Most people can agree that going through a breakup really sucks – especially if you didn’t want the breakup in the first place.
When you lose the person you fell in love with, the person who became one of your best friends and your biggest supporters, it can feel like the whole world loses a bit of its color. It can feel like you’ve somehow been punched in the gut and grabbed by the heart at the same time. And for some people, these feelings can linger much longer than anyone would desire.
Coming to terms with the grief, the sadness, the anger, the confusion, and all of the other heavy emotions that are likely to bubble up when dealing with a tough breakup is no easy feat. It’s a journey that takes courage, patience, and a whole lot of self-love. And, surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, depending on what you already know about the complexities of human personalities, recovering after a breakup is a journey that some personality types report navigating more slowly than others.
When it comes to moving on after a breakup, to my dismay and the dismay of millions of others around the world, there is no magic spell that we can cast that will take away all of the hurt. So how do people do it? Is it by taking time to heal your broken heart? Is it by finding someone new? Is it by going no contact with your ex and falling in love with yourself? Or maybe it’s by shutting down the part of yourself that feels the pain of the loss?
In this article, we will explore how different personalities navigate breakups, rejection, letting go, and moving on. And for the people out there who are all up in their feels and struggling to move on after a breakup, we will offer up six tips for how you can move forward and mend your broken heart. Keep in mind, this isn’t a process to be rushed by us or anyone else. This is about you healing on your own terms and on your own timeline.
Why Is It Harder for Some People to Move On?
There are so many different ways to go about getting over a breakup, and there are also a variety of factors that influence why it’s harder for some people to move on than it is for others.
For starters, different personalities have different expectations when it comes to how they let other people into their lives. According to our “Relying On Others” survey, where we ask about whether people make conscious efforts to avoid being dependent on others, about 83% of respondents say they generally do try to avoid it. However, only 77% of Feeling personalities try to avoid it, compared to 89% of Thinking personalities.
Similarly, when responding to the question, “Do you believe life is much easier when you always have someone by your side?” we see that significantly more Feeling types (75% agreeing) report that they do find life easier when they have someone to share it with, compared to Thinking types (just 46% agreeing).
Thinking and Feeling personalities tend to respond to their relationships and emotions differently. Thinking types might try to view heavy emotions or attachments as things that they can control, while Feeling types might give in to their emotional states with more ease. That’s not to say that Thinking types don’t let themselves fall in love, but they might be more hesitant to let their emotions pull them in one direction or another.
Thinking and Feeling personality types might also have different innate emotional responses to breakups, separations, and rejections of any kind, and those different responses impact how they perceive a breakup.
In our “Rejection” survey, we ask whether people typically feel more sad or angry after a rejection. Out of the Feeling personalities who have responded, 84% report feeling more sad, compared to only 16% who feel angry. Out of the Thinking personalities, 57% report that they feel sad, compared to 43% who feel angry.
That means that Thinking types are significantly more likely than Feeling types to turn to anger when it comes to a breakup. And while it is likely that everyone feels both emotions to some extent when processing a breakup, turning more to anger rather than sadness might just impact whether someone internalizes a rejection or not, how they think and feel about their former partner, and how long it takes for them to move on.
Speaking of moving on, when responding to a question from our “Breakups” survey, 70% of Feeling personalities report that they usually take a long time to recover from a breakup, compared to 43% of Thinking personalities. We see a similar trend with Turbulent and Assertive personalities, with 67% of Turbulent personalities reporting that they take a while to recover from a breakup, compared to 47% of Assertive personalities.
As someone who is both a Feeling and a Turbulent personality type, I can attest to these statistics. To be more specific, I am a Turbulent Advocate (INFJ-T). And interestingly enough, Advocates are the most likely personality type to report that they take a long time to recover from a breakup, at a whopping 75%. (Lucky us, right?!)
We see many distinctions in how different personalities respond to breakups. Regardless of your personality type, however, if you happen to find yourself struggling to get over a heartbreak, I am here to remind you to give yourself some grace.
Moving on after a breakup is really hard! It can seem like a constant battle between your head and your heart. It might be full of many sleepless nights, intrusive thoughts, unanswered questions, and a wide array of draining emotions that, if you’re anything like me, can weigh heavily on the soul. But hard moments like these are also great opportunities to slow down, reflect on who you are, and show up for yourself with love and compassion as you move through the healing process.
