I know–you thought he was the one. Turns out so did the girl he cheated on you with. Now you walk around campus feeling terrified that you might run into him. On top of all the heartache, you still need to finish your chem homework, get up for that 8 a.m. and type up a research paper. How can you properly get over a break up when school keeps getting in the way?
1. Get closure
As Jan from The Office would say, you need to do a “post mortem” on your failed relationship. Take this opportunity to figure out what went wrong, learn what went right and ultimately get all your feelings out on the table. “Without closure, it’s really hard to see [your ex] outside the context of a relationship. And in college, it’s pretty likely you’ll see that person again,” said University of Maryland sophomore Jamie Reynolds. You cannot move on from a relationship unless you tell the person how you feel. Otherwise you’ll find yourself drunk texting your ex at 3 a.m. trying to figure out where it went wrong.
2. Play yourself
Everyone does this. You get all gussied up for a party, squeeze into your tightest and skimpiest outfit possible and you tell yourself, “I don’t need him!” Your awful friends pour you your third shot and slur, “Hell yeah, he’s gonna wish he never broke up with you!” Next thing you know you’re sitting outside the party on the front porch crying your eyes out because the DJ played you and your ex’s song. Regardless of how much it hurts, you need to play yourself to truly realize you’re not over your ex. It helps you understand that you were hurt, and you need to work on getting over that bastard. “I remember getting blackout drunk the night my girlfriend dumped me. I think I called her like 20 times, and I left all these messages calling her a b—tch. The next morning was awkward, to say the least,” UMD sophomore Brian Yin*.
3. Watch movies—a la mode
Like every romcom depicts, watching more romcoms while eating straight from a tub of Ben n’ Jerry’s Half Baked cures most heart breaks. “Always The Notebook,” said UMD senior Jennifer Halloway. “Luckily I’ve only gone through one breakup, but to get over it, I watched The Notebook about four times.” Something about the mixture of chocolate and Ryan Gosling really fills in all the heart cracks like a deliciously sexy cement.
4. Have yourself a good cry
Let it all out–no one’s judging you. Crying is so necessary in the healing process. While you think of your happiest moments with your ex, the laughter and the dancing, it’s going to hurt. It sucks. And you can’t bottle in those emotions, because then you find yourself body slamming your professor after they say you got an answer wrong. Not speaking from personal experience or anything. “You know that feeling when people ask if you’re okay, and you start to say you’re fine but then you just break down crying? Been there, done that. Twice. In class,” Towson University sophomore Diana Jackson.
5. Don’t worry–be happy
When a relationship ends, we tend to put on those rosy retrospective sunglasses; we think it was a perfect relationship that had no faults. But you need to continually remind yourself that it ended for a reason. You were unhappy. She was controlling. He had anger problems. If you find yourself following the white rabbit of happy memories, remember to choose your happiness over nostalgia. “The best thing I ever did was decide to be happy,” said Virginia Tech sophomore Marcus Lindsay. “It’s like a switch went off.”
*Name changed to preserve privacy.
