A Day To Day Guide Of How To Get Over Your ‘It’s Complicated’ Ex

So you met a really great guy. He’s funny, he’s charming, you have so much in common, it’s like you’ve known each other forever. Soon you become close friends, but then the lines begin to blur, and suddenly you’re in the “it’s complicated stage.”

But that’s okay. This time it’s different. This guy is different. He may even be the one. Wow, lucky you. So you wait. You talk every single day over multiple communication portals. You talk on FaceBook, SnapChat, Texting, you even Tweet at each other. When you’re together he buys you coffee, rubs your back, and watches your favorite movies with you. You’re friends constantly drill you with questions like “What exactly are you guys?”

You tell them that you don’t want to put a label on your relationship, you don’t have to, and you’re both adults. But it’s secretly driving you crazy. Finally, after months of being a little more than friends he tells you he’s ready for a relationship. Then 5 days later he tells you he’s started to see someone. One text, one conversation, and suddenly everything’s over. You lose your best friend. You go from “it’s complicated” to “come back I still love you”. So now what? Now you take things day by day. 



Day 1: You sit at home with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s watching He’s Just Not That Into You. Yes, this is a cliché, but it totally happens. You rock that bride-of-frankenstien-makeup-all-over-my-face-sitting-in-my-underwear look. 



Day 14: Okay, enough is enough. Your hair is perfect, your nails are done, you’re makeup is on point. Time to get drunk and take pictures to make him see what he’s missing out on.



Day 15: OMG. NO. YOU DID NOT CALL HIM LAST NIGHT. Someone else definitely used your phone to call him and chat for 10 minutes.



Day 18: You see him in class and wave to him, he looks away. You tell yourself you don’t care, he’s acting like a child. 



Day 21: You sit at home obsessing over what you possibly could have said to him last weekend. You wonder if maybe you’re slowly losing your mind.



Day 40: You join a gym because you realize all this binge eating is making you look slightly less fabulous.



Day 54: You immerse yourself in school, you decide it’s time to raise that GPA 



Day 70: You start relying on your girlfriends again. All those people you started to lose touch with when you were with him, you bring them back into your life.



Day 72: It doesn’t take long before they put you in your place though. No more talking about him.



Day 86: you make a list of everything you hate about him.



Day 87: He texts you Happy Birthday and you immediately delete the list



Day 88: He doesn’t show up to your birthday party so you get really drunk



Day 89: WHO IS THIS PERSON BESIDE ME



Day 92: You go out on a date with birthday boy. He seems like a nice person



Day 93: You feel like you’ve somehow cheated on your Ex “It’s Complicated” 



Day 115: Birthday boy is sweet, and funny, and wonderful…but you just can’t be with him. You tell him you still want to be friends.



Day 130: DAMN. That gym membership was a great idea and you look AMAZING



Day 145: You realize you’ve seen 500 Days of Summer way too many times at this point



Day 170: You get a SnapChat from a friend with him at a club. You breiefly contemplate getting ready and running over even though it 1:20am. You realize how crazy and pathetic that is and turn your phone off and go to bed.



Day 190: Remember when you thought you guys would be friends forever? Ya maybe you shouldn’t have bought those festival tickets with him. Get ready for an extremely uncomfortable weekend.



Day 194: Okay, that wasn’t so bad. Maybe you guys can be friends again?



Day 200: He’s gone back to ignoring you. 



Day 240: You wake up and feel differently. You realize that you haven’t thought about him in a while. Hearing his name doesn’t have the same effect on you. You hear that he’s single now but for some reason you just don’t care. 



One day you wake up and you feel differently for a reason you just can’t explain. You have friends, you’ve kept to your gym schedule and you feel amazing, you’re grades have improved. All the things you’ve been doing to help take your mind off him have worked.

You got your life back and it feels great! Time really does help you get over someone. Sometimes the reason it takes so long to get over them is because you’re constantly reliving the past. In fact, you glorify it. You hold an image in your head of how perfect he was and how great things were with you guys.

But when you do this, you seem to forget all the little things, the obvious signs that it wasn’t going to work. When you’ve spent so much time thinking about him and replaying things in your head eventually it begins to hurt less.

Slowly, you learn to be independent, to enjoy being single. The right guy is out there someone, just because it didn’t work with him doesn’t mean it won’t with someone else.

For more raw, powerful writing follow Heart Catalog here.