After you break up with a guy, there is a period of loneliness.  Not only are you missing the time that you spent with him, but there is also a piece of your heart that walked out the door when he did.  If you are saying “I miss my ex boyfriend,” here are some ways to get past the feeling.

There are two steps to getting over an ex.  The first is to bring closure to the relationship and the second is to start on the next phase of your life.

Closure is the psychological term for ending a phase of one’s life.  There are many things you can do to stop saying “I miss my ex boyfriend.”

First of all, you should determine that he doesn’t want you back.  As long as you think that there is a chance you can get back together, you will not begin to heal.

To that end, exchange all of the physical possessions you have.  Don’t keep his toothbrush in your bathroom or hold on to his leather jacket.  If you have left clothes or other possessions at his house, pick them up.

If either of you owes the other money, pay it back as soon as possible.

Don’t contact him and don’t let him contact you.  Perhaps you can be friends in the future, but right now, you need time to separate your emotional lives.  If you give in and answer his phone calls, emails, or texts, you are just letting a wound fester.

If you find yourself saying “I miss my ex boyfriend,” sit down and write about it.  Write a letter to him sharing your feelings about the relationship and the break up.  But don’t send it to him.  Throw it away, or even better, burn it.  This will help you bring closure to the relationship.

After you’ve gotten over the initial hurt of the break up, start putting yourself out there again.  It might feel awkward at first, but you are going to have to face life as a single person sometime.  The sooner you get back on the scene, the sooner you will meet someone new.

If your ex took up a big part of your life, you will want to find new past times.  This may mean reconnecting with your girlfriends.  Or, it may mean going out and finding new friends.

One of the best ways to fill the space an old boyfriend took up is to start something new.  Join a class or a co-ed sports team.  See if your local book store has a monthly book club.  Start going to church again.

While it may be hard to get started on the social scene again, you will find that you miss your ex boyfriend much less when you are engaged in activities you enjoy.

When you have the opportunity to, start dating again.  Even if the first guy isn’t someone you can see spending the rest of your life with, accept his invitation to dinner or the movies.  As you get back into the routine of dating, you will be able to find a man who can appreciate and love you.

Whenever you hear yourself thinking “I miss my ex boyfriend,” do something that either brings closure to the relationship or propels you to move forward in your life.

When you find yourself saying “I miss my ex girlfriend,” you need to find ways to move forward with your life.  No matter how bad the break up was, there is life after your ex.  Finding your way through the depression that follows the end of the relationship can be hard.  That’s why you need to take concrete actions to move forward.

First of all, you need to work on bringing closure to the relationship.  Closure is the process by which you move on from a situation.  While you may find specific situations in which you say, “I miss my ex girlfriend,” you will not be in this state all of the time.

Begin by definitively saying that the relationship is over.  As long as you think there is a chance that you can get your ex back, you will not be able to move on.  Healing begins with putting an end to the relationship.

Next, you need to physically close the relationship.  You do that by exchanging all of the possessions in the other’s care.  Give her back the toothbrush and curling iron she kept at your house and ask her for the sweat shirt that she had borrowed for the long term.  If you owed each other money, settle up.

Once you have your possessions back, give yourself some physical space.  While you may want to remain friends with your ex in the long run, staying away in the short term will facilitate healing.  Don’t call, text, or email each other.  If she tries to contact you, screen her out.

And, don’t show up at places she is likely to be.  You don’t want to give her any opening to get under your skin.  Seeing her with another guy so soon will just prompt feelings of “I miss my ex girlfriend” all over again.

You may even need to change some of your social habits.  If you go to a small church, you might want to consider changing places of worship at least in the short term.  You may have to pick a new favorite bar or hang out as well.

When you start going new places, you will inevitably meet new people.  Some of these people will be female.  These new women are good prospects for dates.

While it may seem right now that you’ll never want to date another woman, the truth is that the sooner you get back on the dating scene, the sooner you will begin to heal.

It may not be enough to just be available though.  Consider actively seeking out women.  Take a class at the local university’s extension program.  Join a co-ed softball team.  Take up a new hobby.  All of these strategies will allow you to start meeting new women.

If a woman intrigues you, ask her out even if you can’t picture yourself in a long term relationship with her.  A date is just a fun social experience, not a commitment.

Pretty soon, you won’t be saying “I miss my ex girlfriend” nearly as frequently.  You will have moved on with your life.

Keeley knew it was time to be moving on.  Break up with her boyfriend Joe had just happened.  She knew there was no chance of getting back together, so she had to get on with her life.

First, Keeley tried talking to her friends about the break up.  At first, they were sympathetic.  But soon, they became bored with the topic and wanted to talk about their own issues.  Keeley became frustrated at their lack of support.

Her mom, on the other hand, couldn’t talk about anything but Joe.  She thought Keeley was insane to let him get away.  It sometimes seemed like her mom had been more in love with Joe than Keeley ever was.

After a few weeks, Keeley decided to go to a therapist for five sessions.  Over the course of a few weeks, she began to identify the problems which had led to the break up and plan out a strategy for moving on.

The first thing she did was to for the moving on break up was to get rid of all of Joe’s things.  Some, like the leather jacket he loved, she gave back.  Other things like his toothbrush she just threw away.  And, he had given her some nice jewelry, but she decided to box these up and store them until she became less emotional about Joe.

