Ten tactical steps to recovery

Step 1: Understand that to heal completely and move on, you’ll have to get to a place of acceptance and forgiveness.

Accepting the love is over and forgiving both your ex and yourself for any wrong deeds can be one of the hardest challenges to wrap your head around. This can be especially challenging if she is somehow still in your life.
But this will be your challenge. Remember, why let her continue to hurt you (and in some sense win) by you constantly spinning in negativity toward her and suffering from the resulting negative emotions?

Step 2: Remember it’s ok and even recommended to seek help. You don’t have to go through the grieving process alone.

As guys, we often think we just have to suck it up, deal with it and move on.
As well, we often don’t want to let others see our failures.
However, whether support comes from family, friends and/or therapists, don’t be shy. There are many people out there that care about you and want to help you through your suffering – if you let them.

Step 3: Write down all the negative, judgmental stories spinning in your head about your ex and about yourself.

Especially right after a break-up, the negative stories will be spinning out of control in your head, showing up over and over again. Story after story of how she did you wrong, and/or how you did her wrong.
Take the time to write down, organize and visualize each story. If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night filled with negativity, then keep a pad of paper by the bed and just write down these thoughts.
After a few days to a week, re-read what you’ve written and start to organize the stories into common themes. If she was unfaithful, for instance, then categorize all the judgmental thoughts around her infidelity under unfaithfulness.
By being able to visualize and articulate these negative stories, you’ll be able to start to recognize and witness these thoughts when they re-enter your mind again.

Step 4: Each time you feel a negative emotion, pause, reflect and witness the thoughts spinning around in your mind.

This will be discussed more in Core 10: Communications, but thoughts drive emotions.
Therefore, map the emotion to one or more of the thoughts. In other words, which thoughts are creating the negative emotion you’re now feeling?
Over time, it’s likely many to most of these thoughts will be contained as part of the inventory of judgmental thoughts you already captured in Step 3. If not, then add these thoughts to the list!
The point here is to learn to witness your judgmental thoughts, and what you’re attached to that’s not being fulfilled for you. Often it’s easier first to realize you’re having a negative emotion, versus realizing your head just filled up with negative thoughts again.

Step 5: Every time you feel one of the Seven Get-Stuck Attitudes, begin to replace the judgmental thoughts with forgiving ones.

As discussed in Strategy #1, the seven attitudes can be a negative emotional sink. It doesn’t help you to feel resentment, blame, indifference, guilt, insecurity, hopelessness, and jealousy / envy, it just keeps you stuck in the stage of suffering.

Step 6: Every time you feel a Get-Unstuck Emotion, go ahead and feel it.

As discussed in Strategy #2, the Four Get-Unstuck Emotions can be used to help you heal if you’re open to feeling all four of them when they happen.
That said, keep in mind that for these emotions to heal, you will need to let go of the attachments to the expectations that are at the core of the judgmental thoughts driving these emotions. Ultimately, this means you’ll have to accept and stop resisting What Is right now, and What Is right now is that the relationship as it was is over.

Step 7: A few weeks after the break-up, start the process of forgiving your ex for every wrong captured in those judgmental stories.

You can rationalize by remembering she did the best she could, by definition. Clearly, she’s not perfect. She showed up in the relationship as best she knew how, given all the circumstances going for her at the time. Likewise, cut yourself some slack by remembering that you’re not expected to be perfect either.
You can further rationalize forgiving her by remembering you don’t want her past weak behavior to keep hurting you going forward.

Step 8: Every time a judgmental story pops into your head, replace it with a compassionate one.

By actively replacing each judgmental thought with a compassionate one, you’ll find the judgmental thoughts will diminish over time. For instance, if you have judgmental stories that evolve around how selfish she was, then replace these stories by thinking she did the best she could, and that you hope she eventually learns to be more “all about WE” unselfish so she can have a healthier future relationship.
By doing this, the judgmental thoughts will lose their ability to drive negative emotions, because compassionate thoughts bring up positive (not negative) emotions.

Step 9: Write a balanced letter where you take responsibility for your contribution to the relationship’s end and lessons learned.

When you do this, you’ll come to see that the ex wasn’t to blame for everything; you contributed as well to the problems.
The lessons learned then add to your Wisdom surrounding relationships and will help you to be an even stronger partner the next go around.
Remember to forgive yourself for all the things you could have done better.

Step 10: If at all possible, stop all contact with your ex until you’re in recovery; this includes not learning new things about her life.

Every time you see the ex, before you’ve reached a place of recovery, can rekindle the judgmental stories and set you back in the suffering stage.
Likewise, don’t let your mutual friends tell you about what she is doing or whom she is seeing. New information will just give you new stuff to spin on about her.
Do yourself a favor, basically have a moratorium on info about the ex until your thoughts are no longer judgmental and no longer bring you negative emotions. Basically, wait until you’ve reached a place of acceptance and forgiveness regarding her and the break-up. Interestingly, once you’ve reached this stage, you will most likely be less interested about what’s going on with her.
If you have no choice but to maintain contact with her, for instance if you have children together, then your life’s challenge may well be to not let her future actions rile you. If she’s being difficult, for instance, it doesn’t help you (nor your children) to let this get to you and motivate weak behavior on your part. Instead, replace those judgmental thoughts with compassionate ones.