Most dumpees feel this inexplicable, obsessive feeling in their gut that draws them to their ex and makes their moving on very difficult.
They feel that they’re still connected to their ex (that their ex is thinking about them) and that something is preventing them from letting go and moving on.
If you feel this way too and it’s been weeks or months since your ex left, don’t think that something is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you for feeling connected to your ex and wanting your ex to validate your feelings and help you feel better.
You’re just a person who was abandoned and hurt by an ex. That’s why you now need some time to grieve and rebuild your broken self-esteem.
How much time you need depends on what you think and do after the breakup.
If you spend most of your days in bed thinking about your ex, you’ll most likely have a difficult time getting rid of your love (the connection you feel for your ex) and unintentionally make yourself even more emotionally connected to your ex.
But if you’re staying busy with your life (work, friends, hobbies, and activities) and you’d built decent self-esteem prior to the breakup, then you’ll probably get over your ex in a relatively short amount of time.
Keep in mind that all broken-hearted dumpees go through the 5 stages of a breakup for the dumpee. During these stages, they undergo shock, anger, denial, anxiety, depression, a feeling of helplessness, and a variety of unpleasant emotions.
But provided that they stay busy and fall in love with themselves again, these negative emotions will slowly subside. They won’t disappear overnight because detachment doesn’t happen that quickly, but if they follow no contact and focus on themselves, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll stay connected to their ex for another year or two.
Not if they wholeheartedly invest in their emotional well-being and do the things that help them detach from their ex.
In this post, we’ll answer the question, “Why do I still feel connected to my ex?” We’ll talk about the reasons why you feel connected to your ex weeks or months after the breakup and share some advice with you on how to get rid of this unhealthy connection and the thoughts that come with it.
Why do I still feel connected to my ex weeks after the breakup?
If a few weeks had gone by since your ex broke up with you and you don’t know why you still feel connected to your ex, the simplest explanation is that you’re in pain and feel lost.
Your ex has abandoned you, triggered your hidden fears and anxiety, demolished your self-esteem, and affected the way you think and feel about your ex.
He or she made you crave that which you no longer have (a secure relationship) and forced your anxious brain to go into overdrive and analyze the breakup to infinity and beyond. That’s why you now lack happy hormones and think of your ex as the only person who can help you become secure and happy again.
This is a very common occurrence as it happens to many dumpees.
It especially happens to those who:
- blame themselves for the breakup
- have hope for reconciliation
- refuse to move on
- think that their ex is the best they ever had
- keep reliving the breakup in their minds and/or keep analyzing their ex’s pre-breakup and post-breakup behavior
As you can see, dumpees feel connected to their ex when they have a poor connection with themselves – when they lack internal happiness or direction in life.
That’s when they fantasize about having a good connection with their ex and oftentimes fail to realize that the best way to stop feeling connected to their ex is to invest in themselves.
If you feel connected to your ex, you need to understand that your ex doesn’t feel connected to you back. This connection you feel is completely one-sided, which means that it occurred because your understanding of life has changed significantly.
Your life will probably be very similar to before when you were with your ex, but your perception of it and the importance you’ve put on your ex will not. These things are making you think that your ex is your soulmate and that you can’t live without him or her.
Even though it probably feels like you can’t live without your ex, the truth is that you were attached to your ex. Maybe you were even a bit dependent or codependent but failed to realize it. If that’s the case, you’re going to experience gut-wrenching withdrawal symptoms and feel like you’re never going to find happiness again.
Such thoughts are, of course, created by anxiety, fears, and low self-esteem. You will definitely be happy again – whether it’s with your ex or someone else.
Here are 6 reasons why you still feel connected to your ex.
Why do I still feel connected to my ex months after the breakup?
A few months are usually not enough to get over the breakup. Breakups take much longer than that. For most people, it’s around 8 months to a year, but it can take twice or even thrice as long if dumpees were codependent and/or had mental health issues.
Recovery speed depends on how much of their personal happiness dumpees have invested into the relationship.