Next, she started doing things that she didn’t feel comfortable doing when Joe was around.  For instance, Joe would never go to the ballet with her.  Keeley had trained as a classical dancer and she appreciated Swan Lake and Giselle.  When a performance came to town, she got a couple of girlfriends together and they went.  This is not something she would have done if she had been together with Joe.

She also decided to join an adult dance class.  Partially, it got her out of the house two nights a week.  It also got her back into shape.  But, she was able to meet new people as well.  She liked the comraderie of the class.

She also explored new passions.  She never knew much about fine wines.  Joe had preferred beer and she had usually just ordered the house white.  But when she heard a local winery was offering a wine tasting class, she decided to join.

Over the course of five weeks, she developed a palate.  She began to appreciate the difference between a young wine and an old wine.

And, she met Rodney.  Rodney was a good looking lawyer who was interested in good wine and fine food.  He was also interested in Keeley.

Part of how Keeley knew that she was getting over the pain of losing Joe was that she was interested in Rodney.

Keeley doesn’t know whether the relationship with Rodney is going to be long term or a short term rebound fling.  But she does know that she doesn’t miss Joe when Rodney is around.  And that’s moving on break up advice!

Did your girlfriend break up with you?  You are not the first guy to go through this.  In fact, girls initiate three quarters of the break ups while guys only dump the girl in one quarter of the situations.  Therefore, guys have to deal with being dumped far more often than girls do.

Compounding the problem is the impression that men are supposed to deal with their emotions stoically.  While women are allowed to dissect every part of their relationship, men are expected to roll with the punches.

But this doesn’t mean that men don’t have emotions.  They hurt when women dump them.  A girlfriend break up is quite painful.

First of all, men tend to place more value on stable relationships than women do.  While a man might be interested in a fling with a woman who is not his girlfriend, what he really wants is someone who will be there in good times and bad.

But, once your girlfriend has dumped you, it’s important to figure out how to pick up the pieces and go on with your life.

First of all, you should find some way to express yourself.  Girls can do this by writing poetry or talking about the relationship endlessly with their friends.  Men often don’t feel comfortable with these options.  But, if you play the guitar or piano, try writing some music that allows you to express your feelings.  Many of the great songs are about the pain of breaking up.

Next, you need to clear out your place of all of the things that remind you of her.  If she has clothes at your house, give them back.  Throw away her toothbrush.  And, if she’s given you any gifts that you want to keep, box them up for the time being until you can look at them without having turbulent emotions.

You will want to close off communications with her, at least for the short term.  If either of you owe the other money, try to settle up so that won’t be an avenue for talking.

Then tell your ex that you want to go silent for a while.  That means no calls, texts, or emails.  Stay off each other’s myspace and facebook pages.  In time, you may be able to be friends again, but right now you both need to give each other the space to heal.

Then, you need to get out of the house.  Make a point of playing pick up basketball with your friends.  Go out to a bar from time to time.  Become a big brother to an underprivileged kid.

Then, start to get back into the dating scene once again.  At first, you can have casual dates that may not lead to anything.  But, over time, you will meet someone you really care about.  And, at that point, you will know that you have some closure about the old relationship.  You won’t be worried about the old girlfriend break up any more.

Are you getting over break up right now?  Do you hurt so bad that you feel like your heart is going to explode?  Do you want to see the other person one minute and want to kill them the next?  That is all par for the course when you are getting over break up.

Just as there are stages of grief when mourning someone who has diet, there are also steps that must be taken when getting over break up.  One woman whose first husband died and second husband divorced her said that it was actually easier getting over the death of a husband than it was recovering from divorce.  That is because there’s societal support when someone dies, but you are supposed to go about getting over break up on your own.

The first thing you should do is sit down and write a long letter to your ex.  Pour out your heart.  Share the experiences you had together.  Tell him or her why you loved them.  Put on paper how you feel about the break up.  Call them names.  It’s okay to emote in this letter because no one is ever going to see it.  That is because you are going to light a candle and burn the letter over the candle’s flame.  There are not many rituals that go along with breaking up, but this one can help you on the road to emotional recovery.

Next, you need to arrange to exchange stuff.  If you have been in a relationship of any length, you probably have some stuff of his at your place and he’s got your things at his.  You probably want much of this stuff back and he or she is equally eager to get theirs.  Work out a time for a mutual exchange.

If there are things of your ex’s that aren’t going to be exchanged, either box them up or throw them away.  Don’t leave your ex’s toothbrush lying around the bathroom because it will only remind you of them as you are trying to go about getting over break up.

It is also a good idea to box up any gifts your ex gave you for a time.  Wearing a watch that your ex gave you will make you think of them every time you check to see what time it is.  That’s just not a good idea when getting over break up.

There are sometimes financial matters that need to be straightened out when getting over a break up.  If you owe your ex money, try to either pay it off from your own funds or get another loan to pay it off.  If you have a checking account together, work out how you are going to divvy it up and then go to the bank to close it.

What you should be seeing is a pattern of closing out the parts of your lives that you shared.  This is essential to getting over break up.

After you have done what is necessary, agree to have no contact for thirty days.  This will allow you to start building separate lives.  You shouldn’t call, text, email, or meet the other person during this time.  You may even want to agree that some places such as a specific bar or even a given church “belong” to one party or the other during this month long period.

After you have had time to begin building a separate life, you will be able to interact more normally once again.  This is a difficult time, so give yourself the space you need in order to go about getting over break up.