Holidays can be a hard time when you are fresh from a breakup – romance seems to be everywhere, rubbing your nose in it.

1.  Keep close to supportive people

This may or may not be your family – make sure you see people who are supportive and non-judgmental.    Of course you can’t always choose who you are sharing your turkey with, but you can choose who you confide in.  Don’t feel like you have to tell all your relatives the details about your breakup.  You could ask an intermediary to tell less-close relatives that it has happened (to save the questions about why your ex isn’t at the Christmas table on the day), and ask them not to bring it up so you can relax on the day.

2.  Get some hugs in

Christmas and New Year’s is a great time to get hugs from your nephews and nieces, to spend time playing games with them, to find a little bit of joy in being a kid again.  Children can be uplifting, hang out with them for some of the celebrations.

3.  Avoid too much champagne

You don’t have to give it up all together but watch how much you are drinking.  The last thing you want to end up doing is drunkenly crying on your Great Aunt Agatha’s shoulder at the end of the evening – or face a massive depressive hangover the next day.  Try to keep things in moderation – and balance the high without the low that alcohol can bring.

4.  Revel in the benefits of being single right now

You do not have to put up with his crazy relatives.  You do not have to rush around doing two families in the holiday season.  You do not have to compromise on where to go away to.  You can spend the money you would usually spend on his present and spend it on something you really want.  You can talk to that cute guy at the New Year’s party without feeling guilty.  You can sloth around or be crazily busy on your days off and do exactly what you want to do.  What is better than that?

5.  Go party

It is the party season, so take advantage of it!  Go dancing, eat canapes, look fabulous and enjoy getting out there.  It’s a great time of year, enjoy it (but watch the alcohol – see point 3).

6.  Avoid him

It is going to be difficult as you probably have similar friends, but try to avoid bars or parties that you think he will go to (or find out for sure from your friends before committing to attending).  You don’t want to end up having a boring deep and meaningful discussion with him close to midnight on New Year’s Eve when there are cute guys to flirt with.

7.  Spend some time alone

In amongst all this busy-ness, take some time out for you.  I wrote a bit about looking at your dreams and goals yesterday – go for walks and think about what you want for 2011.  Take some time writing in your diary about what you have been through this past year, what you are thankful for, and what you are concerned about and what you hope for in the year ahead.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, get to hug lots of close people and see all that you are thankful for – I know I will be!

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Many of us turn to our friends and family to talk through our problems after we breakup (or in fact have any major issue in our lives).  We go over our sadness, what he did, what we did, what we should have done, what he shouldn’t have done.  We rehash it…again and again.

But this stage of breaking up isn’t something that will help you get over your ex.  I’ve been reading an interesting little book called 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot , written by Professor Richard Wiseman.  He looks at the scientific studies backing common self-help exercises to see if they really work.  And talking through your problems after breaking up helps less than you may think.

Most of us believe that ‘a problem shared is a problem halved.’  But a Belgium study looked at the affect of sharing a traumatic experience with someone else – and it showed that it made no difference in helping them cope.  Several studies though have shown that writing down (and you can just spend a few minutes a day doing this) your deepest thoughts and feelings about your problem can help improve your psychological and physical well-being.

…including a reduction in health problems and an increase in self-esteem and happiness.

Richard Wiseman, 59 Seconds

So why does talking about it not work, while writing does help?  Just talking about your problems is somewhat chaotic and can lead to more confusion but researchers believe that writing gives you the chance to structure your thoughts, you ‘create a storyline’ and this helps you to make sense of what happened to you.  From there, you can work towards a solution.

I definitely found that when I was on the rocky road of ending my marriage, my diary helped.  It gave me a sense of control – whatever the mayhem around me, I was able to keep writing in my diary and this helped me to ’see’ what was going on.  It gave me perspective in the muddle of devastation.  The other thing it did was help me to see what was bothering me.  Maybe I moaned to my friends about my relationship problems, but it wasn’t until I saw the same issues coming up again and again in my diary was I motivated to do anything about it.

It was helpful to write in the aftermath of my breakup.  As I channeled my complaints and grief onto the pages, my head cleared and I could think about other things for some of the time.  I could rehash and rewrite my past, and I could see that logically I had made the right decision.  It’s hard to think about going back when you have pages and pages of writing about how unhappy you were in the relationship – no matter what you tried.

So try it out, grab a notebook – something sturdy and small you can carry around with you – and get writing.  Put some structure to your grief, and find the way forward.

If you need extra support getting over that ex of yours, check out The Smart Woman’s Breakup Program – it’s based on over 100 interviews with women facing breakups just like you and includes the advice of over 25 experts.  You can download a sample chapter here.

