How to put yourself first after a breakup: 5 easy ways!
When you love someone, it’s normal that you would put them first and make them a priority in your life. In fact, for many people, their partners become their main priority! The problem is that when a breakup occurs, a person is left brokenhearted with a bruised ego, and it becomes hard to remember how to put yourself first.
Putting yourself first is the key to healing, but it’s actually also the key to getting your ex back! I’ve written this article for you today to explain how you get back into the habit of putting yourself first so that you can get back in control of your life.
It can be challenging when you’ve spent so much time with this person, but there is always a way to change bad habits or behavior that isn’t serving you!
The misconception about putting myself first
When it comes to putting yourself first, there is a common misconception. It has a negative connotation and is equated to selfish needs, but the truth is that we need to do this in order to maintain balance in our lives!
Think about it this way – putting yourself first is like knowing how to make yourself happy. You pay attention to your needs and you do what is in your power to make yourself feel satisfied. As I often say to my clients, you are in control of your own happiness. It shouldn’t depend on anyone else.
When two people were together for a long time, it’s not uncommon for one of them to lose themselves in the relationship. Knowing how to think about yourself after a breakup will help you to bounce back. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to become an awful, selfish person who doesn’t think about anyone but themselves. It’s simply a matter to reminding yourself that your needs and your happiness are important and that you should do anything in your power to make yourself feel good.
You’re not going to become an unpleasant person that makes people feel uncomfortable! No, you’re going to be someone who puts themselves first because they know that that’s how they’re going to heal from this breakup.
How to put yourself first after a breakup so you can heal
When you are going through a painful breakup, it is crucial that you make yourself a priority. There will be certain steps that you have to allow yourself to take.
I say “allow” because many people feel guilty after a breakup. They think that somehow it was all their fault, that they weren’t good enough, or that they did something wrong. It’s hard to break the habit and begin focusing on yourself instead of others and taking care of your own needs.
But now is the time to do exactly that, and I will provide you with the first steps to take!
1. Let yourself be sad.
We sometimes try to have thick skin and not allow ourselves to feel the pain of the breakup, but suppressing it isn’t going to do you any good. If anything, it’ll surge up later on and feel even more intense. Many people don’t realize that allowing yourself to grieve is a way to put yourself first. It allows you to feel the emotions that need to be felt, and it allows you to move forward.
Just be careful to not let these feelings consume you, It’s good to let the tears out, but that doesn’t mean that you should opt to lock yourself up in a room for weeks on end while life passes you by!
2. Put space between you and your ex.
This is a huge one – and yes, it’s the same whether you want your ex back or not. In fact, you may have heard of the no contact rule, which consists of cutting contact with your ex for an extended period of time,
The reason why I tell you to distance yourself from your ex is simple. They are a source of heartache and pain right now, and one of the best ways to put yourself first is to remove sources of hurt from your life. You are in control of how often you see your ex. It’s tempting to want to reach out, text, call, or email your ex. It’s normal that you’d want to look through their social media profiles to see what they’ve been up to, but you’re going to have to fight the urge.
All that’s going to do is twist the knife in the wound.
3. Start getting busy with activities that bring you joy.
Maybe you lost track of some of your favorite hobbies while you were in this relationship. Maybe you put your physical health on the back burner. Maybe you even stopped hanging out with your friends and family.
It’s also possible that you became codependent on your partner and prioritized everything he or she wanted to all the time. The more this happened, the more normal it began to feel, but now it’s time to change that.
So get out there and start hanging out with your best friends and your family, go to new places, try out new activities, and fill up your schedule with things that bring you joy.
4. Boost your self-esteem
You cannot blame yourself entirely for the breakup. Relationships consist of two people and the issues you two were experiencing stemmed from both of you. Like I said above, your self worth cannot be measured based on your ex or based on this relationship.
If you blame yourself for everything, you aren’t going to be able to put things into perspective and process what went wrong…
Taking a step back and looking at the situation in terms of what you could have done differently and what your partner could have done differently can help you handle a future relationship much better.
Remember, these are all learning experiences.
