When your ex-girlfriend tells you to move on, she sees or feels that you’re not accepting the breakup and that you may be thinking about how to impress her and reattract her. In a strange way, she wants to help you let go of hope and completely give up on getting back together.
She knows that by giving up, you would stop hurting and also make it easier for her to clear her guilty conscience.
Sadly, an ex who tells you to move on has no romantic feelings (love) or expectations of you. She’s detached and doesn’t want to feel that you still love her and want to be with her.
If she feels that you’re having a difficult time accepting the breakup and moving on, she feels pressured by your one-sided feelings and wants to do something to stop feeling that way. In response, she feels tempted to push you away by force and focus entirely on herself.
Self-focus would make her feel positive emotions whereas your pain and feelings would continue to make her feel cornered and uncomfortable.
If you don’t stop saying or doing things that put her in an uncomfortable situation, she’ll keep telling or showing you to stop caring about her and move on.
This will make you feel even more rejected and unworthy of her and make you more desperate for her acceptance and love. The more anxious you feel, the bigger the danger that you’ll tell her or show her how important she is to you and put her in a situation to control your thoughts and feelings.
Therefore, take an ex-girlfriend who tells you to move on seriously. Respect her lack of romantic emotions and consider her decision as final. I’m not telling you to be over her right away, but do avoid fighting her decision to leave.
Avoid telling her you still have feelings for her and that you’re ready to fight for the relationship. Now that the breakup happened, there is no more relationship to fight for. Couples fight for relationships when they’re still together and love each other.
They don’t fight when they break up and want different things from each other. Technically, couples who break up aren’t couples. They’re ex-couples who couldn’t make the relationship work. They have no choice but to give each other space and stay broken up until they both want to be in a relationship again.
Dumpers know their ex wants to be with them. They can tell how their ex feels just by looking at their ex’s facial expressions and body language. They don’t need their ex to apologize and promise them to be a better partner to know their ex wants another chance.
It’s clear to them that they’ve hurt their ex’s feelings and made their ex want to get bad together.
Most dumpees want another chance. They want another chance even if their relationship was unhealthy and had no common goals and values.
Dumpees want to be with their ex because they got rejected by an ex they were attached to. Attachment makes it hard for them to let go of the future they invested in and envisioned for weeks, months, or years. They’d rather reject reality and focus on their imagination.
Imagination gives them hope and a false sense of control whereas reality scares them and gives them anxiety.
So if your ex-girlfriend told you to move on after she broke up with you, remember that she’s serious about the breakup and that she wants you to leave her alone. She wants you to accept her decision, control your emotions and actions, and give her the space she needs to self-prioritize and not feel bad for leaving and hurting you.
Your ex doesn’t want you to hold on to her and stay emotionally dependent on her. Dependence and codependence don’t look attractive and make your ex want to be with you even less. Negative traits and behaviors only suffocate the dumper and make her want freedom and independence.
The only way to make the dumper happy is to let her know you accept the breakup (not want the breakup) and give her the space she needs to live life on her terms. Nothing makes her happier (and respect you more) than showing her you understand what she needs and that you have the strength to let her go and move on.
Conversely, nothing makes her feel more trapped, guilt-tripped, and annoyed than (constant) communication, personal questions, tears, threats, and various deeds that show you’re in denial, incapable of letting her go.
If you try to stop her from moving on by force, she won’t just feel unheard but also feel tempted to tell you how she feels. This means she might get angry with you and make you regret acting on fear and desperation.
As a dumpee, you need to listen to what she tells you. If she tells you to move on, she does this because she’s moved on herself and doesn’t want you to reason with her. Moreover, if she tells you to find someone else, she probably wants to find someone soon or has already found someone.
Whatever she tells you to do, keep in mind she’s likely projecting her wants and needs onto you and expects you to let her be free. You don’t have to look for someone else if you aren’t ready and don’t want to, but you do have to let her date others if she decides to do that.
What she does as an ex-girlfriend is not your concern. Your ex is capable of making her own decisions and must be allowed to do so. That’s how you can show her you accept the breakup and want the best for her.
In this post, we discuss what it means when your ex-girlfriend tells you to move on. We also talk about why an ex-girlfriend may continue to text you after telling you to move on and whether no contact will work.
What does it mean when your ex tells you to move on?
When your ex-girlfriend tells you to move on, she wants you to stop loving her and expecting her to feel something for you. The girl or woman considers you her ex-boyfriend – a person she fell out of love with and doesn’t want to be with anymore.
As your ex, her only wish is to distance herself from the breakup and unwanted reminders of you and the past. Unlike you, reminders don’t make her nostalgic. They bring back difficult emotions and prevent her from leaving the past behind.
The longer she feels trapped, the more negativity she associates with your persona and the smaller the chance that she’ll process everything and want to be with you again.
So bear in mind that when an ex-girlfriend tells you to move on, she means every word. She’s set on staying broken up and wants you to let her go. She told you to move on because she feels emotions she doesn’t want and because she can’t feel emotions she wants to feel.
She wants to feel relieved and elated and doesn’t want to feel guilty and forced to commit to an ex she broke up with and doesn’t want to be with.
By telling you to move on, your ex may also be trying to lower your hopes and anxiety. Unfortunately for her, though, you don’t want to hear “Move on.” It’s not very empathetic, considering she just broke up with you and hurt your feelings.