If they’ve put their hopes and dreams into their relationship, the end of the relationship usually hurts dumpees immensely. It increases their desire to be loved and possibly even makes dumpees feel connected to their dumper on a spiritual and psychic level.
Generally speaking, the connection dumpees have with their ex shouldn’t last more than half a year. But if it does, it usually means that dumpees aren’t doing everything in their power to regain their happiness and let go of their ex.
Most of the time, dumpees who stay connected to their ex prolong their connection by remaining in frequent contact with their ex. This is how they set themselves back emotionally, increase their dependence, and slow down their healing progress.
So if you can’t figure out why you still feel connected to your ex many months after the breakup, the first thing you need to do is figure out if you’re making any of the typical post-breakup mistakes.
If you are, you need to stop making these mistakes immediately and start following the rules of no contact instead.
And if you still feel connected to your ex two or three weeks after that and you’re not just feeling hopeful, you may want to analyze your emotional health and discern if you’ve been taking care of your emotional well-being.
Many dumpees mistake love and connection for pain and anxiety. They don’t like hearing rational explanations and advice that’s good for them because they’re overestimating the importance of their emotions.
What to do to stop feeling connected to your ex?
There are lots of things you can do to detach from your ex and stop feeling connected to your ex.
You can (and should):
- throw away your ex’s gifts and reminders of your ex
- unfollow your ex on social media
- avoid places that trigger nostalgia
- stop looking for information on your ex
- ask your ex to stop communicating with you
- distract yourself with friends, work, and things you enjoy
- work on regaining control of your emotions
- practice self-love affirmations
- sign up for therapy
Anything that takes your mind off your ex and puts it onto you will help you stop feeling connected to your ex. But to recover the quickest, you have to stay committed to your recovery plan and avoid thinking about your ex.
Even though it’s okay to think about your ex from time to time (or a lot of time if you just got broken up with), it’s not okay to deliberately investigate your ex and his or her post-breakup life.
If you play the detective, it’s only a matter of time before you come across something you were hoping not to find, get hurt again, and start desiring your ex.
So do your best to leave your ex’s life alone and focus on yours. You have plenty of more important things to figure out now that your ex has broken up with you. Things like how to reduce anxiety and make use of your spare time.
Focus on yourself rather than your ex and you’ll soon stop feeling connected to your ex. You won’t even know you’ve disconnected because it will happen without your awareness.
But I suppose you can tell you’ve disconnected from your ex when you go a day or two without thinking about your ex.
Is there anything else I can do to stop feeling connected to my ex?
You can decrease the time it takes to sever the connection you have with your ex by investing in areas of your life that are lacking.
For example, if you feel lonely because your social life is not as good as you’d like it to be, start going out more and being more social. Meeting new people and talking to people in general are some of the most important things you can do after that breakup.
That’s because people will keep your brain engaged and leave you with less time to obsess over your ex. It will probably be difficult to improve something you’re bad at or lack confidence in, but that’s exactly why it’s so important for you to work on it.
It’s your job to figure out what it is that you’re lacking because this is your time to reflect and improve. If you don’t do it now that you’re hurting and ready to self-invest, you won’t do it later either.
If you don’t know what to improve about yourself, you can’t go wrong by increasing your:
- self-esteem
- self-control
- emotional intelligence
- confidence in your abilities
- willpower and emotional strength
- independence
- optimism
- ambitiousness
- enthusiasm
- gratitude
- social intelligence
There is no limit to how much you can learn and improve after the breakup. You get to decide what you want to change and get better at. So if you’re in pain and have a lot of work to do, do a lot of work. You’ll never get another opportunity to grow this much.
Make sure to use it.
You can stop feeling connected to your ex by connecting to someone else
One of the best ways to stop feeling connected to your ex months after the breakup is to connect with someone else – with someone who cares about you and makes you feel the same emotions your ex did.
This is how you can distract yourself, start enjoying your life again, and gradually forget about your ex.
But don’t misunderstand what I just said.