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I wrote last week about bad news that kept coming my way – a friend’s tragic breakup, another friend miscarrying, more breakup news and the week started badly with a major earthquake down in Christchurch (and days and days of very scary aftershocks).  I found it impossible to detach from all this news.  It wasn’t my bad news but my dear friends’.

It was timely that Christina Katz themed her latest newsletter, the Prosperous Writer on the topic of detachment.  She has many great points about staying detached and not being drawn into the drama of things you can’t control – all great advice, and you know, normally I am so right there with her.  This past week though, it was impossible.  Too much tragic news happening to good people for me to distance myself.  And I don’t mind – in fact I am seeing some benefits to not being too detached.

The thought of all those sympathetic looks, is just too much for me right now.

S, talking about telling people about her miscarriage

I am not just sympathetic to S right now, instead I am mourning her baby along with her, I miss her baby and so wish things could have been different.  Not that I’m dumping my grief on her, just letting her know her darling is missed here too.  For so many with miscarriages the feeling that others don’t see it as a real death or loss, rather just a sad happening, makes it harder to handle. My inability to detach from this news has given me this.

For me, I’ve gained something from my lack of detachment.  I feel lucky this week -  things I don’t normally notice (like my house still standing!) are suddenly important and wonderful.  I moan about my home needing this fixed and that done to it, but actually it is a safe roof over our heads at the moment, and I am thankful.  I don’t wake up to the earth rumbling underneath me and wonder about our safety.

I feel lucky to live in a country where people pull together and generally there has been a great community response to the disaster (and if you read about looting, well…I think there was a couple of burglaries) – as well as people keeping their sense of humour.  And thankful that in these days of Facebook, blogs, forums and twitter (and word of mouth) we could find out almost immediately that people were OK.

I am aware of small things this week – sunshine after all the spring rain, homemade muffins out of the oven, enough free time to get to the pool.  All these things are normal but this week, I am grateful for.

All this bad luck has given me a new perspective on life, and for that, I can only be thankful.

If you are interested in seeing an aftershock – check out this security camera footage of the c1  espresso crew going back to their cafe to check how things were holding up – about 1 min in you get the shakes.

(Photo credit: Dr Mark Quigley)

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I just found out a friend of mine is breaking up with her adorable boyfriend.  They moved in together about three months ago and everything was going so well.  Until something got in their romance’s way…it’s made me think of the tragic breakup.

Not all breakups are arguments and recriminations – sometimes our timing is out, or our situations don’t match, and this creates a tragic breakup.  You still love each other, and want to be together but it is not possible.  No one’s fault, it just isn’t meant to be.

For my friend, her boyfriend is from another country and after a romantic trip to the homeland to introduce her to friends and family, he realized that he belonged there.  He loves her, but can’t see living in our country permanently, speaking a different language, eating different food and struggling with a different system of doing things for his whole life.  It is understandable – having lived in an extremely different culture before, I relate to his situation.  The only way I could do it was to give it a time limit, to know that I would move back into an easier culture (for me) within 5 years.  Knowing that when I had children, it would be near my family.

But for my friend, it just wasn’t possible.  And she can’t leave here to be with him in his country.  She has health issues and wants to stay here close to her support and her family.  And she has always been clear about that.

So it is a tragic breakup – no blame, no fault, just sad.  I’ve never gone through a tragic breakup, so I don’t know if it is harder to get over.  Would I start to think of ‘what ifs’ afterward?  Would it be harder to let him go?  Would I find ‘no contact’ too hard to do?  How would I get through with no anger?

I hope my friend will be OK.  She is distraught and I feel for her as it’s just the beginning of the stages of breaking up for her, and that first month is so hard.  She is strong, I know she will cope, but it is tragic that she has to go through this.

Are you in the middle of a tragic breakup and need some extra support getting over that ex of yours, check out The Smart Woman’s Breakup Program – it’s based on over 100 interviews with women facing breakups just like you and includes the advice of over 25 experts.  You can download a sample chapter here.

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One of the hard things about the sudden ending of a relationship – especially when it involves a third person with an affair – is learning to accept that it has actually happened!  To accept that your partner, who last week seemed so wonderful, has been lying and cheating behind your back is hard to come to terms with.  In a normal breakup we might have seen the signs that the end of the relationship was coming, but with infidelity, the end of the relationship can come as a shock.

It can also be a shock to discover your darling partner is a cheater and a liar – the relationship was not what you thought it was at all.   After finding out about their cheating, to be able to accept it, many of us rewrite our history.  We find we need to know what happened – in detail.  To others this may seem masochistic but instead it is us trying to find a way to accept our new reality.  Don’t be hard on yourself if you find you have this driving need to know, but also understand that you may never know everything.  Your cheater is an adept liar and will protect himself and his affair – he will think he is protecting you too by hiding details even now.

