little bit less, and feel a little bit better about yourself.
So take that step.
Tomorrow, you’ll thank yourself for it.
To help you out, I’ve put together a resource of all my best articles here. Read them, take the action steps out, and then take back your life.
It’s up to you, and you know you can do it.
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.