Why You Struggle to Let Go After a Break-Up (Even When They Were "Bad" For You)
In today's episode, I'm sharing some thoughts on why you might struggle to let go of someone after a break-up - especially in circumstances where you logically know that they were "bad" for you. This is such a common experience, particularly for those with anxious attachment - feeling pulled in two different directions between what you know is best vs what your body and attachment system is urging you to do.
We cover:
The importance of managing expectations after a break-up
Why it's normal to miss your ex (without it meaning anything)
Why unhealthy or dysfunctional relationships can be even harder to let go of
Treating moving on as a choice rather than a feeling
💸 🎉 50% OFF SALE - use code HEYBABY to save 50% off any of the following:
Why You Struggle to Let Go After a Break-Up (Even When They Were "Bad" For You)
Breaking up is never easy, but it can feel particularly perplexing when you find yourself struggling to let go of someone who was objectively “bad” for you. This emotional tug-of-war is more common than you might think and, contrary to popular belief, is not a sign of weakness or ignorance. Instead, it speaks to deeper emotional mechanics at play, particularly for those with anxious attachment styles. Let’s explore why it’s so challenging to move on and how you can work through this bewildering phase.
Emotional vs Logical Understanding
When a relationship ends, the human brain often plays a cruel trick: it creates a conflict between your emotional responses and your logical understanding. Logically, you may very well grasp that your ex-partner was inconsistent, unkind, or otherwise not suited to you. But emotionally, the attachment you formed doesn’t dissolve just because the relationship has.
This dichotomy can be especially pronounced in individuals with anxious attachment. For those who experience heightened anxiety around relationships, the bonds they form tend to be more intense and harder to sever, even if the relationship was fraught with issues. Understanding that this emotional dissonance is normal can be the first step toward healing.
The Role of Habit and Muscle Memory
One of the reasons you may struggle to let go is sheer habit. Relationships often involve routines and rituals that become ingrained in your daily life. Morning texts, evening calls, weekend plans—all of these create a structure. When the relationship ends, so do these habitual interactions, leaving you with a sense of void.
Moreover, emotionally charged relationships often have a kind of "muscle memory." You’re conditioned to think about your partner, worry about them, and even argue with them. When that stimulation is removed, the quiet can feel unsettling. The brain, accustomed to a certain level of emotional engagement, finds the sudden silence disruptive.
The Allure of Familiar Chaos
It might seem illogical to miss a relationship that caused more stress and drama than joy. Yet, for many, there is a twisted comfort in the familiarity of chaos. Dysfunctional relationships often reinforce a continuous cycle of stress and relief. Conflict generates anxiety, but resolving conflicts, even temporarily, provides emotional relief. This cycle can become addictive, making the emotional highs and lows hard to relinquish.
For some, being in conflict still feels better than being alone. The connection inherent in heated exchanges or reconciliations feels preferable to the emptiness of separation. Recognising that a dysfunctional relationship can still offer a perverse sense of security is crucial in understanding why letting go feels so tough.
Reframing Moving On: Action Over Emotion
The journey to letting go is often hampered by the belief that moving on should be a feeling rather than a choice. People say, “I can’t move on because I still love them,” and thus wait for the feeling of having moved on to arrive. However, this misconception can prolong your suffering.
Moving on is more about making deliberate choices and taking specific actions, rather than waiting to feel differently. Just like exercise, where motivation may come after you’ve already started working out, taking steps toward closure can eventually foster emotional relief. Setting new routines, seeking new social connections, and investing in personal development can initiate this process.
Practical Steps to Letting Go
Here are some practical steps to help you move forward:
- Limit Contact: Reducing or eliminating contact with your ex can help you rewire your habits. This includes social media checks and casual texts.
- Create New Routines: Fill the gaps left by the relationship with new hobbies or activities. This introduces new forms of joy and structure in your life.
- Reach Out for Support: Engage with friends, family, or a therapist to discuss your feelings and receive guidance.
- Self-Compassion: Be kind to yourself. Acknowledge that it’s normal to miss someone and that these feelings don’t invalidate the reasons for your break-up.
- Focus on Personal Growth: Take this time to reflect on what you want and need in future relationships. Break the cycle of past patterns by understanding and reworking them.
The Importance of Self-Kindness
Above all, be kind to yourself. It’s easy to fall into the trap of self-criticism, asking why you can't seem to move on. Instead, understand that this is a deeply human experience. There’s nothing wrong or weak about feeling attached to someone who wasn’t good for you. It’s a part of navigating relationships and growing from them.
