6 Reasons Why You STILL Can't Over Your Ex
Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with someone who is still hung up on her ex. The deets are these—they were together for a couple of years, they broke up because she wanted something more long-term while he didn't, and they've been broken up for about six months now.
Me? I'm the kind of person who is a total advocate for taking as much time as a person needs to heal. At the same time, I don't get how anyone can do that if they don't "clean break" their relationship with someone; even if it's only for a season. Unfortunately, the woman I'm referring to isn't doing that. Not even close. While she's out here thinking that she can't move on from her ex because there is some sort of cosmic connection between the two of them, I'm on the sidelines totally believing that it has more to do with some of the things I'm about to share with you.
When you dated someone that you were really into, just like you didn't fall for them overnight, it takes more than a week to get over them too. But, if you are really struggling to let one of your exes go, something tells me it may have to do with one of the six reasons on this list, sis. Does it?
He Broke Up with You (Not the Other Way Around)
One particular ex that I have, I wish we had never gotten into a relationship. Not because he isn't a good guy; last I checked, he totally is. It's just that, he has a rule that once he breaks up with someone, the last thing that he wants to be with them is friends. And since he and I were homies first, not having him in my life can be hard, at times. Anyway, when I ran into him once and shared that with him, he rolled his eyes in the most masculine way possible and said, "Shellie, you already know that I don't stay connected to exes…especially you because you are the one who broke up with me."
On the onset, what he said might seem egotistical. And yes, there might be some of that thrown into the mix. But I can sympathize with a lot of where he is coming from. When you're in a relationship with someone, you care about them deeply and ending it isn't on your radar, when they decide to call things off—where exactly are your feelings supposed to go? Even if you are truly hurt by what they did, that doesn't mean that you don't care about them anymore.
So yeah, out of all of the reasons why you may not be able to get over your ex, them breaking up with you could be the most impacting. For this one, clean-breaking, time, healing, and accepting the reality of what happened is the prescription that I would recommend. You deserve someone who wants you. It's hard to get to him if you're still all mentally and emotionally caught up in your ex.
You Didn’t Get the Closure That You Needed
I've got a theory that a lot of men don't want to give women closure because they have, what I call, "keep her on the shelf" syndrome. What I mean by that is so long as they don't formally or officially end things, in their mind, it gives them the opportunity to come back—or at least reach out for time to time or (if you're not careful) get some a few times a year. As a result, when we don't require that closure transpires, that can get us caught up in their tawdry little web. We'll be out here not letting ourselves fully move on because we think there is still a chance to make something happen with "him".
Not only does this kind of drama keep you stuck, it's also pretty cruel on his part. Sure, he might still have feelings for you and sure, he might not be sure what the future holds but he's not guaranteeing you anything either. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised in the least that he's got five other girls caught up in the very same web he's been spinning for you (SMDH).
If there's one thing that I know about a man, it's that what he wants, he will make it clear that he desires it; he will also do everything within his power to obtain it and maintain it.
If your ex is only making the effort to call to see if he's still got an emotional hold on you or if he can come over and "hit", engage the conversation. Invite him over. Then get the closure that you need while making sure you close your home's door and your heart's door afterwards. A man who is emotionally ambiguous is a man who doesn't need to waste one minute of your time. Don't let him.
The Relationship Is Now a Situationship
Please tell me that you said "duh" when you read this particular point. Oh my goodness, words cannot convey enough how real oxytocin is! If you're out here downgrading what you've got going on from a relationship to a situationship, what that sounds like to me is, he's getting all of the perks and privileges of being with you without the responsibilities. When a man gets that comfortable, of course he's not going to totally end things. Why should he? There's a huge chance that you're being his girlfriend without him being your boyfriend in return.
Just recently, while getting my nails done, I was talking to a woman who told me that she was no longer with her ex. You know what else she said? They still have sex and she's even had—count 'em—two children by him since they "ended" things. But because they aren't "officially" together, he sees other women.
Why wouldn't he? They aren't in a relationship; they are in a situationship. And when there aren't clear standards put into place between two people, that makes things confusing. It also makes it close to impossible to get over them too.
