Turning the page doesn’t always mean finding a new relationship
There are two types of individuals in our society: those who want to emerge victorious from a breakup and those who want to continue to live quietly.
Of course, breakups are not a game or a competition. To find true happiness and fulfillment, it is essential that we stop comparing ourselves to people from our past and move on.
Often times, we talk about coming out on top of a breakup when we meet a new person before our ex, and we lose when our ex finds someone else before us.
Everyone wants to feel coveted and wanted by new people when a relationship ends. And we’ve learned to measure whether or not we’ve moved forward based on our ability to quickly find a new person to love.
The truth is, turning the page doesn’t necessarily mean entering a new relationship.
It’s not about getting back into the dating game. It’s also not about falling in love with a new person and bringing them back to a family meal to introduce them to their parents.
To turn the page is to take control of your life. And if the only way for you to do that is to meet someone, then you probably have bigger issues to work out than whether or not you came out victorious in your breakup.
Turning the page is about investing yourself in your own life in a way that is unaffected by the relationship you have shared with your ex. It’s making your own choices, pursuing your own desires, and making the big changes you need to make, without worrying about what your ex thinks.
For almost three years after my last long relationship ended, I believed that being still single meant I hadn’t turned the page. I had dates, but they never ended in relationships. I’ve had a few flirtations, but I never wanted things to get serious. I thought my lack of interest in serious engagement meant that I just hadn’t turned the page with my ex.
Until the day I met him on the street and realized that I had practically forgotten about his existence.
Somewhere between a move, a career change, several months of traveling, and a lot of personal thinking, I was no longer heartbroken. I was happy again, alone. I had completely turned the page, without realizing it.
But all this happened without me having another meeting. I didn’t need anyone else to get better.
Turns out, moving on, for me, didn’t mean engaging with someone else.
It meant entering the phase of my life when I was only attached to myself.
Leaving was to find a new apartment that I liked and decorate it exactly as I wanted. It meant planning a move to a new city without considering its impact on someone else’s life.
In reality, turning the page does not mean the same from one person to another. For some, that means falling head over heels in love with someone else. For others, it means building an independent life.
You move on when your thoughts are no longer on your ex. When your mind has stopped imagining ways to win it back. When your life has subtly evolved into bigger and better things and you are focusing only on those.
The truth is, the day you stop thinking about it you emerge victorious from your breakup.
Because what happens to you after you break up has become so much more interesting than looking back.
