Resenting Your Ex? 3 Reasons Why It’s Time to Let It Go

Being dumped sucks. You don’t have to tell me how heart-breaking it feels because I’ve been there. I cried like a baby for two weeks straight, and my best friend ran out of ideas to “cheer me up.”

One guy at the gym literally had to ask me if I was okay because I silently cried while trying to do push-ups. I said, “no, I’m not okay.” As embarrassing as it was to admit it to a stranger, break up can really mess you up, and I truly meant it when I said I’m not okay.

For those of you who have been through bad traumatic breakups, you know that it comes with phases. The first week you’ll grief and asking yourself nonstop why things didn’t work out.

“It was all good; we were perfect for each other; why couldn’t we make it work?!”

Well, the breakup won’t happen if you were “perfect” for each other. They still left you, and there’s nothing you could do to make them love you back. And then you hear people around you say, “just move on.”

It sounds easier said than done! Unless if you go to a doctor and decide to remove all of the memories you had with the person from your brain, I doubt you could completely move on in the first month.

The next common phase after the separation is usually the overflowing feelings of anger. You want them to feel your pain; you want them to regret why they left you in the first place. You are the best thing they could have, so you want to make sure they know that.

But those resentments and anger feelings will make you stuck in life, and many people don’t realize this. They thought it’s normal to keep talking about how their ex did them wrong over two years ago. It’s not.

Here’s why:

1. Having a grudge can impact your physical health

When my dad decided to get married to my mom, his ex-wife wasn’t really cool about it. She spread the hateful gossips and said mean things to my family. Coming from a rich background, she thought she could stop my stepdad from marrying my mom if she gave her some money for my brother and me.

But my stepdad still took the leap, and five years later, the ex-wise still wasn’t over it. She still didn’t want to say “hi” to my mom even though we lived in the same village.

Until this day, I’m not sure what’s her main reason that she couldn’t seem to let it go. She’s given a chance to fix what she did wrong in the marriage, yet she didn’t do anything about it. And when the marriage between my stepdad and my mom happened, she put herself in a situation where it’s full of anger, resentments, and other negative feelings.

Then one and half years later, she died from chronic illness. Her family said she’s been so stressed out for years and couldn’t seem to move forward with her life. She let the negativity ate her alive and refused to forgive people.

The day when she died, I was shocked because I never thought holding a grudge will do that big damage to your life, but it did.

2. They don’t deserve any space in your mind anymore

Can you imagine how productive and exciting things you can create from those times you wasted on thinking about your ex? Probably a lot.

This is when I realized after two months of nonstop grief and wishing only the worst things for my ex. My mind was tired from the same thoughts and too much negativity around it.

So once I moved to Bali, I completely stopped. Whenever the thought came up, I just snapped out of it and told myself, “let’s think of other happy things; what about that one cafe you are excited to try next week?”

It’s so easy to get drawn in the resentment and anger feelings, so you have to control it. Reminding yourself of what they did to you badly won’t make you feel better. Plus, it happened in the past, so if it still disturbs your peace, then it’s not worth it.

There are definitely other happy, exciting things you can think about and force your brain to do it.

3. It only attracts more negativity in your life

Do you have that one friend who keeps talking about her breakup and how fucked up his ex is? I have, and as time goes by, it seems like her life is full of unpleasant events.

When you keep thinking about the past event in a negative way, it will bring back all of those bad feelings. You tend to dwell in those thoughts longer than you expected, and as a result, you don’t want to open your mind about the new positive things that might happen in your life.

You just blocked them all and reserved your space for this one big event in your life where you broke up with your lover. If I’m honest, it’s a sad way to live your life because the more you talk about it, the more negative things will show up.

What You Can Do:

• Surround yourself with positive people and avoid talking about your past with them

• Change your environment or move out of the city if needed. This is what I did, and it didn’t take long for me to let go of my grudge over my ex.

• Find something that makes you excited about the future; new jobs, new travel plans, or even new gadgets you’d like to have are enough to keep you busy and detached from the bad memories.

Parting words

Just like you, I wish forgiving people is as easy as exchanging contacts with new people. The pain and what they did to us can leave some permanent scars, and it’s common for those people who went through such an abrupt breakup to still have nightmares about it.

But I’ve also witnessed some people whose life gets worse because they can’t let go of the past. They think they can use the feeling to defend themselves and prove that other people are wrong and they are right.

If it’s hard for you to get over your ex or even people who have done you wrong in the past, do whatever you can to let go of the feelings little by little. Even if you don’t seem to see that things are changing for the better, trust me, it will.

You’ll open new doors to a new possibility, and many more positive things will come in your way. Forgiving people isn’t easy but letting the hate stay inside you is a lot harder to do.