A friend wrote to me with advice about accepting a breakup – it is worth reading as well.

If you are worried your partner or spouse is lying and cheating on you – then check out The Breakup Bitch’s latest site about Catching Them Cheating. You don’t have to put up with lies anymore.

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So you’ve done it. Or he’s done it. Someone’s done it and you’re on your own. Not that it’s sunk in yet that you are single, on your own, footloose, fancy-free, unattached, unencumbered, free to do as you wish. No matter how you name it, it doesn’t feel real. You’re sitting on your bed staring at the wall, with sad bad love songs running through your head.

You are sure you should be doing something, but you can’t quite work out what. You know there are feelings simmering away inside you, but none are reaching beyond the shock you feel. Is it possible that you’ve forgotten how to feel? Your mind is stuck on a loop trying to find ways to fix the problem that is unfixable.

Why do you need to go no contact?

Like withdrawal from a drug, a breakup is withdrawal from a person:

(Breaking up) actually heightens the phenomenon of passionate love in the brain circuits of both men and women. That brain region desperately, hungrily seeks the loved one. Withdrawal – as if weaning from a drug – takes over.

Louann Brizindine, Neuropsychiatrist (from her amazing book The Female Brain)

You will crave your ‘drug’ – your ex. It is normal to think obsessively about your ex as your brain searches to get its ‘fix’ of the love hormones. So you need a plan to keep you on track with your breakup.

You need to get through this one day at a time – so I’m going to take you through it step by step.

If you are struggling with going no contact with your ex, download the free chapter of my new ebook – The Smart Woman’s Breakup Book:  ‘Get Him Out of Your Life.’  It gives you lists and exercises to follow to get you prepared to go no contact – and you get to read real-life stories of women and men facing this challenge after a breakup.

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T and I were still together when I wrote this, but things are quickly going downhill.  2 months until we breakup...
4/17  I think T’s true colors are coming out…I have to shut up though, I will not be helping by saying
anything.  He is in a difficult situation but he put himself there.  He way overspent on his holiday and he needs to pay some of it back.

Anyway I have to stop wasting energy on this – he has to work it out for himself.  I just have to stay focused on working hard.  He needs to work out his own problems, I will not be married to some flaky guy.  My mind is full of it and it is boring.  I have changed and maybe I’m leaving my husband behind – there’s nothing to be done about it.  I have tried long enough, it is up to him to do his part now.

We look at things differently – I look at the long term and he looks at immediate gratification.

Oh dear, just leave him alone Sarah – he’ll sort himself out.  I wish he would just demand the money to pay back that debt, then I would just leave him.  I’d be 34 no husband no baby no nothing, but free of this stress.  But I’d be on my way to my dream life.

Read about the background to my Diary of a Breakup, or read all my breakup diary entries.

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I am really excited to have my 3 Simple Steps to Getting Over a Breakup Faster eBook ready for you to download.  It coverse the early stages of breaking up.

You might feel you are stuck in your breakup. You might worry that you think about your ex too often and that you may never get over him.
What you want is:

• To move on faster
• Get over him for once and for all
• To do more than the no-contact rule

If you want to turn into a free woman and start your new beginning, your first action is to download my FREE 3 Simple Steps to Getting Over a Breakup Faster eBook.

Take strides towards getting over your ex today!

3 Simple Steps to Getting Over a Breakup Faster gives you:

• Concrete exercises you can do now to help you let go of your ex
• New habits to start you on your new beginning
• A strategy to deal with friends and family (who might not be helping)

You get told ‘accept your breakup’ or ‘don’t be hard on yourself’– what does this mean? How are you meant to do it? In 3 Simple Steps to Getting Over a Breakup Faster, I’ll give you some easy things you can start doing today.

Change your attitude & your life!

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I found this online forgiveness and letting go ritual on the Fetzer Institute Website, that you might want to try.  It is very simple, and perhaps gives you a chance to think about what it is you need to let go of after your breakup.  Letting go of your pain, of the frustrations and the unfairness of the end of relationship is important for you to move on.

The Fetzer Institute also recommends making a garden, writing letters and starting conversation about forgiveness (not sure about the last one – as doesn’t go so well with the no contact rule).  What are some of your ways to symbolize your letting go?

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This is the last breakup tip from my friend A who recently survived her breakup.  She wrote this great email to me listing the things that she learned from her divorce, and this is the last item on her list:

Breakup Tip #7: Be attractive.  Dont be a crazy, angry, petty, revengeful, stalker!  Be the one that he wishes he never broke up with.  You need to protect yourself financially and physically and emotionally, but is it really worth arguing over stupid things.  How much better to be the generous, happy, kind, strong woman that you really are!

Thanks A – great to get these from you – this one in particular is hard to do.  Sometimes you just don’t feel like being attractive!

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