When You Can’t Get Over Her

Sometimes after a divorce or a painful breakup you feel like you can't move on. Maybe you can't get over her and you don’t know why. You keep trying, but nothing seems to work, and you just cannot let go.

WELL, I want to propose three reasons why maybe you can't get over her.

The first reason why you can’t get over her is forgiveness. Maybe you don't want to forgive her because you don't want to appear weak. You don't want her to think that what she did to you was OK, because it wasn't. So you hang on to resentment. Anytime you hang onto resentment, you're not going to be able to move on. You are not going to be able to get over her. It's like a 20 pound weight you carry with you. Until you can let go of the weight and forgive, it can be very hard to move on and get over the relationship.

The next reason is that sometimes we don't want to move on. We don't want to get over her. So this is a big one. Why would you do that, right? I mean you are trying to get over her, and it isn’t working, but you don’t feel like it is because you don’t want to. Well, on the other side of getting over her there are some scary things. Like dating, meeting new people, potential heartbreak ,falling in love, possible rejection. These are all on the other side of that, so maybe it is easier to stay stuck where you are. You can just sit here in this pain that you know. This pain you know is more comfortable than the discomfort of the unknown. It is easier than the fear of those scary actions. So you don’t move on, you get over her, you hang onto the pain you know how to deal with because the things waiting on the other side are unknown.

The last one that I will propose to you has happened for a few of my clients and is one that I see frequently. Sometimes we don't want to get over it. We don't get over her because if we move on from this relationship we feel like it did not matter. The pain of holding on makes the relationship matter, it makes that relationship important, it means that it meant something.

Recently, my client ,David, was dating someone and they were together maybe three or 4 months. It ended, and he was in heartbreak and mourning the loss of that for almost a year. We worked together for quite a while and he discovered that he really didn't want to get over it.

Now that's a really important thing to know. Are you really ready to get over her? Are you ready to move beyond her and give up any ounce of hope that a relationship could still exist? If you're not there, then you are not ready to move beyond this relationship. You would be better served to sit in the sadness for a little bit. I know we resist negative emotion we don't like to feel it but I promise you if you just invited it it's not going to last nearly as long as when you try to like stuff it down.

When it feels lighter, when you feel like forgiveness is actually possible, when you know that there's scary action on the other side of moving on, you are becoming a little bit more open to it. When you are genuinely ready to move on and you don't want to carry the weight of this pain anymore, you can absolutely move on. There are steps that you can take and there are guides that can guide you. There are ways to do it, but nothing happens until you want it.

So if you're feeling stuck after a painful heartbreak or divorce consider these options and see if any of these resonate with you. Maybe one of the reasons why can help you figure out why maybe you have moved on yet.

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