If the breakup just occurred and you’re extremely emotionally dependent on your ex for love and recognition, know that it’ll be too soon for you to connect to another person. You’ll still want to be with your ex, so you’ll most likely just rebound with the new person and experience a painful setback.
A setback that will remind you why it’s important to take care of your emotional health before you try dating another person.
So before you get involved with someone else, make sure that you’re completely or mainly over your ex. Take care of your self-esteem and become emotionally independent again.
But once you’re emotionally ready to start a new chapter of your life, start talking to other people. You don’t need to date them if you’re not ready for it, but do converse with them and build a good relationship with them.
This will tell you that you’re desirable and that it may not hurt to connect with someone new when the time is right.
Do you still feel connected to your ex? What are some of the things you’re doing to stop feeling drawn to your ex? Share your game plan with us below the post.
However, if you prefer to discuss relationship and breakup matters in private, check out our coaching options.
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. Learn more about me or get in touch today.
Helo Zan,
I am Sandie. Thank you very much for your words.
But i still got a problem. I had a 4 and half years relationship and in march ,2020 i got dumped by my ex.
Its been nearly an year . He blocked me from all the social media and from every other mean so that i couldnt reach him. If i ask about him through his friends, he blocks his friends too.
I really wanna know what kind of situation this is ? Blocking me (dumpee) is normal . But is it abnormal to block every person that asks him about me ?
Hope you ll have an answer..
Kind Regards!
Hello Zan,
your articles make so much sense and they help. I’m going to need that kind of help.
I’m a dumpee, I could laugh but it’s so not funny. And I’m sure anyone reading this would think I’m a total idiot, they would be right.
I was married for 19 years, in that time I buried my daughter aged 13 and fought and survived cancer. Our relationship was not without heartbreaking challenges. My husband was her stepfather and struggled to understand my grief and found interests to obsess over whilst I learned how to carry on, when life did return to something that wasn’t so painful every second we continued but that closeness we had was lost, he seemed to have moved on.
We continued to raised our combined family of 4 boys and then we were blessed with a daughter. But life was getting difficult, the boys were growing, becoming teenagers and my ex is an aspie he struggled and life became even more difficult. It’s been a rough ride as advice online doesn’t alway add up to his way of thinking.
We separated 5 years ago but I never stopped loving him, and after 18 months came back together, but he had been seeing someone and lying to me to cover that up. I found out and that’s is when the back and forth nightmare started. I didn’t know at the beginning, but this woman has and still lives with her partner for 18 years, my ex believed that she was on the level and everything she told him, he wanted her, and she said she was going to leave and come to my ex….but then he wanted me and so it went until he finally asked for a divorce and I gave him it.
I moved away but It took its toll on my mental health and I lost myself many times,
He came looking for me and foolishly I moved back but I became the dumpee many many times over. I moved in and out of our home it was ridiculous. The last time he persuaded me to return by proposing, and I wanted my old life back, the one where we were happy and I wanted the pain to end.
One day I saw that lies were still going on and he was texting her I dumped him finally… and moved away.
Our child chose to stay with him with friends and school. That was tough. But I was getting there and yes again a few months after settling in my new home he came all smiles and regrets and apologies yes I took him back again but stayed in my own place. This time the relationship lasted 8 months and last week… he pulled the final plug. I am desperate to become the strong independent happy person I was so many years ago. The pull is painful, but I know I am the only person who can make the change, I hope that reading your words helps me to remain focused. Thanks
HI zan
Thank you for your brilliant angle on things.
For me it’s been 18 months.
I had been in no contact with my ex with the last contact being in July when she reached out to wish my son a happy birthday.
I had to contact her In regards to some legal matter and I kept it very bland but she came back with raw emotional stuff and asked if I would be up for a chat.
We spoke on the phone for 2 hours and at some point she mentioned her “amazing” partner (I think she has been with her for 10 months.
She also asked if she could video call my kids because she missed them.
The last contact was a week ago and I am left feeling confused and tired.
I want to give things a go but I had given up believing. Then I kinda got this nothing contact and I up left up in the air agian.
