[Self-Healing] How To Let Go Of Past Relationships

We all have different relationship experiences, but the common ground is that they hurt us and changed us.

Unfortunately, they sometimes leave us fearful and less confident about the success of our next relationship.

How can you let go of past relationships and the trauma they carry? How to let go of your own mistakes in those past relationships?

How to learn to trust yourself or the new person next to you? How to not allow the past to mess up your present and miss an opportunity for building a healthy relationship?

In this post, I will do my best to give you answers to all of those questions and show you a perspective you might not have thought of.

But first of all…

Why can’t you let go of past relationships?

If you’ve been asking yourself this, then you aren’t alone. It is really mind-boggling how you can let go of a person, forgive him for hurting you, but still recall situations and painful moments.

Why is letting go so hard? Is it about the other and holding a grudge against them? Or is it about you and holding a grudge against yourself?

Here are three possible reasons you cannot let go of your past.

The mistakes you never forgave but still carry

With time, you might realize that it is easier to shrug shoulders and say, “That was the best they could be, and that’s why they hurt me.” than to admit the mistake was shared equally between you two.

Again, it is easier to explain someone else’s behavior than your own. You are more willing to forgive and forget someone else’s bad actions against you than your own self-betray.

You might often find yourself lying in your bed and contemplating over a small situation that you could’ve avoided… maybe the whole relationship.

My last relationship (the one I had before I met my fiance) was with a guy who broke my heart, abused me mentally, and got me to the lowest point of my life so far.

And do you know what I kept recalling every few months?

The first time I saw him! The moment I laid my eyes on him (he looked gorgeous), I had that gut feeling that he was nothing more but trouble, and I should stay as far away from him as possible.

He was giving that “bad boy” vibe that makes your knees weak, and you know nothing good is going to come out of it.

I kept remembering that moment and often would find myself shouting in my head “Just listen to your guts! Just listen to your guts!”. But it is all gone, and I didn’t listen to my guts. And I ended up in a toxic relationship. And I regretted it for too long.

If it’s easier, watch the video below on the same topic.

The red flags you overlooked

Once you catch yourself remembering moments and recalling situations, you realize that the red flags were there all along, but you choose to ignore them.

Maybe they said or did something that made you suspicious of their true intentions, but you just kept quiet.

Probably someone else told you that you shouldn’t count on that relationship to last forever. It’s possible that a friend or your sister hinted that you aren’t with your perfect match regardless of how you feel.

And you ignored all those people, all of the feelings, all of the red flags.

Now, contemplating on them for months in a row, you got to the point where those red flags are like neon signs on the motorway… How could you not see them?

Forgiving them is easy

Forgiving your ex-partner is easy. Forgiving yourself for being in a relationship with them is the hard part. However, there are always ways to work with the trauma regardless of how willing you are to forgive yourself.

But first of all…

Why is it important to let go of your past?

Regardless of the reasons you felt guilty, letting go of the guilt is essential for building a healthy relationship with your next partner.

If you fail to do that, you risk bringing that emotional luggage in the next relationship and re-creating the same problems, situations, and eventually, the end of that new relationship.

On top of that, you also risk annoying your new partner and hurting them by assigning him personal characteristics he doesn’t have. He would do something that reminds you of your ex’s toxic behavior, and you would get mad at him about it. You might even take all of the anger you’ve accumulated over time on your new partner and cause more trouble than you imagined.

If you cannot let go of your past relationships, the ghosts of the past will always overshadow your present regardless of how much you just want to enjoy your life.

Letting go of your past relationships

There are more than a few ways to let go of your past relationships, and I will share my favorite ones here.

Through therapy

If you’ve been through a lot with your ex-partner, it is okay to ask for professional help. Gone are the days when therapy was only for those who needed medications and had severe mental struggles.

I went through a few therapy sessions after the end of my previous relationships, and it helped me see things from a different perspective.

But most of all, I benefitted from the fact that I had someone with a degree tell me I did my best. You can laugh at this here, but when people who love me pity me, it hurts. I needed a non-biased opinion that I wasn’t the villain in my story, and my story had no villain at all.

In fact, your story has no villain either. You were just two people doing their best in building something with the wrong person.

Therapy is always a good choice if you truly struggle with letting go, regardless of how long it’s been since you broke up.

Through conversations

Just as with therapy, simple conversations with a friend or a close person will always help you bring the trauma out of your chest and work with it.

Often, all we miss to let go fully is to be listened to while we share our version of that relationship.

Maybe your ex-partner never truly understood you and never talked to you… like, at all. You probably tried to explain yourself more than a few times, but even after you broke up and had those “closure” conversations, you still didn’t feel heard.

Grab a friend and ask her if she has time for you. Tell her you don’t mind if she doesn’t fully agree with you, but you just want her to listen. Then talk and say it all. Take it off your chest and let it go. Once you name the pain, it gets easier to work with it and eventually – fully heal.

Through journaling

I must say that this was one of my favorite ways to let go of my past relationships, but I place it last on this list because not everyone is willing to do it.

You could do a few types of journaling to let go of any trauma, not just the one from previous relationships.

• Just a casual journaling where you share your side of the story (just as it would be with a friend) and take the pain out of you and onto the pages.
• Talking to the ex – This would be a letter’style journaling where you write a letter to your ex-partner and let them know how much they’ve hurt you, how much you’ve allowed them to hurt you, why you couldn’t let go and what you’re holding on to. Sending it is optional, I would’t recommend it, but burning it (safely) is great way to deal with it.
• Grateful for… – Your past made you who are and there is nothing to be ashamed or blamed for. Using gratitude to find why your past happend and what you learnt from it is a powerful way to realize that nothing (absolutely nothing) happens “just because” in our lives. Learning the lessons through gratitude and finding the good (regardless of how small it is) is a personal growth on another level.

You could go through all types of journaling or choose just one of them. Do whatever suits you.

The one thing to NEVER do – Final thoughs

The one thing to never do is “nothing”.

Doing nothing to let go of the trauma is still doing “something”. And that “something” is staying in pain, keeping the self-blame alive, accusing every other partner of things they didn’t do, and eventually bringing yourself to the bottom of your own misery.

Also, keep in mind that just because you “don’t feel like dealing with a trauma” doesn’t mean the trauma doesn’t deal with you.

Yes, it is either the trauma or your happiness, and you make that choice every day.

What did you choose today?