By compassionately confronting your feelings and taking proactive steps towards a healthier future, you'll find that the struggle to let go lessens over time. It’s in the ongoing process of nurturing yourself, rather than the rush to move on, that true healing occurs.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Do you find yourself struggling to let go of past relationships, even when you know they were not healthy for you? Reflect on the emotions and thoughts that arise in these moments.
How does your attachment style influence your feelings post-breakup? Do you notice any patterns or tendencies that might be contributing to your struggle with letting go?
Steph mentions the concept of “predictability in chaos.” Can you relate to finding a sense of safety in a tumultuous relationship? How has this impacted your ability to move on?
Have you ever mistaken missing someone for a sign that you should get back together? Reflect on why these feelings might be misleading and how you can reframe them.
What are some practical steps you can take to support yourself through the process of moving on from a breakup? List a few specific actions and consider how you can implement them in your daily life.
Consider the idea of moving on as a series of actions rather than just a feeling. How can you apply this mindset to your own healing process?
Reflect on a time when you felt an impulse to check up on an ex-partner. What emotions were driving this behaviour, and how can you redirect that energy towards self-care?
Journal about the role of self-compassion in your healing journey. How can you be kinder to yourself during this difficult phase of letting go?
Do you find yourself orbiting around the idea of your ex-partner, even long after the breakup? Explore ways in which you can shift your focus back to your own growth and well-being.
Stephanie talks about the importance of reframing your story from one of powerlessness to one of agency. How can you reframe your own narrative to feel more empowered and in control of your healing process?
Feel free to use these prompts for journaling or group discussions to deepen your understanding and reflection on the themes discussed in this episode.
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Check out my couples course, Secure Together (& save $200 with the code SECURE)
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, I am talking about why you struggle to let go of someone even when you know they're not good for you, so to speak. So this is a very, very common conundrum, particularly for folks with anxious attachment, although I don't think that it's exclusive to anxiously attached people. I think that the letting go of someone, irrespective of whether we logically know that the relationship, the connection is not right for us, whatever that might mean. You know, it's something that we all can fall prey to, that we can all struggle with to varying degrees. Although I do think that those among you who identify with anxious attachment will experience this in overdrive. And as we'll talk about, that's normal and makes perfect sense.
[00:01:20]:
I spoken many times before about, you know, why anxiously attached people tend to struggle with breakups. And this really falls into that same category. So I'm gonna be sharing some thoughts today. It's gonna be a short and sweet episode, but hopefully one that gives you some reassurance if you're in this situation, if you're struggling to let go of someone, some reassurance that what you're experiencing is normal and it's not something that you need to overthink. Of course, easier said than done, for all of my overthinkers, if only it were as simple as me telling you to stop overthinking. But really, it isn't something that you need to try and make sense of because so much of the time, these things that we're trying to apply a rational lens to, they are experiences that are inherently irrational in that they are deeply emotional. And so oftentimes it's not a matter of making it make sense, but actually just making peace with the fact that it doesn't make logical or rational sense. And it's just a matter of seeing it for what it is and continuing to take steps forward without trying to solve it or make it go away.
[00:02:29]:
Because I think that's where we can get ourselves really stuck and devoting so much more energy to something that we're actually trying to move away from or let go of. So I'm gonna be sharing some thoughts on that today. Before I do, just a reminder that you can still save 50% on my master classes and courses, I think for the next week or so. I'll see. I'm going to be taking that down soon, maybe at the end of June. So you've still got a little bit of time to jump in, but not much. So if you're wanting to save 50% on any of my master classes, of course, is particularly with today's topic around letting go of someone. If you're in that situation, I'd really recommend you check out higher love, which is my breakout course.
[00:03:08]:
Hundreds and hundreds of people have gone through this course over the past couple of years, and it always gets really incredible feedback. People saying that it was instrumental in helping them not only kind of heal from their breakup, so to speak, but take steps towards a future where they feel much more confident and sure of themselves and, I suppose, self trusting that they're not going to just repeat the same patterns in the next relationship. And that's a big part of the course is getting clarity around that and kind of breaking those patterns so that you can do things differently next time rather than just doing a rinse and repeat. So you can save 50% on any of those with the discount code, hey, baby, if you're interested. And that's all linked in the show notes. Okay. So let's talk about why you struggle to let go of someone when you know that they're not good for you. Now, as I said, very, very common experience.
