I talk about my former love partner often to others.
I am angry with my former love partner.
I still try to please my former love partner.
I still have an emotional commitment to my former love partner.
I still think my former partner and I will get back together.
I become emotionally upset when I think about my former love partner.
If you answered True to at least one or more of the above statements then you may not have completely let go of your past relationship. You are carrying around some extra baggage that could get in the way of you starting a new relationship and moving forward in a more positive way.
1. Go through your house and remove all of those things that tend to keep you thinking about your former love partner. Pictures, gifts, and similar mementos can be removed so that they are not a constant reminder.
2. If you lived together then you may need to rearrange the furniture in the house, perhaps even to make the house look as different as possible from the way it was when you were living together.
3. The shared bed is often an especially important symbol. You may need to put the bed in another room, sell it, or at least move it to a new spot in the bedroom. Change the coverings for a new look.
4. Make a collection of all those reminders of your former love relationship and store them in a box in the attic, garage, or basement.
5. Some weekend you may choose to do some implosive grieving, whereby you bring out all of these mementos and set aside a period of time to grieve a heavily as possible. This period will probably be very depressing and having another person around for support could help. Becoming as much out of control as possible in your grieving may help you to let go more rapidly. By increasing the intensity of the grief, this implosive grieving may shorten the number of weeks or months it takes you to let go fully.
6. Refuse to play the game. Don’t return phone calls, letters, or emails from the person you are trying to let go of. You will have to become assertive, or perhaps even start hanging up the phone or returning letters unanswered and unopened.
7. Whenever you find yourself weeping about that person, think about something painful or something unpleasant in the love relationship. That will lead you to stop thinking abut the person. Choose another image to concentrate on, instead of focusing on the past love.
