You just broke up with your now ex, and you work with them. So, on top of dealing with a breakup, you’re dealing with a breakup with someone you see every day at work. You may wonder if it’s possible to move on and, if so, how to get over an ex you work with.
Check out these 25 tips for getting over the ex you work with to refocus on yourself while you go through the process of healing from your breakup.
This post is all about how to get over an ex you work with.
GET OVER AN EX YOU WORK WITH:
1. Avoid thinking there’s a better life out there for you
Ending a relationship, no matter how long your relationship was, is a major life transition. Once you acknowledge that breakups can cause major disruptions to your life, you can start to treat yourself with more compassion.
This means that it’s normal to question your decisions and life choices when you look at the married people around you or those in committed, long-term relationships.
But, you also need to understand that this is all part of transitioning into a different phase of life and navigating the discomfort that comes from big life transitions.
So, remind yourself that you are you only because of the decisions you’ve made. Question your life freely while knowing this is simply a reflection of the pain you’re experiencing.
2. Resist the temptation to make snide remarks
As good as they will feel in the moment, especially if your ex treated you unfairly, snide remarks won’t benefit you in any way. You already have to deal with seeing your ex every day at work, so go easy on yourself.
Let yourself see them without getting emotionally involved enough that you want to wound them the way you’re wounded. More to the point, avoid banter with them for the same reasons. Any snide remarks will just start an argument.
If they don’t, you will feel the emotional tug of your past relationship all over again. It’s easy to fall back into old patterns, no matter how unhealthy they are. So, do yourself a service and channel that anger into a journal or ranting to close friends.
3. Find new haunts to avoid seeing your ex at your old haunts
You deserve to hang onto every piece of your life that you developed with your former partner regardless of whether they’re still in your life. They don’t have a right to your old haunts anymore than you do.
Unfortunately, when you’re trying to get over your ex, you also have to prioritize self-care first and foremost post-breakup. And those two things don’t always coincide. So, you may need to find new places to hang with your friends and get a bite to eat.
Rather than getting angry or bitter about this, think of it as a new adventure in which you can focus on a new overall goal of creating a beautiful life outside of the pain of your last relationship.
4. Try out a change of scenery
Try new restaurants, go to new bars, and explore new neighborhoods. Treat your breakup like the painful disruption to your life that it is and accept when you need to change up your scenery for the sake of your mental health.
It’s difficult to move on from your ex when you see them at work all the time. It’s more difficult when you see them at work and outside of work because you frequent the same places or live in the same area.
You need time and space to get over your ex, and you deserve that outside of work if you can’t get it within your work schedule. You don’t have to move for this to happen.
Think of the small steps you can take to avoid running into your ex without having to make a major life decision after you’ve gone through a major life transition.
5. Avoid entering the break room by yourself
Regardless of how your last relationship ended, you need to give yourself as much space to heal as possible. The best way to do that is to avoid an awkward situation in which you’re forced to either stay painfully silent or navigate a minute of excruciating small talk.
The break room is one of the easiest places for these awkward encounters to happen, so it’s a good idea to avoid entering the room alone.
Once you start engaging in small talk with your ex, you’re either going to get sucked back into your feelings about them or you’ll get angry and hurt all over again.
In both scenarios, you’ll be right back in the middle of the difficult time you had immediately post-breakup. This is why a no contact rule is a great way to put space between you and your ex so that you have time to process your emotions.
6. Focus on the new memories you’ll make without your ex
You need to feel your negative feelings and process the pain of your office breakup. However, you don’t have to stay in those negative feelings without letting yourself feel better while you work through your breakup.
Instead, you will benefit from thinking about your new life post-breakup. This isn’t an excuse to become resentful and dive deeper into negative thoughts based on what your ex did or didn’t want to do with you.
Let this be a way to find any reason for gratitude and positivity as you deal with those painful feelings. Gratitude and positivity are not quick fixes or bandaids for your emotional baggage, but they do keep you from getting drowned by it.
That’s why one of the most important things you can do after a breakup is start working towards experiencing joy again.
7. Enlist the help and support of a work colleague
Never underestimate the power of an ally. In this case, a work colleague can stick with you when it’s convenient and you have someone to enter the break room with you or keep you from having to make awkward conversations with your ex.
They’ll get those subtle clues and already be in the know about your situation. So, they are ready to get you out of any uncomfortable situation with the ex you’re trying to get over.
Plus, you get the emotional support of someone you work with when you don’t have access to the support system from your personal life.
There’s nothing more uplifting than having someone in your corner through good times and hard times. This way, you’re not alone at work and you have a friendly face during this tough time.
8. Remember that breakups are a big deal
Treat your breakup like the big deal that it is. You deserve to grieve your relationship and learn to let go of an ex you dated, whether your relationship lasted a long time or two days.
Acknowledge that the breakup is a big deal and that you both need and deserve some time to work through it. It might feel easier to avoid the emotional work of feeling your pain and processing the breakup. But, that will make it harder for you to move on in the long run.