[00:03:55]:
So normal. And as I've spoken about many times before, if you search breakups within this podcast, there's heaps of episodes on it that you can go back and binge listen to if you feel so inclined. But really, breakups are meant to be hard and breakups are meant to pull you in different directions because you've got all of these conflicting drives. And just because a relationship ends, you're not going to suddenly stop loving the person. You're not going to suddenly stop having feelings towards them or feeling attached to them. You're not gonna stop expecting to see them in your day to day life or speak to them. All of these things that are so habitual and that you have so much muscle memory around, for them to just evaporate overnight is a really, really challenging experience at the best of times. Right? Now, when someone is not good for you, whatever that might mean, I think we'll just assume for the purposes of this episode that we're talking about, someone who maybe didn't treat you terribly well, maybe was flaky or inconsistent or just the combination of your attachment styles or whatever else, like what you each brought to the relationship meant that it was high drama, it was tumultuous, it was conflict ridden and you felt really unseen and all of those things that I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with.
[00:05:17]:
I've certainly had my fair share of that kind of dynamic in the past. So why why would that be hard to let go of? I think we can feel it doesn't make sense. As I was saying in the introduction, we can have this sense of wouldn't it be easier to let go of that person? Because rationally, logically, I know that that relationship was unhealthy and that they weren't good for me, that I felt distressed and sad and anxious most of the time in that relationship. So shouldn't I feel relieved now that I'm not with them anymore? Why do I feel like I miss them? Why can't I stop thinking about them? Why am I obsessing over what they're doing and who they're seeing and how they're spending their time and whether they miss me and whether they're thinking about me? Why do I still care so much when deep down I know that it was dysfunctional? And I think that, again, we really have to be so kind to ourselves and cut ourselves a lot of slack there because you're not like uniquely broken or desperate or pathetic for having that experience. It's actually extremely normal. And I think that, again, when we've had any kind of relationship end, but particularly one that has been really high drama, we have all this energy that we're used to devoting to the relationship, and we've probably really raised our baseline level of activation and stress around relationships. So when the the war is over, so to speak, and we're just left standing amongst the rubble, it can feel extremely disconcerting. And all of those drives to like check up on them and try and see what they're doing and try and control them in some way, That's probably just residual patterns of how you acted in the relationship.
[00:06:56]:
Right. You wanted to always be in conflict with them because for a lot of us, like conflict, at least we're engaged in conflict. And that connection that I get from fighting with you in a weird sort of way feels a lot safer to me than the silence and the disconnect. And so when you're then in the wake of a relationship ending and there's just nothing, you're just in the void, that can feel extremely uncomfortable. And it might not be conscious in so many words that you're making sense of it in that way. But that's often what's going on, is that you'd rather be in in the drama and in the chaos than in the silence and in the void without them. And so when you've been calibrated to that level of drama and chaos with someone who you know is not good for you, then your drive to pursue that, and often that will come out as overthinking about them obsessing, scrutinising, looking on their social media, playing detective, talking about them incessantly When you're so accustomed to there being stress and drama around that, when you're so accustomed to there being stress and drama around that attachment, around that person, around that relationship. So just recognising that what you're experiencing is a very normal response because, again, we can't really expect to go from, like, fully invested and and particularly when you've been in a relationship that has been stressful and on its last legs.
[00:08:27]:
Again, with anxiously attached people, the tendency is to just keep upping the ante in terms of how much energy you are putting towards the relationship. So you've probably neglected, like, every other aspect of your life, and you were consumed by it. Right? You're thinking about them all day long, or maybe you were trying to talk about the relationship all day long, but, like, really doubling down on trying to hold on, trying to get them to see you, see your perspective, to agree with you, to see how much they were hurting you so that they would change all of these patterns. And so when the heat just keeps rising and rising and rising and then it all goes quiet, that's a very uncomfortable experience. And so the what you're experiencing is why can't I let go of them is really like your system, just having this big hangover and not knowing what to do with the space and the separation and the lack of oversight, the lack of knowing what they're doing, not having that that tether to them when you've derived a lot of safety from that, even if it felt really dysfunctional and chaotic, There was a safety and a familiarity in that for you. There was a predictability in the chaos, and now you are left in the void and that can be deeply uncomfortable. So just normalising that experience and validating it, I realised that doesn't necessarily make it easier, but hopefully, will allow you to not feel like there's something wrong with you or that there's something that you need to solve for there or that you need to make meaning out of. I think this is where so many people fall down after a break.