Do I reach out again? Do I wait for her to initiate again? Do I tell her I still love her and this is too hard?
2 months ago I didnt think I would ever hear from her again so I don’t want to go in all guns a blazing demanding answers because I know that will jsut push her closer to her new girlfriend.
Any ideas would be grateful.
#hoplessromanticlesbiansarwcarzy!
Thanks for the blog and this post. I’m going to buy your book as well. For me, it’s been over 20yrs since the split and I’m still struggling with this one. Life will and does go on but for me I wonder if some feelings will ever end… Appreciate all your doing here I can can tell it helps many!
Hi A long road.
If it’s been 20 years since the split and you’re still struggling to move past it, I suggest that you identify where your feelings for your ex come from.
Did your ex treat you badly at the end of the relationhip and caused you psychological trauma? Have you been doing your best to forgive and forget your ex? What about your personal happiness? Would you say you’re happy with who you are and how far you got?
A part of you is still holding on to your ex. So do some soul-searching to discern if you feel connected to your ex because of the pain your ex has caused you or because of something lacking in your life.
Best wishes,
Zan
It’s been nearly 5 months after my breakup and I’m still feeling very much in pain. 6 year relationship, he had GIGS and jumped straight into something with someone else. He said he had to leave to be on his own etc. We had a house and a full life together. Obviously wasn’t good enough. Been in no contact since September and recently I’ve noticed he’s unblocked me from his work cell. What do you think this means? He hasn’t reached out but I can’t help but overthink he’s going to reach out or that I’m still in his mind and he’s in a regretful stage. Please can you write an article on how to deal with being unblocked but the person not reaching out?
This blog has saved my life the last few months. Thank you!
Hi Getting There.
I’m glad the blog’s helped you with your breakup.
Your ex’s unblocking doesn’t mean much. All it means is that he’s processed his worst feelings for you and that he’s realized he overreacted.
You need to stay in no contact and keep moving on. Stay strong!
I’ll write an article on your suggested topic soon.
Best,
Zan
Please zan write an article about Being unblocked . I was recently unblocked on WhatsApp one year after the breakup she is with someone else but sometimes she checks my social media , she even blocks me on Instagram when i upload nice pictures of me and then she unblocks me again. And as i told you she unblocked me on my cell phone recently after one year that she blocked me and monkey branched and she is still with the guy and living together. Im unblocked one month since then and its been no interaction i havent talked to her and neither did she
Please comment on Being unblocked on WhatsApp one year after the breakup and she monkey branched right after
Hi Linx. I’ll start writing a post on this matter tomorrow.
Your ex probably gets annoyed when she sees you’re doing well, so she blocks you. If you’re trying to get back with her, my advice is to post less frequently.
In my next post, I’ll explain what it means when an ex unblocks you.
Stay healthy,
Zan
And she didnt even follow me on instagram its insane. I post less frecuently i even changed my account to private since november. Only now in january she unblocked me on WhatsApp…and she is still súper in love with her boyfriend and posting her happy life which makes everything more confusing.
As people say here, the covid 19 and lockdowns makes the whole thing more more difficult. You alone and isolated at home aand she with her new support at home watching Netflix, i Dont even know how i still resist …but i do it
Hi Zan,
Thank you so much for your insight and support for all of us who feel as if we are going through a breakup alone in the middle of a pandemic.
Can you write an article about the best ways to breakup when one day we might find ourselves in the role of the dumper instead of dumpee? I never want to inflict this kind of pain on another person.
Thanks Zan!
Hi Hermione.
I believe I mentioned a few good ways to break up with someone before, but I don’t think I created a separate topic for it.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll put it on my to-write list.