When she tells you to move on, she kills more hope than you’re ready to kill and hurts you immensely. Among other things, she hurts your self-esteem and makes you rely on yourself for healing.
Instead of being frank, she could have told you that you both needed some time to process things and that communication would only make things worse. She could have said something that showed care and made you understand (on your own) that moving on is the best and only thing left to do.
I suppose her way of ending things is better than being ignored or told you were a terrible partner, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
How an ex tells you to give up on the relationship is extremely important. It determines how quickly you get yourself back and move on.
You won’t move on just because your ex told you to move on. You’ll move on when you’re ready to detach and stop seeing your ex as the most valuable person in your life. It could take a while to detach, but the most your ex can do to help you let go and move on is to be honest and empathetic.
By empathetically telling you what you need to hear, she can encourage you to focus on your health and happiness rather than taking your hope away and making you blame yourself.
Your ex doesn’t have to support you from start to finish. But she is morally responsible for giving you closure and helping you move on. She has to choose words carefully and do her best not to harm you.
Typically, dumpers tell their ex to move on in an attempt to get their ex off their back. They want their ex to stop texting and calling them and making their post-breakup life difficult.
They want to achieve two things at once:
- Make their ex stop chasing them and encourage their ex to be as detached as them.
- Stop their ex from making them feel pressured and aggravated.
If they can do both, they alleviate their guilty conscience and feel in control of the breakup.
That said, here’s why your ex-girlfriend told you to move on.
Forget what she says and do what’s best for you
When your ex-girlfriend tells you to move on, she wants you to do what she says and help her move on easier. She wants to help you help her assuage her guilt and get rid of you in the quickest way possible.
You probably feel confused and wonder why she didn’t use different (more reassuring) parting words. Why didn’t she say she wanted you to feel better and let you down gently?
The reason she said she wanted you to move on probably had something to do with her lack of patience. She felt smothered due to the negative feelings she accumulated throughout the relationship (or after) and decided to push you away to avoid dealing with your emotions.
This was the quickest and easiest way to deal with a situation she didn’t want to deal with.
You see, dumpers don’t want to see their ex hurt and desperate for affection. They want to see their ex accept the separation and allow them a smooth transition from a relationship to a single life (or another relationship).
A smooth transition eases their guilty conscience and helps them focus on things that give them happiness and meaning.
If dumpers aren’t allowed to move on as quickly as they want to, they often get overwhelmed and tell their ex things such as:
- move on
- find someone who loves you
- I need to focus on myself
- I love you but I’m not in love with you
- we’re incompatible
- I don’t want to date anyone/I just want to be alone
Their words may not be lies, but they don’t offer any comfort either. They just make dumpees overanalyze things.
You should ignore your ex’s meaningless words and remember that your ex needs time to go through all the breakup stages for the dumper. Your ex needs to process negative emotions and figure out whether to stay in touch or not.
If your ex wants to talk, your ex will reach out and let you know she wants to chat. But if your ex doesn’t want any communication, your ex will stay away from you and tell you “Move on” and other things you don’t want to hear.
Regardless of what your ex tells you, you should do your best to move on. Holding on to your ex for reassurance won’t help you feel better, nor get back with your ex. It will only delay detachment and healing.
So be strong and try to get back on your own two feet. When you recover, you won’t miss your ex so much you feel sick. You’ll think a lot more rationally and see that your ex wasn’t your ideal partner.
An ideal partner wouldn’t have left you and told you to move on. She would have recognized your value as a partner and remained committed to you through good and bad.
Your best option is to focus on moving forward and rebuilding yourself. Eventually, you’ll be able to move on from your ex and see your ex for who she truly is.
What if my ex told me to move on but still texts me?
This behavior is commonly referred to as breadcrumbing. Dumpers sometimes text and confuse dumpees for selfish reasons. They don’t want a relationship or anything serious from their ex. All they want is to check up on their ex from time to time and get something from their ex.
Sometimes they want forgiveness, and other times, they want someone reliable to talk to. Someone who knows them, cares about them, and can help them with their problems.
If your ex is breadcrumbing you after she told you to move on, it doesn’t mean your ex has changed her mind about the breakup. It just means that your ex is ready to converse with you about non-relationship matters (things you don’t want to talk about).
It’s in your best interest to tell your ex you’re not ready for friendship and that you’ll let her know when or if you are.
Will no contact work if my ex told me to move on?
No contact can work even if your ex told you to move on and date other people. It can make your ex want you back months or years after the breakup, depending on what kind of predicaments your ex goes through and whether your ex can reflect.
If your ex doesn’t experience anything difficult and/or doesn’t engage in self-reflection and let go of negative perceptions of you, no contact won’t work the way you want it to.
It will probably continue to let your ex feel victimized and make her blame you for the demise of the relationship and the way she feels.
No contact could work as a reconciliation method only if your ex gets hurt and sees that she left a good individual. That’s because pain could make her think about the breakup for so long that she redevelops feelings and wants you back.
It could force her to regret leaving and want your love and reassurance.
Whether she comes back or not, know that no contact will help you in ways it needs to. Soon, it will improve your self-esteem and make you care about yourself more than your ex. Give it some time and you’ll see that your ex’s words and actions don’t determine your happiness and success.
They only affect you now that you feel rejected and hurt.
What do you think it means when your ex-girlfriend tells you to move on? What should the dumpee do about it? Share your views below the post.
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My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.
