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Penny Price has spent over 20 years as a relationship counselor, sitting with thousands of people in the weeks and months after a breakup. In that time she noticed a pattern. People in pain rarely stay stuck because they are weak. They stay stuck because they do the wrong thing, again and again, often while trying very hard. In her words: "99 times out of 100... people do the wrong thing to get over their breakup."
The mistakes below come from her list. Every one of them makes sense from the inside, which is exactly why they are so easy to fall into. And one of them, number five, is a mistake most people are proud of making.
If you recognise yourself in a few of these, go easy on yourself. As Penny says, "we all have been there, too."
You wake up and they are the first thing on your mind. You fall asleep replaying the last conversation. In between, every song, street and smell leads back to them. Thinking about someone you loved is natural, but when it fills the whole day, there is no room left for anything to heal.
Instead: give the thoughts a place to go. Write them down, say them out loud to someone you trust, or set aside a time each day to let yourself feel it fully. When the feeling has somewhere to go, it stops having to follow you everywhere.
This is the one that keeps people up at 2 a.m.: going over what must be wrong with you, since you couldn't keep the relationship going. You rewrite every argument and find yourself guilty each time.
Instead: take Penny's line to heart. No matter why the breakup happened, you are not at fault for the pain you feel, and "no healing can ever happen if you are constantly thrashing yourself over the loss." You can learn from a relationship without punishing yourself for it.
Constantly contacting your ex, trying to persuade them to give it another try, is on Penny's list for a reason. Each message keeps the wound open, and each silence or short reply opens it a little wider.
Instead: make a calm decision about contact, in daylight, before the lonely evening comes. Penny's book has a full section on when and why contact with an ex is and is not advisable. Decide once, clearly, so you aren't deciding again every night with your thumb over the send button.
A drink to get to sleep, then three. Scrolling until the screen blurs. Whatever stops the feeling for a few hours. Penny calls these the "self destructive things" people do to numb the pain, and she counts "destructive diversions like going to the bar" among the most expensive ways to deal with a breakup.
Instead: swap one numbing habit for one comforting one. A walk, a bath, a call to a friend, an early night with a book. You don't have to be perfect. You only have to stop making tomorrow harder than today.
This is the mistake people are proud of. You keep a brave face at work, you tell your family you are "doing really well, actually", and you push the sadness and the anger down because everyone seems tired of hearing about it. It looks like strength. Penny sees it differently: if you don't let yourself fully feel the pain, you can never be free of it.
The hurt doesn't vanish. It waits, and it can leave you "with a bit of a hole in your heart that you just choose to bury and try to ignore", which can affect your future relationships and your future happiness.
Instead: tell at least one person the truth. Penny suggests finding a "Breakup Sponsor", one person who understands and can keep you going on the rough days. As she says, it's not a magic pill, but that support can be worth its weight in gold, and asking for it is a sign of strength.
Penny goes into this in her short video on the 5 key principles to getting over your ex, and it is worth a few minutes if you have been holding everything in.
When a relationship ends, the routine often goes with it. Meals get skipped, sleep goes wrong, the gym bag stays by the door. Penny lists a disrupted daily routine among the common mistakes because a day with no shape is much easier to fall through.
Instead: rebuild one thing at a time. Pick a single fixed point, such as breakfast at the same time, a ten-minute walk or a call to a friend on Sunday, and keep it for a week before you add another. Small things you repeat do more than big plans you abandon.
The last item on Penny's list is the hardest to see from inside: finding it impossible to think about a happy life without your ex in it. It feels like a fact, yet it is a feeling, and it keeps people stuck longer than almost anything else, because it makes every step forward look pointless.
It is also why some people say yes on the spot when an ex asks to try again, before they have asked themselves whether it is what they deserve.
Instead: let yourself picture a future without having to believe in it yet. Penny talks about honoring your past while looking forward to a bright future, and about becoming "a newer, better and more loving and loveable you". Write down one small thing you want for yourself in the next year that has nothing to do with your ex. And decide now, calmly, what you would say if they asked to come back, so you never have to settle for second best.
Don't try to fix all seven at once. Pick the one that stung when you read it, and do the "instead" for that one today. If you can manage a second, make it number five: tell one person the truth about how you are.
[Add one sentence here about which of these mistakes you have seen most, in yourself or in someone close to you. If not, delete this line.]
Penny wrote all of this up in a step-by-step eBook, Survival After Separation, built on what she saw work and not work over two decades of counseling. Her short video sets out the 5 key principles behind it, and it is the best next step if you saw yourself in this list.
Watch Penny's short video on getting over your ex and being happy again
(As I said at the top, that is my affiliate link.)