According to Neil Sedaka, breaking up is hard to do. Nobody said it was gonna be easy. A woman can make a break up even harder on herself by doing the wrong things instead of the right things. Here are three things a woman should not do right after a break up and why:
Trash Your X On Facebook
Even if you are bitter, there is no point in telling all your friends and their friends how you feel. Talking trash about your X may feel good, but it will only make you look bad, and it may alienate the people close to you. Instead, write it all out in a letter. Vent until your heart is content. Mail yourself the letter, and keep it unopened for a month. After a month, open it. You will see the progress you made and be glad you didn’t share those thoughts with your friends, family and co-workers. Then you can take a match to the letter and burn it along with those bad memories.
Go Out, Get Drunk, And Go Home With Another Guy
While this may feel like the perfect revenge, and make you feel temporarily hot, sexy and wanted, the chances are you’ll wind up feeling like a used tissue wrapped around a spent condom the next day. You are too vulnerable to expose yourself to someone right after a break up. A more empowering move would be to go out with the girls, flirt up a storm, and go home alone, leaving the guy at the bar wanting. How good does that feel to know you could give him a great time, but chose not to, because you think better of yourself than that.
Jump Right Into Another Relationship
While diving into another relationship may get your mind off your break up, and replace the knots in your stomach with butterflies, rebound relationships are never a good idea and rarely successful. Your emotions are too raw and you’re likely to take out your anger on the replacement guy, and the odds are you’ll wind up right back where you started a few months down the road, recovering from yet another relationship gone awry. If you think this rebound guy is a genuine prospect. Tell him to wait a few months while you get back on your feet. If he’s worthy of your love, he will give you your space and wait.
Instead, step back and reevaluate. Take a mini Eat Pray Love vacation from life. I’m not saying spend a year or even three months traveling to exotic locales trying find yourself—who has the budget for that? But, a little self-reflection never hurt. Get away for a weekend, pamper yourself, spend some quality time alone and take a look at the dynamics that weren’t working in your past relationship, and make a list of what you want in your next relationship. Then, after you have time to grieve, time to get the anger out in a kickboxing class, and time to get your priorities back on track, you can get out there and do as my blogger friend Marrie Lobel of Dirty in Public says, Drink, Meate, Date. Not a bad way of finding yourself post break-up.