Letting Go and Moving Forward: 6 Tips for How to Heal from a Breakup
So, in the spirit of embracing the suck, here are six tips for how to move forward after a breakup that you didn’t want.
1. Take It One Day at a Time
When you’re trying to get over a breakup, it’s important to be patient with yourself. It can be frustrating when you can’t get your ex off your mind or when you aren’t moving on as quickly as you want to. But despite what popular culture might lead you to believe, there is no perfect timeline that can define how long you grieve the relationship that, at one point in time, you wanted with all of your heart.
It takes time and effort to process the grief that comes from the loss of a relationship that you cherished. It takes time and effort to heal a broken heart and let go of what life used to look like – and what the future could have looked like, had things worked out the way that you wanted them to. This is why you have to take things one day at a time as you try to move forward. In your lowest moments, you might even have to take things one breath at a time.
In our “Grieving” survey, we ask whether people usually try to speed up the process of grieving as much as they can. Interestingly, 65% of Thinking personalities say they do try to speed up the process, compared to 41% of Feeling personalities.
This makes sense, considering that Thinking types tend to be more task-oriented when it comes to people and emotions. They might view their emotions as problems that they can solve through simple steps, rather than as a state of being. And, sometimes, this functions as a very effective strategy.
However, just because you might try to rush through the grieving process does not mean that you will rid yourself of these emotions completely. Grief has a way of popping back up, whether you like it or not, if you haven’t taken the steps needed to heal.
2. Try Not to Internalize the Breakup
After a breakup, if you’re anything like me, you might start to wonder why you weren’t good enough for the person who ended things with you. This is normal. Not being chosen back is a really hard truth to come to terms with. It can trigger so much doubt and insecurity. It can make you question whether the love that you felt in the relationship was ever real to begin with. But these are feelings and ideas – not facts.
In our “Breakups” survey, we ask whether people usually consider themselves to be the reason for a breakup. We see that Turbulent personalities are the most likely to say they do, at 65%, followed by Feeling personalities at 63%. Comparatively, 47% of Assertive personalities and 52% of Thinking personalities say they assume the breakup is their fault.
Across the board, 59% of the people who have responded to this question agree that they think they were at fault for their relationships ending. That’s a lot of people who are blaming themselves for their breakups!
And while you have to assume some responsibility for the parts that you played in your breakup, when it comes to romantic relationships, it still takes two to tango. It takes two people who are willing to be honest, communicate with each other, and actively choose each other every day to make a relationship work. If someone decides that they can no longer put in the hard work – or if they take the connection that you have for granted – that has nothing to do with your worth as a person. You are innately worthy.
3. Be Honest with Yourself
Breakups are extremely challenging, but they are also an opportunity to be honest with yourself about the roles that you play in your own suffering and to prioritize your peace. So if you are struggling to move on, it might be time to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Why?”
Of course, readjusting to life without the person you love can feel like an uphill battle. But that said, are you doing everything that you can to let go? Are you doing everything that you can to stay rooted in the present? Are you being honest with yourself about both your former relationship and your ex? Are you learning the hard lessons that may come from this experience? Are you showing up for yourself and loving yourself through all of these difficult thoughts and feelings?
In our “Giving Up and Letting Go” survey, we ask whether it usually takes people a long time to quit something after they realize that they should quit it. Nearly 69% of Feeling personalities report that they do take a long time, compared to 49% of Thinking personalities. In this same survey, we also ask whether people find it easy to accept that they cannot change someone or something. Only 39% of Feeling types think that being unable to change something is easy to accept, compared to 47% of Thinking types.
The data shows that, in general, Feeling personalities have a harder time letting go and accepting something that they cannot change – even if they know they should. As a Feeling type, I can admit that I’ve always had a hard time letting go of the people I let into my heart, and I can also admit that I haven’t always taken the necessary steps to move on, even when I’m otherwise ready.