Kind regards,
Zan
Hi Zan! Thank you for your great work at magnet of success…
it’s like this article is actually made for me to be able to express myself about this. It’s a month now I went on no contact or I say I stopped talking to my Dumper ex girl. We were in a long term relationship and lots happened, on and off thing and all of that and yet we still smile and connected but during covid19, whole story changed and well she broke up again last year May. I did follow her talk and talk and all I get was pain and pain and pain and pain and I finally had the urge to stop talking to her for like a week plus for the 1st time since have known her. Then she called and texted me I have changed and all of that…started playing victim mentality thing and she also told me about her skin problem and seek out help from which I gladly did and it worked for her. All of a sudden after a months or two months of talking, she started acting up though I was tripping too kind of wanting her more and still kinda argued on things and well she just told me we can’t work out cause of the difference in religion that’s been there. Well I did 2weeks of NC and it was 31st of December and I called her like we shouldnt end this year like this atleasf we should talk normally but nah she was so acting up like I was a pest omg…i did this till 4th of January this year and all I get was just some serious acting…serious attitude and all sort of mean talk and that…so I decided to stop talking to her and its a month now…and it feels good and void and like…i can’t describe it….i had the urge to call her yesterday so badly but I was able to surpress the feeling and wow I didn’t…i hate my feelings for her even after all sort of things she is done to me..i am scared of getting connected to any other girl and some can see it in me cause I really wanna get to that height of not feeling for her any more…she doesn’t call me again too and its so sad and disheartening it’s coming from her…i hate this hope…
Zan I don’t know if my feelings is ok or I need therapy…
Hi lb.
Your breakup is still fresh, so it’s expected of you to be in pain. It’s only been a month.
But from what I see, you’re healing and getting better, so you you’re not in desperate need of therapy. If you think therapy can help you, however, then I encourage you to find help. You might also learn more about yourself.
Kind regards,
Zan
Went through all of this that you Zan are explaining to us! Love this article and thank you for finding ways to help all of us
Hi Linda.
Most people believe that they’re connected to their ex. But after some time (when they lose hope), they realize that it was all in their head.
Thanks for commenting!
Best,
Zan
Covid amplifies everything too. Being isolated & cut off from friends & family since she dumped me has made it much more difficult to stay distracted. She also seems to have an instinct for when I’m just starting to let go & always finds some reason to make contact. Thinking it’s because she misses me, I’m filled with gratitude & hope & allow the bandaid to be repeatedly torn off. The connection is imaginary. When they walk away, it’s your job to close that chapter & get on with your life. Waiting around for the person who discarded you to have a change of heart instead of working on your self-esteem is a tragic waste of precious time.
I went through that too. Getting over a break up, confusion, mixed messages etc during covid. Locked in the house and not being able to go anywhere. But time heals and sorts everything out. You realise that all they/re doing is bread crumbing us and means nothing. Mine even told me she misses me etc. But actions ultimately speak louder than words. You get to a point with enough time to see them as they really are. And it isn’t good. And think of it this way, if we can get through this during the pandemic and be ok, then we can get through anything.
Hi learning_lessons.
I agree with you that connection is imaginary. So do yourself a favor and walk away as quickly as possible. It will take time to heal, but just because it hurts, it doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.
Best,
Zan
Can my ex feel my feelings of loathing and hatred? Finding out an ex cheated after they leave is a rather unsatisfying experience when you’ve you’ve decided to not communicate and feel like telling them what a piece of crap you think they are.
Hi Trevor.
Your ex can’t feel your feelings of hatred unless you tell her or show her how you feel. But do try your best not to be angry with her anymore. Anger is causing damage to you, not her.
Best,
Zan
I know but it just comes and goes. Really hard to get past it since she was gaslighting me about my suspicions and made me feel guilty for even questioning and manipulated me with tears about having nowhere to live so stayed at my place for three months past our breakup which was emotional hell. I really despise her now for skipping off after using me and discarding me.
I understand that you feel used, Trevor. I would too if I were you.
But now that it’s over, you have to learn to forgive her. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself.
Practice forgiveness affirmations and try to convince yourself that she wasn’t meant for you.
Kind regards,
Zan
Thanks so much Zan.
I bought your book and it was helpful.
I actually pray for her all the time. I’ve heard it’s hard to hate someone you pray for so I guess I need to do more.
Keep up the good work.