Take care of yourself first so you can be truly happy
I recently worked with a client who came to me because she felt like she had lost everything when her boyfriend broke up with her. They had been dating long distance for about a year, and she had recognized that she always put him first. In the end, she put him first so much that she actually started to change. She was becoming someone else, and she no longer felt whole. Of course, when the breakup happened, she didn’t know where to turn.
If you want a healthy and long-lasting relationship with your ex or even with anyone else, you have to make yourself happy first.
When your ex first met you, you were living your own life, and you were putting yourself first whether you realized it or not. Now is the time to become that person again, but the new and improved version!
Remember what made your ex fall for you in the first place, and work on becoming an even better version of him or her!
As always, I am here to help guide you from A to Z so please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly here or leave your question in the comments section below!
All the best,
Your coach for knowing how to put yourself first
Alex Cormont
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About Alex
"What if the true definition of love was not what you thought it was?"
It’s time to make your own.
Alex Cormont
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Hi Alex, how are you? I hope well 😊. I met a man younger than me by 23 years who has a double major in Business Administration & Management by accident when I left the emergency room 2 months and as I was walking back to my car decided to get a smoothie in the restaurant he supervises to catch a breath. My father has cancer that is treatable and had just gotten into a huge fight with me about what I was required to let him do & not do and eat & not eat because of his chemotherapy and I was the only one in my family able to care for him and gave him 150 % of all of me, so as you can imagine, this fight left me totally heartbroken with worse symptoms of shortness of breath and pain below my chest. I live in Lebanon 15 min from Beirut and 3 days after this fight, I was laying in bed in the afternoon and felt that any side I was laying on wasn’t helping my severe shortness of breath and due to my anger toward and resentment toward my parents, I headed to Beirut to the American University Hospital to be examined and did not want to answer any calls or texts from my immediate family. As I mentioned earlier, I met Jad on my way back to car when I stopped inside the restaurant he supervises and when I asked the staff there if they had smoothies, they said no, so I decided to pamper myself and enjoy my personal time away from home and sit down to eat and have some reflection time to myself which I never leave home except to go to the hospital for my father’s treatment, admissions to the hospital the many times he had complications, the many ER visits, his clinic appointments with the many doctors he’s seeing for his other underlying illnesses, the laboratory to have his blood drawn for lab tests & ordering, getting all of his medications, taking, recording all his daily vitals multiple times including his fluid intake, bowel movements and urine output and inputting all that information into a Dropbox online account which my sisters who are doctors could get into and see what’s happening with him on a daily basis. When I finished my meal at Jad’s restaurant, left a tip, asked him how business was down there since our Revolution is about our collapsing economic system, he told me that it’s been fine since the majority of the customers are medical staff coming in from the American hospital I was out. I shared with him and the other young Lebanese waiters that it is their generation and some of my generation who are making and will make a difference in Lebanon with this Revolution unlike our parents’ generation who allowed this government to corrupt and dictate for the past 30 years. Jad directly invited me to sit in the outdoor seating are with him and have a cup of coffee which I said no to because I don’t drink caffeine and he then insisted on tea which most teas have caffeine too but he was so eager for me to sit with him that I ended up saying yes. We sat outside and talked for a very long time about the U.S since his first question was how a person in his situation affected by the economic struggle in this country and therefore not able to finish his Masters can do to go to the U.S. I shared everything I know with him since I grew up and had spent 25 years in the U.S and know, understand and worked on my own immigration papers myself there. Five days after that visit together, Jad called me to see if I had gotten any information for him from AMIDEAST as I told him that I would because my level of English is superb and I would know what questions to ask for him to see what is put in place here by AMIDEAST to help students here study abroad in the U.S and graduate. AMIDEAST stands for America Middle East. I told him I hadn’t yet and got on it & called him back sharing all the info I got for him. He still hadn’t even made that appointment yet to meet with the advisors of the program that helps students get to the U.S if all requirements are met even after I offered to go to the appointment with him and help with everything with more questions of my own for him that I newly thought of because I don’t want these advisers to rush him and want them to be precise about everything so that he gets a clear pictures of everything. Shortly