Why do I still cry over my ex?

One participant in a group I run ended a long relationship themselves, and the first week after it they felt great.

Week three came and they were sad, borderline depressed, and shocked by it. Sitting in the car between jobs, it would hit them like a truck.

Because I feel like the first week after I broke up, I was like surfing a wave. I was on a real high. I felt motivated and inspired. And naively I thought that was it. I've grieved, I've moved on, time for the next chapter.

a participant in a group I run, three weeks after the breakup

They hadn't gone backwards. They had taken the good first week as the finish, so when the grief came they read it as having failed at the grieving.

A lot of us think about healing that way. It means the crying stops. So the week you notice you're still crying over someone, the conclusion is already written, and it's about you.

Does being healed mean you stop crying?

No. Healed is knowing how to respond when the feeling comes, and being alright with yourself while it does. The tears show up for a while either way, and what changes is what you do when they come.

A woman in one of my groups had expected the reverse and said so. She thought healing would mean letting him go and not crying for him any more, and she found it ran the other way round.

I was thinking: when I heal, it means I'm going to let go of him and I'm not going to cry for him anymore. But what I realise now is the opposite. Being healed doesn't mean you don't cry anymore. It doesn't mean you don't get hurt anymore. It doesn't mean you're not going to get any disappointment by someone else. Heal is: you know how to respond, and acknowledge yourself being you, authentically.

a woman in one of my groups

Two things sit in that. You know how to respond. And you acknowledge yourself as you are, right then, while you're still in it. Both of those are available to you on a day you cry.

How do I know if I'm over my ex?

Two signals, and the crying is neither of them. The first is what the grief is about. Early on it's about the person, and later it's about a future that was never going to happen anyway. The second is whether you can want someone and still choose yourself on the same day.

In my experience, the hardest thing about breakups was this. It wasn't grieving what was had, it's grieving what will never be. That grief is honest and it finishes. The delusion of how things could have been is the one that keeps going.

The second signal came from the same woman, still in the middle of it.

Even I really want someone, for now I still choose myself. This is so much improvement for myself.

a woman in one of my groups

And she was clear about why that counted.

Having someone is not guaranteed that will fulfil me and make me happy, because the fulfilment and happiness is my responsibility.

the same woman

She cried through most of that call. Both of those were true on the same day.

When does the grief come?

Later than people expect, which is most of why the grief gets read as going backwards. With the men I work with, the first reaction to a breakup is usually relief, and then it generally takes two to three weeks for the reality to hit. Then comes the resisting: another person, drinking it away, suppressing it, and it goes on for far longer than it needed to.

By then the people around you have stopped asking, and you have already told them you're through it. So the week it hits is the week with the fewest people checking in.

The same participant described one of those days as a dark night of the soul, like being stabbed in the heart and twisted around. Nothing had gone wrong. That was week three doing what week three does.

What happens when you decide you shouldn't still be crying?

It gets louder. Judging the feeling puts a second feeling on top of it, and the one underneath has to get bigger to be heard. You would never say it to another person for exactly that reason, and saying it to yourself runs the same way.

Yet you would never actually tell someone that they're overreacting, because that's just going to make them overreact more. But mentally, when you tell yourself you're overreacting, it has that same effect of making you overreact more.

another group member

Her alternative was accepting the emotion that's there and being in the moment, instead of trying to push through it. So I said to the group that day: maybe your emotional reaction is justified, and it's through not experiencing the emotion that the unresourceful action comes.

The unresourceful action here is anything aimed at making the crying stop. A night out, a new person, more work. A third had spent years suppressing her emotions, because she didn't want to be a burden to other people.

What is it that you need right now?

That's the question I ask myself when a strong emotion comes. Not whether I should be feeling this. What I need, right now, while I'm feeling it.

What is it that I need right now? Is it that I need space from that person? Is it that I need to go and scream? Or is it that I need to feel heard? Do I need to hear myself? Do I need to face them? Do I need to communicate something? Do I need someone to know something?

Daniel Lawson

Once it gets out, the reaction starts to go. It's been heard, it's been released, it's been expressed. The sequence underneath that is name it, own it, feel it, release it. The body already knows how to do it, and some of us are more disconnected from it than others.

One more participant described how it runs.

First recognizing the emotion, and then just allowing it in without trying to limit the intensity of the feeling. And when you just allow it to come in and allow yourself to feel it fully, then it kind of goes away automatically.

a group member

Through my own breakup I went at it from the other end. Every time the grief came I asked what I could do to turn it up to ten out of ten. It sounds wrong, and the more I turned it up the harder it got, and the more of it came out and was done with.

And I don't cry that often. Very rarely, in fact. It's something I want to practise.

Daniel Lawson

I said to a group member crying through a call once that I could see them doing what they needed to do, and that the crying was getting them out of their head and back into their emotional experience of life.

Common questions

Is it normal to still be crying over my ex?

Yes, and for longer than the timeline most of us have in our heads. It comes in waves rather than in a line. What's worth looking at is whether anybody else knows you're in it this week.

Does crying mean you're healing?

It means the feeling is moving, which is what has to happen. Whether anything heals depends on what happens next. The participant who had suppressed her emotions for years cried in front of other people for the first time that week, and said, "there's such a release. And with that release, there's healing that happens within me."

How do you know when you've healed?

By what you do when it comes, rather than by it never coming again. The woman I quoted earlier thought she had already handled it, and found it back as soon as someone got close: "I thought that I already handle [it] well, but when I'm with someone it's coming again." That isn't the healing undone. It's the same thing showing up where it lives, which is in front of another person.

Should I contact my ex to get closure?

Not yet. Give it at least three to six months without contact first. Should I contact my ex for closure? is the long answer, and the short one is that the call is asking them for certainty about a decision you already made, and they can't give you that while their answer could impact how you feel.

If this resonates

If you've cried your way through a week and still done everything you said you would, you already know how to cry and keep your day. A group member put it in the chat like this: "I can cry all I want, but at 6 pm I am teaching no matter what."

What comes next is saying where you're at while you're still in it, rather than a few months later when you have a clean answer for it. The crying is easier to do than the telling, and the telling is what changes this.

And it goes better with somebody who asks how this week has been, and who isn't expecting you to be through it yet.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are our groups where we have these conversations together.