You Haven’t Set Boundaries with the People You Both Share
In hindsight, one of the absolute hardest things about breaking things off with the exes in my life was realigning boundaries with their family members. Shoot, to this day, one of my exes nieces and nephews still come to me for insight and advice and we've been broken up for well over a decade now. My ex has a relative, in particular, who continues to hope that we'll end up back together someday. Yeah, that's not gonna happen, but when the break-up was fresh, hearing that person talk about what could've been, on loop, it was a little difficult—and I was the one who actually ended it.
I'm not saying that it's automatic that if a relationship comes to an end, the relationships that were birthed out of that connection need to automatically follow suit. But what I am saying is, if you're still talking to his mama every week, shopping with this sister all of the time, or going over there for holidays, that is bound to do a number on your psyche. Same goes for both of you having friends who like to provide updates on what the two of you are doing, even though the two of you are apart.
So yeah, a new normal, complete with a new set of boundaries of each other's peeps, are also needed. Otherwise, it could take you for-e-ver to totally get over your ex.
You’re Not Being Intentional About Grieving and Moving On
Anyone who doesn't feel that a relationship is like a death is someone who hasn't been in love before. I've been through a lot, but when I look back, very few things even come close to heartache. Sometimes, it's so devastating that we want to do any and everything but walk through the grieving process. But believe me, if you don't, you are going to feel confusion, pain, resentment or all of the above for much longer than you ever should.
A few months ago, I wrote "Why You Need To Grieve Your Past Relationship". If you're not still over your ex and you actually want to be (I'm about to get more into that in just a sec), please check it out.
Sometimes, no matter what our ex is or isn't doing since the break-up, we're not able to get past him because we're not making it a point to walk through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) so that we can really, truly and fully heal.
You Don’t Want to Get Over Him
I recently read a quote that said, "How often have you wounded yourself by getting angry, fearful, jealous or vengeful?" In the context of this article, I'll add another quote about the power of the mind—"I found that when you start thinking and saying what you really want, your mind automatically shifts and pulls in that direction." What both of these points point to is the fact that if you can't get over your ex, it's probably because you don't want to. You're literally not choosing to.
Just think about it. If the break-up was bad and/or he has made it abundantly clear that he doesn't want to be with you anymore, to keep pining for him…is that not a form of self-harm? And since thinking and saying what we want is what ends up tugging at our spirits, isn't that continually choosing to hurt yourself?
I'm not saying that there aren't instances when exes break up and get back together. In fiction, there's Queen Sugar's Darla and Ralph Angel. In the real world, there are examples like R&B artist Miguel and his wife Nazanin Mandi and Common and his girlfriend Angel Rye. Still, I'm thinking that if you're reading this, there is something within that is telling you that it's time to focus on some other things; that holding a torch for your ex has been burning you, not benefiting you.
Besides, if he wants you back, he'll make that abundant clear in his own way and time (check out "If He REALLY Wants You Back, He'll Do This."). In the meantime, why not use the time apart to heal, to better yourself and to evolve as an individual. That way, if getting back together is truly meant to be, hopefully, because you are both in a healthier space, breaking up again will hardly be necessary (reading this article again will be too).
Want more stories like this? Sign up for our newsletter here and check out the related reads below:
Have You Brought Ex Baggage Into Your New Relationship?
Why Running Into Your Ex Can Be The Best Thing Ever
#AskDV: How Do I Get Over An Ex?
I Broke Up With My Boyfriend After Four Years And A Year Later He Became The Love Of My Life
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Different puzzle pieces are creating bigger pictures these days. 2024 will mark a milestone on a few different levels, including the release of my third book next June (yay!).
I am also a Professional Certified Coach. My main mission for attaining that particular goal is to use my formal credentials to help people navigate through the sometimes tumultuous waters, both on and offline, when it comes to information about marriage, sex and relationships that is oftentimes misinformation (because "coach" is a word that gets thrown around a lot, oftentimes quite poorly).
I am also still super devoted to helping to bring life into this world as a doula, marriage life coaching will always be my first love (next to writing, of course), a platform that advocates for good Black men is currently in the works and my keystrokes continue to be devoted to HEALTHY over HAPPY in the areas of holistic intimacy, spiritual evolution, purpose manifestation and self-love...because maturity teaches that it's impossible to be happy all of the time when it comes to reaching goals yet healthy is a choice that can be made on a daily basis (amen?).