after I git all this info for him, we began to text more, be on the phone a couple of times which he would call not me and one time he even sent me a picture of the peaceful neighborhood he was looking at at night when I told him that I had been sitting in my balcony enjoying the peace of nature and it’s quiet surroundings and said that this picture was for me since I had just told him that I enjoy peaceful surroundings. He has not done things like that for me since. Our conversations got heated up between us some time after he continued to compliment me for being so caring & sweet and loving my wonderful soul and told me that I doing things for him that not even his relatives are. I started developing happiness and gratitude when I would speak to him that I haven’t felt in years. I’m divorced and have 3 grown children who live and work in the U.S. My children’s father is American. I am Lebanese. I haven’ a partner in my life in 12 years since my split from my ex-husband and haven’t had sex in 8 years. After many conversations about a lot of things, I shared that with Jad and he was very shocked that I haven’t had sex in 8 years and told me that’s too long and that he hasn’t in 7 months. Things got heated up between us and we were very comfortable talking with each other about everything, were honest with each other and promised one another to continue being honest about everything. So, because I was beginning alive again, a spark in my heart, I began to send him videos of intimacy and pleasure that I would love to share with my partner and how sex to me is about giving the love of your life pleasure and making your partner feel good not animalistic as some people have it. He was amazed by all the heartfelt emotions and thoughts I have on what having sex means to me and to be honest with you Alex, i’ve never had it the way I would love to literally sharing your soul with your partner even when I was married because my ex-husband just wanted quickies and only became interested in experiencing different sexual positions when I found out about Kama Sutra and the G-Spot and wanted to experience those inner deep emotions, closeness and strong orgasms. After a while of sending such powerful videos to Jad along with many motivational songs and videos when he was down or going through hardship, we decided that he would come to my home instead of renting a chalet for a day because of financial reasons, that I would cook for us and that we would Shades of Gray Freed, the last movie in the series of Shades of Gray. Alex, I spent three days preparing for the meals and ensuring we had good snacks to eat during the movie and had already been working with a movie & electronics store young man for almost three weeks to surprise Jad with 7 movies he would like after he told me what he really likes which is sexual romance. I made Chicken Chow Mein, Coca Cola Chicken Wings & Shrimp Scampi with Garlic & Fresh Corander. I bought flavored malt beverages and beer for him since I don’t drink alcohol. Jad had already met my parents at a restaurant in Beirut across from where he supervises his restaurant a month before and my parents approved of him so they allowed us to spend the rest of the day doing our own thing, so he took me really far out to a city called Jbeil since he knew I wanted to be near the ocean and in open air to talk and eat and we talked about so MANY things about our lives, hardships, people who have hurt us, what we like and don’t like. So when he came to my house to spend time with me, he spent time talking with my father while I warmed up the food and set it on the table. We are and he woudn’t eat until I sat down to eat because I had been so busy ensuring everything was great and I did that for him Alex 💔💔. I wanted everything to be perfect for him because I loved how he was with me. I even went out and bought a simple casual comfortable bright dress & sandals that I felt sexy in because that was what having him near me in my life did to me. My father left the house and we started our movie Fifty Shades Freed when he pulled me close to him, started to rub my lower back & squeeze it, rub my lower side and squeeze it and same with the side of my stomach. I rubbed and caressed his hand then his forearm up and down until he asked me if I was happy and started kissing my lips, fondling one of my breasts and then sucking on my nipple in a way that made me crazy and high! I bit and sucked on his upper and bottom lip as we kissed which he loved, sat on top of him and massaged his penis with a way I learned on YouTube to please your man and massages his inner thighs as I learned of the spots that would give my man pleasure and delay and intensify ejaculation later when it’s time. I had done all this research and learning for weeks thinking of just him and how we could satisfy each other’s needs and please one another. I didn’t know any of these things before , but wanted intimacy with him. He fingered me for a bit teasing my clitoris and when we couldn’t wait for penetration any longer, he tried to penetrate but we had a complication. His penis is of good size and I’m on the smaller side also given I haven’t had sex in 8 years, so Jad worries that our maid or my father would walk in on us and stopped and told me next time he’ll do something I haven’t seen before. I was devastated, hurt, heartbroken & couldn’t believe that he let me down like that knowing how badly we both wanted it especially after he had told me just the night before that he was going to do something about the way we were feeling for one another when he comes