Work your way through the grief process because that’s the only way you can be ready for a new relationship or showing up in your personal life. You can’t rush the process, so let it take its time.
9. Consider switching to a different department
If possible and if working with your ex is too much, consider switching to a different department. It’s not fair when you need to change a part of your life to feel more confident in getting over your ex, but it’s also necessary.
If seeing your ex every day will make it impossible to get over them or feel comfortable at work, listen to yourself. Once you switch departments, you won’t have to worry as much about your previous relationship.
You can focus on both yourself and business matters while you’re in the work environment. Remember that if you do this, it should be for the sake of your mental health and healing process as you get over your ex.
10. Steer clear of office gossip
It’s never a good idea to get involved in gossip, especially if you want to share what happened in your past relationship. Office gossip won’t help you get over your ex.
If anything, the entire office will fixate on all of the gory details about your breakup and you will inadvertently continue reliving the pain. It may feel cathartic to reveal your ex’s bad behavior in the moment.
But, you’ll be left dealing with the loneliness that comes from talking about your feelings without processing them. You won’t be able to get over your ex or move past your breakup.
Instead, you will be drawn back into that painful dynamic time and time again by the people you work with at no fault of theirs. If you want to talk about your relationship with a colleague, avoid going into that conversation with malicious intent or to disparage your ex.
11. Refocus yourself on what a healthy relationship looks like to you
Ask yourself what a healthy relationship looks like. Hopefully, your past relationship was healthy and you still learned something from it despite how healthy it was.
Unfortunately, it’s also possible that even if a relationship starts off healthy, the end of a relationship can drastically change. You may forget what a healthy relationship should feel like based on how your last relationship ended.
Do research, consult a marriage and family therapist, or talk to people you trust. Keep in mind that healthy relationships can look slightly different and the relationships in your life may not be good examples of that.
Still, you can get input from lots of sources, including yourself when you ask what feels good and fulfilling in a romantic relationship.
12. Talk it out with family members
Use your resources as you work through your breakup. Your support system, whether that’s friends or family, is part of that. Keep in mind that your family and friends want to see you happy and, when you’re not, they want to support you.
Give them that chance and remember that they want to help. No matter what your brain tells you in the middle of your breakup, the people you care about and value will not see you as a burden.
Sometimes, all it takes is someone to listen to you talk out loud and process your feelings verbally. You’re going through a rough time, and you need to realize that you need support and time to heal from that rough time even if that’s just someone to listen.
13. Go see a family therapist for professional help
It’s hard enough to deal with everyday struggles on your own, especially when you think about how much you have to unlearn. The process of unlearning becomes exponentially more difficult once you go through a challenging life cycle transition like breaking up with a partner.
This might look like unlearning the way you’ve learned to handle conflict in an unhealthy way. You might also be unlearning the idea that you deserve to be treated unfairly.
Family therapists can help you process your breakup by focusing on the relationship you had with your ex and your relationships with your family members. They can help you unpack more than your recent breakup.
They can help you work through how it has affected you so that you develop a well-rounded understanding of how to move forward toward your healthiest self.
14. Give yourself permission to avoid small talk with your ex
Small talk can be painful for everyone. Add your ex to small talk and, now, you’re experiencing something that’s both painful and meaningless. The only purpose of that conversation would be to prove to your ex that you’re ready to talk to them and over the breakup already.
Even if that is the case, the healthiest way to approach small talk to is ask yourself if it benefits you and your healing journey. The answer is likely no because it’s too soon not to be triggered by the conversation or even interacting with your ex that soon after a breakup.
It’s a bad idea to engage in a relationship with your ex too soon after your breakup, even if that relationship just means that you become new friends. Your emotions will still be too raw and easily triggered.
15. Prioritize your mental health as you process the breakup
Focus on your self-care activities, or start doing some self-care activities. Give yourself ways of expressing your emotions while you go through the daily motions of working, eating, and sleeping.
The goal of an effective self-care practice is that you do it frequently, including and especially the times when it’s most difficult to fit it in. When you’re feeling burnt out and emotional, you need your self-care more than you need it at any other time in your life.
So, don’t wait for the perfect opportunity to begin self-care or incorporate it into your life. Avoid telling yourself you’ll start once you get back on your feet after your breakup.
You have a lot of responsibilities that, unfortunately, don’t always pause when you need them to. So, be extra conscious about prioritizing your mental health and self-care during this time. Make time for yourself and stick to it.
16. Remember that you two are human beings
More than anything, remember that you and your ex are both people. You’re human beings and you will both experience grief from your relationship together differently. As hard and painful as it is to accept, your journey post-breakup has to start with you letting them go from your life.
You need to get over your ex you work with by recognizing that you two are humans and that they are going to have to go through their grief journey just like you. Perhaps they’ll get over the relationship faster than you. Or maybe it’ll be much more painful for them than you.