If you have any PERSONAL QUESTIONS (please do not contact me with any story pitches; that is an *editorial* need), feel free to reach out at missnosipho@gmail.com. A sistah will certainly do what she can. ;)
Beyond Burnout: Nicole Walters' Blueprint For Achieving Career Success On Your Own Terms
Nicole Walters has always been known for two things: her ambition and her ability to recognize when life’s challenges can also double as an inspiring, lucrative brand.
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
Courtesy
“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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Taraji P. Henson Gets Candid About Aging And Mental Health: 'I Had No Idea What Was Happening To My Body'
Award-winning actress Taraji P. Henson's 2001 debut in John Singleton's box-office hit Baby Boy opened the door for the Washington D.C. native to achieve massive success on the big screen. Known for breaking ground in Hollywood, since her mainstream introduction, she has gone on to achieve enormous affluence portraying Loretha "Cookie" Lyon in the musical drama television series, Empire, and has starred in blockbuster films such as Hustle & Flow, Think Like a Man, Hidden Figures, and most recently,The Color Purple.
With being a working actress in Hollywood and constantly being in the spotlight, many wonder how one maintains the foundation of who they are, especially for heavy hitters such as Taraji P. Henson. According to Taraji, she maintains her authentic well-being by "Taking vacations, saying no, hanging out with my sister circle, going back to my roots, visiting my family, and hanging out with my grandma, who is about to turn one hundred years old."
However, with an abundance of information readily available across the internet and on social media, studies, and scholars have suggested the negative impact on one's mental and emotional health, causing many to stray away from who they truly are at the core. In this current age of instant gratification and perfectionism, Taraji advises young women to protect their peace and prioritize their well-being by not worrying "about what anyone else thinks."
She also emphasizes, "Make sure you have the information and resources you need to keep yourself prepared and empowered to live confidently, especially when it comes to aging, because, like many women, I'm experiencing changes with my body. Not all of them are fun per se, but they shouldn't have to be debilitating. The truth is, it's normal and completely natural!"
Now, in her latest quest to generate more insight behind perimenopause and maturing, the Howard University alumna has teamed up with Always Discreet to shatter stereotypes associated with "aging and changing bodies as women encounter symptoms such as bladder leaks," Taraji tells xoNecole.
Taraji P. Henson
Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM
"I am super passionate about mental health, and perimenopause can have a huge impact on that. Although I do not experience bladder leaks, I had no idea what was happening to my body when I reached perimenopause. One in two women over the age of 18 experience bladder leaks in their lifetime, yet no one talks about it."
So, if no one talks about these symptoms and their inevitable effects on our bodies, how do we begin to cultivate conversations around this topic to gain more knowledge and better educate ourselves? Taraji encourages women to reach out to their medical providers to help find the best available options and, most importantly, don't be shy about it because "sharing your experience with loved ones is a great first step."
As a champion for change, there's no denying the Golden Globe award winner has utilized her platform throughout the years to enlighten, empower, and educate the masses, especially regarding mental health within the Black community. Her tireless dedication and advocacy for this work stemmed from her own mental health challenges, resulting in a pivotal moment that led to her candid and upfront approach to what was taking place in her life behind closed doors.
"The tipping point that led me to speak more openly about my mental health was when I was in search of help for myself and my son. It was quite difficult looking for a therapist who looked like us, and that was alarming to me. That's a problem because Black people are carrying seven generations of trauma that we've never unpacked, and yet there are no therapists to help us unpack it who understand the struggle."
Feeling compelled to take action to promote awareness in the Black community because "most insurance policies don't cover mental health costs," she started the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation. According to the company's website, offerings include "access to localized and black-culturally relevant therapy, wellness resources, and a best-in-class network of professionals."
As a continued result of leading by example in caring for her overall health, Taraji promises to leave "behind all negativity" as we move forward in this new year. "I am leaving behind all the things that stop me from growing into the person I know God wants me to be. What I'm taking into the new year is more space for grace for myself and others as this world gets crazier and crazier every day. We all should work on having more grace for one another."
Taraji's sentiments are echoed as there is an increased interest in our community as many strive to live a more balanced, healthier, happier, and fulfilled life. We're all fighting battles that others may or may not know about, but extending grace is one of the easiest things we can do. And just think kindness doesn't cost or come with a price tag. It's priceless.
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Feature image by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Palm Springs International Film Society