to my house the next day. Since that day Alex, Jad texts me every four days and that’s if I have sent him a message and I have already shared with him before that i’m always initiating our contacts and that I had learned that when one person in a relationship is always giving more than the other and it’s not being reciprocated, the person always giving will be depleted of energy & leave. So he knows this! I’ve said it a couple of times. I told him that if he wants to walk away I’ll understand but he wrote back that he is never going to walk away because he needs me in his life. When I don’t reply back with my usual way of replying and he knows something is wrong, he asks what’s wrong or what happened just not in a very caring way when talking to me about what’s wrong with me. He has told me before that I am so strong, but it got to the point where I feel like he thinks i’m such a strong women and will just get over it. I know this because when I have had some issues come up & dealt with them without being sensitive or emotional, he told me “Bravo” & “ I’m proud of you”, but I get emotional and have told him that i’m crying a couple of times, he viewed it as negative vibes & dismisses my problem which last week, I confronted him and lectured him about that and the fact that he had taken 3 days to go camping alone just to clear his mind last month from problems he was having so not to say that to me and look T himself. The problem is Alex is that I don’t know what Jad & I have, a relationship, a friendship that has turned into sexual attraction on his part, sexual attraction on his part or what ?! The day he was at my house, after we tried to have sex, he told me that he has given me full control to tell him what I want and when I thought about it and told him that I wanted a relationship, he repeated it after me in surprise, but never said ok. I also told him that I would like to have contact with him regularly or daily to see how he is and how him going off for 3 days camping without contact with anyone to clear his mind made me worry like crazy and that it’s not right and that all he has to do in those cases is just say that he can’t talk, that’s he’s leaving or won’t be available for a few days or that he’s not in the mood to talk but to just disappear like that is wrong because it makes your loved ones worry like crazy and feel like or think of what they might have done wrong. He told me when we first started to get close that he prefers to have me as his secret side because people here talk too much and he wants to keep me private and also explained to me when he was at my house that i’m like the X woman and when I asked him what he meant, he said that when his friends talk about the women in their lives, he would refer to me as his X woman. He has been telling me a few times now that “we will meet & talk soon”, “ we will meet and talk as soon as possible and feel good and good things will happen”. Our nation is currently mourning, suffering & in pain from the explosion last Tuesday and he had told me that we will meet and talk before this crisis. I don’t know what he is doing except that he donated blood and went down to Beirut on Saturday for the Revolution. I don’t even know if he is going down to the Revolution every day. He’s not working because the restaurant he supervises is closed per the Corona lockdown of the government, unless it’s open now and I am not aware of it. I don’t know what he does with his time because like I said earlier, I get messages from him now every 4 days. Something happened in his life last week and he told me twice that he “ promised he will tell me what happened” and still hasn’t but he has the time Alex. He’s not at work and he’s not at the University. When I messaged him that I was heading down to the Revolution with a make friend I have just met around the same time I met him so I’ll be safe and have a way to get home, he had nothing to say nor even asked who this male friend is, how I met him nor offered to come get me and take me with him to our Revolution in Beirut, but when I first met him, he REPEATEDLY kept offering and telling me that he would like to and can take to my doctor’s appointment in Beirut. My father has chemotherapy this Wednesday so I will know if his restaurant is open because i’m unsure if the lockdown is still in place considering our latest crisis and people needing to be out to help the injured, homeless and cleanup crews.
I am so so sorry that my message is so long but I really need to know from you what your input is on Jad. What am I to him? What is he doing? Is he playing? I really feel like he has taken advantage of me. Please Alex, i’ve been praying many times about this situation and it’s starting to mess with my head. I just started seeing a Cognitive Behavioral Psychologist because of all the abusive treatment i’ve suffered through in my life include physical, mental, psychological and emotional abuse for 17 years from my ex. I really don’t want to end up with a narcissistic person either and my everyday and health emotionally and mentally is depleted from giving and giving and I’m learning from my psychologist how to change my thought patterns now which affect my emotions then behavior then physical problems. I will appreciate any help you can give me. God bless and have a good day. The work you are doing is God sent Alex 🌹🌹🙏🙏🙏.
Hello Faten, thank you for being here with us! I invite you to book a private coaching session with me or a member of my team so that we can work on your situation. To do so, just click here.
Wishing you all the best,
Alex