Either way, they can’t be your concern anymore. Keep in mind that no matter how you two experience it, you both will experience it. Give them space to heal as much as you need space to heal and work on releasing any animosity you have toward them for your sake and theirs.
17. Let go of any thoughts of wanting to get your ex back
Relationships look different for everyone. Healthy relationships tend to look the same in some key ways that are important for you and your partner to fulfill each other’s needs.
However, by the time you reach the end of a relationship, your relationship can become something entirely different than you recognize. You may leave your relationship with entirely different goals than you had upon entering it.
You may look back and end up hating your ex no matter how much you cared for them during the relationship. Maybe you end up feeling guilty about some aspect of your relationship. Regardless of your situation, it’s normal to go through the grieving process and miss your relationship.
For a while, you might only remember the worst thing about your relationship. But, after so much time has passed, you may start to forget the hard time towards the end of your relationship and wonder if it was true love.
Know that this is normal and it’s okay to want your ex back but that you also should not let these desires or thoughts go much further than that for your sake.
18. Set boundaries to stay within your comfort zone at work
Set boundaries for yourself that you and only you need to stick to. While this may sound silly to create boundaries within yourself, it’s an important part of learning to be single again.
Your partner is no longer involved in negotiating boundaries unless they have to be. So, you get the chance to make some boundaries within yourself and your own life.
Maybe you refuse to let yourself talk to your ex for any substantial amount of time or you avoid talking about your relationship with anyone at work.
Unfortunately, you have to take action when your ex starts to cross the boundaries you’ve set for yourself and encourages you to do more than you’re comfortable with. You must verbalize the boundaries you’ve set to prioritize your healing.
19. Consider getting a new job if that feels like the safest option
It sucks to feel like your personal relationship is affecting your professional life. You’ve worked hard to get where you are and relocating is not easy. It’s scary, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar. However, when all else fails, you need to make the best decision for you.
That might mean that you don’t hang out with coworkers after work, gossip in the workplace, and switch departments. Or that might mean that you find a new job where you’re fully capable of getting over your ex, starting fresh, and avoiding future office romances.
You should never feel pushed out by your ex, so, if that’s the case, consider other options for leaving. However, at a certain point, you need to consider the best approach for you.
20. Avoid thinking about your last relationship as a failed relationship
You didn’t fail your relationship no matter how it turned out. While you can experience a broken relationship, you are not broken. You are worthy of love regardless of what happened or how you were treated in your last relationship.
You learned from it and you may do something different in your next relationship, whether that’s choosing a different type of partner or not making the same mistake twice.
Even if you did make a mistake, the first step you take after a painful breakup caused by your mistake is to learn from it for your sake and your future partner’s sake.
Avoid shaming yourself and, instead, look forward to the ways you can apply lessons from this relationship to your love life later on. Focus on how you can grow and become a healthier person and better partner.
21. Limit how often you see your mutual friends
It hurts to lose friends or to hang out with your friends less simply because they’re friends with your ex, too. Maybe you’ll even have some friends who choose to remain friends with you because they understand the need to separate yourself from your ex.
However, when this isn’t the case and your friends expect to hang out like usual, you need to draw the line for yourself. Set boundaries with your friends that you love them and understand they are simply friends with both of you, which isn’t their fault.
And, yet, they still need to respect that you can’t hang with your ex. Recognize that you’ll need space away from your ex and space free from talking about your ex to truly move on and communicate that to your mutual friends.
22. Process your negative emotions without dwelling on them
Take the time to feel your emotions and breathe through them as you feel them. Let yourself cry or stay in bed when you need to. Allow yourself to feel your painful emotions and feel them in your body.
You can also try journaling through your thoughts and attending therapy with a couples therapist to truly work through the emotions of your breakup.
However, the most important thing is that, once you feel those negative emotions, you don’t dwell on them. You allow yourself to feel joy alongside the pain. The joy you allow yourself to experience does not negate the pain you feel.
23. Spend time with your best friends
There are few cures better than spending time with your best friend. They can remind you who you are and why you’re worthy of learning to be single again. You may be struggling to even consider life without your partner.
They can help get your mind off of the pain for a while and remind you who are you outside of the relationship you used to be in. This may not help you when you’re at work, but it can help you manage the feelings of losing your partner in your personal life.
24. Wait a little while before you find a new partner
You can certainly get to know someone new even if they’re not permanent in your love life. But, you are going through so much and your emotions are so raw that it’s a good idea to hold off on a new romantic relationship.
If you’re interested in nourishing your social life outside of the relationship you just got out of, consider finding new friends as an alternative to a new partner. Let yourself fall in love with friends platonically rather than rushing your healing process post-breakup.
25. Let yourself go through the healing process
The healing process might sound vague and ominous, especially if you’re going through it right now. However, healing means that you give yourself time to feel the pain and work through it until you no longer feel it or you start to grow around it and feel that it’s manageable.
Healing looks different for everyone, but, if it gets worse before it gets better, you’re probably going about it in the right way.