It can be easy to get caught up in the nostalgia of a relationship that meant a lot to you. People tend to look back on the good times and the special moments that made their heart sing, but at the end of the day, no relationship is perfect. And if the relationship ended, it ended for a reason. Taking off the rose-colored glasses and radically accepting the relationship for what it was – the good, the bad, and the ugly – is a very necessary step in moving forward after a breakup.
4. Do What You Can to Lift Your Mood
When you’re going through a breakup, it is imperative that you do what you can to lift your mood and feed your soul when you just cannot stand to live in the hurt any longer. That’s not to say that you should ignore your feelings. There might be days when you don’t want to get out of bed. There might be moments when you aren’t sure if you will ever feel whole again. And that is okay.
But you are not your emotions, and you are not your thoughts either! Don’t forget to give yourself a chance to experience the good things that are available to you in your life.
Listen to the music that you love right when you start your day. Do whatever physical activity you enjoy to get yourself out of your head and into your body. Go for a walk outside. Feel the light from the sun against your skin. Listen to your favorite podcast. Go watch the sunset. Read that book that’s been sitting on your nightstand forever. Fully invest yourself in a project that inspires you. Spend time with your friends, your parents, your siblings – anyone you love who can remind you that your life is so much bigger than any one relationship.
Lean into your emotions when you need to and when it feels right. But don’t lose yourself in the past. Every day that you wake up is an opportunity to appreciate the little things that make life so beautiful.
5. Invest in Your Other Relationships
After a breakup, it’s normal to feel lonely. When you lose someone who took up so much space in your day – whether it was the person you woke up next to every morning or the person who asked you how your day was when you got home from work or the person you would call when something went wrong – it can feel like a huge piece of your life is missing. But you have to remember that your life is full of other people who care about you.
As you try to move forward, you can use the extra free time in your life as an opportunity to work on your other relationships. It’s possible that you’ve invested less attention into your relationships with your friends or your family or your coworkers because you’ve been so caught up in your love story. But there is more to life than being in a romantic relationship.
Your other relationships deserve just as much time and effort, and your ex isn’t the only person you have to lean on. Breakups are a great time to zoom out and focus on the people who do show up for you and the people who love and accept you unconditionally.
6. Work on Your Relationship with Yourself
Last but not least, one of the best things that you can do after a breakup is take all of that time and energy and attention and love that you put into another person and give it back to yourself.
This is your time to focus on your hopes and your dreams. It is your chance to explore your inner world, unpack any feelings of unworthiness, and address any unconscious patterns that continue to play out in your relationships with others and your relationship with yourself. It is also your chance to show yourself the same love and compassion that you would have shown to your partner. What small acts of love and kindness can you give to yourself every day as you try to move on?
Societies so often place an enormous amount of value on being in a romantic relationship. Under that pressure, combined with the pain of the heartbreak, it can sometimes feel like being single again is the worst thing in the world.
But being single gives you the chance to live your life for you again. It gives you the chance to be your own rock and your own safe place, and that is a beautiful thing. After all, the most important relationship that you will ever have is the one that you have with yourself.
The High Stakes of Love: Embracing Vulnerability and Uncertainty
Regardless of your personality type, if you’re going through a breakup that you didn’t want, it is safe to say that your heart might be tender for a while. Disappointments in love can be absolutely excruciating. Do what you have to do to take care of yourself, and don’t be afraid to do it at your own pace.
And as you move forward on your healing journey, always remember that it’s okay that you fell deeply in love. It’s a beautiful thing to fully give your heart to someone, but ultimately, love will always be a risk. It comes and goes. That’s the nature of everything. But love is also all around you and within you. No one can ever take that away from you, if you don’t let them.
Are you a Feeling or a Turbulent personality type who is having a hard time moving on from a breakup? Or maybe you’re a Thinking or Assertive personality type who just made it to the other side of your heartbreak. Comment below and let us know about your experiences with breakups – the highs, the lows, and everything in between.
Further Reading
- How Do Different Personalities Break Up?
- 7 Ways Any Personality Type Can Overcome Loneliness
- How to Deal with the Blues: Situational Sadness and Personality Type
- Romantic Conflicts: Four Horsem*n and Four Personality Type Groups
- Use our premium Single Styles Explorer to find out how your behaviors relate to your search for romance.