[00:10:03]:
I was like, oh, I miss them. That must mean something. That must mean that we should get back together. So off I go, I'm gonna text them, and I'm gonna ask to see them and have one more conversation, and try one more time because if this were the right thing, I wouldn't be feeling this way. And while that's a really understandable kind of way to make sense out of it, I think that's often misleading because it's assuming that the missing them is unusual in some way or that it wouldn't be there if the relationship if it were really meant to end. Whereas, I think if you go into a breakup expecting to miss them, irrespective of what the relationship was like, knowing that it could be the most dysfunctional relationship in the world, and you're gonna have little moments of loss and grief, and that's completely normal as you kind of figure out the next chapter. I think that way you can kind of be a little more prepared for those moments if and when they come up and you you don't spiral quite so dramatically. So if you're in this situation and you're having this this thought of why can't I let go, then what I'd really encourage you to do is for starters, drop that story.
[00:11:18]:
So stop saying that over and over. Why can't I let go? I can't let go. It has this kind of powerlessness baked into it that I don't think is very helpful to just keep telling yourself that, oh, my hands are tied. I can't help it. I can't help texting them. I can't help calling them. You can. And I think you just have to say the more honest thing, which is it's really uncomfortable for me to be in this no man's land, to be in this in between space of not really knowing what the next chapter of my life looks like, but not being in that last chapter where even though it was dysfunctional and I didn't feel very good in the relationship, there was still a sense of identity and purpose that I derived from that.
[00:12:02]:
There was still a familiarity. There was still a predictability even in all of the drama. So be honest with you can stop yourself from doing it. It's just really uncomfortable and unfamiliar, and it's going to take some time for you to know how to navigate that. And that's really where you might have heard me say before, we really have to reframe moving on after a relationship ends from a feeling to a choice and an action. People say, I can't move on. I still love them, so I can't move on. And I think if you're waiting for moving on to be a feeling, oh, I just have to sit at home on the couch until I stop loving them.
[00:12:42]:
You're going to be waiting a really long time. Now, that's not to say that you can't have a wallowing period. I actually really encourage it in my higher love course. I have a little exercise for you where you just devote 10 minutes a day to wallowing and crying and doing whatever you need to do. I think it's important to allow yourself to feel those things, but to balance that with taking decisive steps forward and really supporting yourself and taking good care of yourself and kind of deciding that you're gonna write the story of what comes next rather than really dwelling in this place of passivity and self pity and woe is me and nobody's ever gonna love me. I don't think that that's a good place to hang out for too long, And you really do need to trust that if you take steps towards moving on, you take action towards moving on, then the moving on as a feeling kind of follows the moving on as an action or a set of actions. So in much the same way that we don't wait to go to the gym until we feel really motivated, we decide to go to the gym because we know that that's in alignment with our values. And even if we don't feel like it, we know that the feelings will follow, will feel better afterwards, will feel better while we're there even.
[00:13:55]:
And so we we take the action even if we don't have the feeling at the outset. Same with something like meditation. I think that a lot of the time people say, oh, I'm too distracted to sit down and meditate, and and that might be exactly why you need to sit down and meditate. Right? Because you're too distracted. So recognising that we can make choices and take action even if we're not feeling the way that we wanna feel, often us feeling good about ourselves, feeling supported, feeling optimistic, trust that you can do things, you have agency around that, And that those feelings of, of hope, optimism, confidence, self worth will often be a result of the actions that you choose to take. So if you're in that situation, struggling to let go of someone who you know isn't good for you, just know that it's a very, very common one. But there are so many things that you can do. And starting with just letting go of that story and taking little baby steps towards self care, being really kind to yourself, and taking good care of yourself rather than just orbiting around them, fixating on them after a breakup.
[00:15:12]:
Recognise that that impulse is really normal, but you don't have to follow it. You can still take aligned action in the direction that you wanna go and that you know you should go. And as I said, if you want some extra support and more specific guidance with that, definitely check out my Hire Love course, which is 50% off at the moment. Okay. Gonna leave it there. I hope that that's been helpful, and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
[00:15:38]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
on attachment, relationships, insecure attachment, anxious attachment, letting go, relationship breakups, healing, overthinking, emotional experience, irrational feelings, personal growth, Higher Love course, self care, conflict in relationships, relationship advice, relationship coach, breakups, relationship dynamics, self worth, moving on, self trust, personal development, attachment styles, emotional attachment, breakup course, relationship guidance, relationship patterns, romantic relationships, emotional health, Stephanie Rigg.