How to Get Over Someone You Love and Move On

How to get over someone you love takes layered work. You're grieving the person, the daily check-ins you built together, the future you imagined, and the version of yourself that lived inside the relationship. All of it at once.

You're going through a hard time. There's no rapid change required today. Small, doable steps at your own pace will get you where you're going.

This article walks you through four areas of the work: untangling your thoughts about what happened, letting yourself feel the grief instead of pushing it away, slowly rebuilding the daily habits that wrapped around someone else, and finding who you are outside the relationship.

Key Learnings

• Losing someone means losing the routines, the future plans, and the version of yourself that existed with them.
• Closure is something you build for yourself - waiting on the other person just prolongs the pain.
• Suppressed feelings don't fade quietly, because they tend to come back louder when least expected
• Old routines are sneaky anchors that keep the attachment alive long after the relationship ends.

Cognitive Reflections

When something goes wrong in our relationships, we fall into overthinking. Gradual shifts in your emotions and beliefs can help you begin to untangle what just happened.

Name What You Lost

It might feel like you've lost your ex. The pain is usually layered.

You may also be grieving:

• the version of yourself you were with them
• the routines and daily check-ins
• the future you imagined together
• the feeling of being chosen or understood

Create Your Own Sense of Closure

Not all endings come with clear explanations. Waiting for closure from the other person can keep you emotionally tied to them.

If you feel tempted to reach out, ask yourself: What guarantee is there that they'll be honest, or even know how to answer? 

Even if they answered honestly, their explanation might not provide the clarity or peace you're hoping for. You're the only person who can build this sense of an end and give it logic.

Finish this sentence in your journal: "This connection ended because…" Give the answer that feels real to you and let your mind settle.

Emotional Release

Trying to move on often turns into trying not to feel. The more you push emotions away, the more they come back, louder and harder to manage. It takes bravery to let your emotions find a place inside you.

Create Time and Space to Grieve

Grief needs an outlet. Research shows that letting yourself actually feel, instead of pushing emotions down, is how you move through loss.

Set aside 10 to 20 minutes a day as feeling time. Just a dedicated window where you're allowed to feel whatever comes up. Cry, sit quietly, write angry things you'll never send. Whatever you need.

Outside that time, you can tell yourself: I'll feel this later. Your nervous system learns that the feelings have a place to go. They won't be forgotten. They're just scheduled. This simple act of containing your grief to a specific moment gives you permission to function for the rest of your day.

Use Art to Express Yourself

Art can be a powerful tool for emotional release, especially when you do it on a physical medium.

Experiment with what feels best. If you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, try this:

1. Put old magazines or newspapers on the floor where you intend to create. On top of that, put your canvas, which can be anything from a large piece of paper to a magazine spread.
2. Open your paints. Gouache or acrylics work well because they're easy to put on your skin, and you can find a set in any store cheaply.
3. Let the paint touch your skin. It might feel strange. The act of feeling paint on your skin can be groundbreaking if you've been physically disconnected from yourself. Explore the feeling. There's no wrong way here. The point is moving what you're feeling onto the page, not making it look good.
4. Put your hands on paper. Move the paint around and use colors as you feel them. Channel your emotions about the breakup through movements and color choices.

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Behavioral Reset

Love is a set of habits as much as it is a feeling. When your behavior has been built around someone else, repeating those behaviors can become a barrier to moving on.

Identify Your Autopilot Moments

Autopilot, in this case, is when you repeat the same behavior in response to an emotional trigger tied to someone you love. These subtly reinforce your connection and keep the pain alive.

Your autopilots might be:

• reaching for your phone first thing in the morning
• wanting to text them something funny
• the evening hours when you used to talk
• certain places, songs, or routines

Swap, Don't Remove

If the urge to reach out persists, swap the behavior instead of trying to remove it.

For each autopilot moment, choose a small alternative action:

• texting them → send it to a friend or write it in your notes
• checking their profile → open a different app or step away from your phone
• replaying memories → play a podcast or go for a quick walk

Keep it simple and repeatable.

Identity and Meaning

When a relationship ends, it can leave you lost and confused. The void may feel like the loss of your own identity. As you find your own purpose, you also start to make sense of your relationship and yourself apart from it.

Imagine a Future

Right now, the pain may feel central. Over time, this experience can become one part of a much bigger story. It doesn't have to make sense yet. Try to be imaginative for a second. It might feel like your past failed you right now. Over time, it can come to mean something else entirely.

Take 5 to 10 minutes to imagine yourself a year or more from now. Ask yourself: "How might I see this situation differently? What would the future me say?"

Reflect on Yourself

Even if your ex hurt or rejected you, the relationship revealed something about you. When we think about lessons learned, we usually imagine something overly positive. The lesson doesn't have to feel good to be useful. Reflect on what this relationship said about you.

Ask yourself:

• What did I deeply need in this connection?
• Which of those needs were met, and which weren't?
• When did I handle things better than I expected? What do I want to do differently?

If you want more questions to sit with, Liven's Smart Companion, Livie, can help you generate them.

Do Identity Experiments

When you're not sure who you are without your ex, small identity experiments help you find out.

Choose two or three low-pressure identity experiments, like:

• "I'm someone who goes on solo walks"
• "I'm someone who sings silly songs for five minutes"
• "I'm someone who tries new parks, libraries, or cafés occasionally"

The goal is to find something you consider remotely fun and explore how it feels to do those activities.

Start With One Practice This Week

Feeling fully over someone takes time. The work happens through small daily acts that compound over weeks and months.

Pick one practice from this article and start there. Maybe it's writing down five things you've lost in a journal tonight. Maybe it's setting fifteen minutes aside tomorrow morning to feel whatever wants to come up. Maybe it's choosing one autopilot moment (the morning phone reach, the evening hour) and swapping it for something else. Maybe it's spending thirty minutes on one of those identity experiments, just to see how it feels.

Whichever one you pick, let yourself adjust to who you are right now: sensitive, messy, searching, lonely. These versions are still you. As you let them be, you gather the strength to come back to yourself.

References

• Fernández-Alcántara, M., Cruz-Quintana, F., Pérez-Marfil, M. N., Catena-Martínez, A., Pérez-García, M., & Turnbull, O. H. (2016). Assessment of emotional experience and emotional recognition in complicated grief. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 126. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00126
• Roy, A., Yadav, M. K., Singh, A., Mahto, I. K., Kumar, A., Kumari, S., Kumari, M., Kumari, K., Kumar, A., Neshab, A., Kumar, N., Kumar, S., Raj, A., Mahto, B., Raj, R., & Patel, M. (2025). The neurochemistry of heartbreak: Unravelling the complex interplay of brain regions, emotions and neurotransmitters in relationship breakups. International Journal of Scientific Research and Technology, 2(7), 216–227. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15861168
• Li, Y., & Zheng, P. (2025). Trait resilience protects against social anxiety in college students through emotion regulation and coping strategies. Scientific Reports, 15, Article 28143. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-13674-0
• Zhu, L., Tao, Y., Guo, Y., Zhang, X., Wang, T., Zhou, B., Li, G., & Zhang, L. (2025). The relationship between habit and identity in health behaviors: A systematic review and three-level meta-analysis. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.70017
• Xu, G., Haratyan, F., & Tian, H. (2026). A 2025 systematic review of teacher emotion regulation and well-being: Implications for student engagement, learning outcomes, and professional development in EFL contexts. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, Article 1715266. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1715266