Thought Catalog Agency

Toxic vs. Dignified Ways Zodiac Signs Cope With Heartbreak

ARIES

How you cope:

The first thought that runs through your head is, “Why would they let me go—why would anyone?” It’s only after hours of ruminating that you deduce that your new ex must have been possessed to lose such a once-in-a-lifetime catch. Usually, that would be enough of a push to get a babe like you to let go, but this feeling is alien to you. You’re the master of dumping, but being broken up with is a huge blow to your personal ego. Maybe you did the leaving, not from true desire, but because you sensed their distance, so you chose to leave before you got left. Either way, you view your heartbreak as personal defeat.

Committing doesn’t come easily to you, and neither does losing. Instead of allowing yourself to feel the ache, you translate it into failure. You mask your emotional pain with anger. It’s easier for you to be livid at the person who left you than admit that your heart is outside of your chest and in pieces. Avoiding the reality of your feelings spirals into a white-hot fire in your chest. Your need to have the last word propels you into drafting a text that borders on violence. 

You indulge in remorse and self-blame, if only for choosing wrong. You’re pragmatic with goals, so when you chose this person as your partner for the long-run, you not only meant it, but planned a life for it. However evolved and mature you may be, now that it’s out of your reach, you’re not unlike a little kid who had their ball snatched at the playground. 

You reshape events in your head to fit a narrative in which you’re innocent, and they’re solely to blame. This isn’t to say they are clean of culpability, but that you reframe any of yours into being warranted. 

To avoid your emotions, you act out in impulsive ways that only leave you feeling angry with yourself. Sometimes your impulsivity leads you to make dumb choices. You numb yourself by seeking that adrenaline rush. Whether it’s a new hair-do that just isn’t you or a heavy night of regretful drinking, you start making decisions based on your unattended emotions. You want to move on faster than your ex, so regret may come in the shape of a couple of rebounds. 

How you should: 

Burn it all down—metaphorically and literally speaking. Sever those ties, baby, and limit contact before saying things you will regret, even if your ex deserves to hear them. Write a rage-filled letter, but throw it into the pyre instead of sending it. Don’t forget to throw in the mementos you collected throughout your relationship. 

Despite what you’ve heard, love is not a game. Suppress your need to come out on top. There is no such thing as winning the breakup. Jumping into something new will only serve as a messy distraction. Eventually, your unresolved feelings will rear their monstrous heads. Itch as they might, do not use those fingers to re-download dating apps! Look away from the next hottie in line at the bar, and look within. Be alone. Take time to sit with what you’re feeling and what the relationship meant to you.

Go on an adventure alone to remind you who you are—fierce, proud, and confident! Whether it’s setting out on a natural trek, a solo weekend trip, or a vacation, do something that reconnects you with your wild nature. 

Make a list of all the things your relationship was holding you back from doing, personally and professionally, and set out to start crossing them off. Stay busy. Soon enough, you’ll be jumping over the moon, grateful for your newfound independence. Like Taylor, you miss them, but you missed sparkling. Congrats on your breakup!

TAURUS

How you cope:

When you commit to someone, it’s because they look a lot like your lifelong partner. For you, love is forever, and a relationship is one of your biggest investments. You may have even viewed this person as your future spouse. They were certainly endgame. Throughout the cherished time you spent together, this person became your constant. You, Taurus, are no fan of change. To say you have trouble accepting the end would be an understatement. 

You value security over suitability and you tend to stay in relationships past their expiration date. If the breaking up was your doing, you’re completely chill and practical about it—eerily chill. When you’re the one who got left, you not only have a tough time hearing no, but you feel utterly abandoned. It’s a complete shock to your system to lose the one you love. Your first instinct is to push too hard—you want to give it another shot, compatibility and circumstances be damned. You don’t take anything into account but your feelings and the time you’ve devoted to the relationship. Lovely, Taurus—you may even degrade yourself by begging. If you could just go back to how it was. You want to rehash everything, you want closure, even to reconcile. You think that maybe if you remain friends, there’s still hope. 

Then comes your bitterness. Loyalty is of utmost importance to you, and there is no fury like a bull scorned. Your rage is a ticking time bomb. You’ve experienced a loss of stability in your life, and when that comfort is taken from you, you react with anger. The anger then turns into sadness. You retreat and isolate to lick your wounds. You tell yourself you just have to wait for the moment to pass. The trouble is that you seek too much comfort. You end up wallowing in sorrow under too many fuzzy blankets and depending on too much takeout for sustenance. 

How you should:

Closure isn’t real, Taurus, and the sooner you engrave that into your skull, the easier you’ll find it to move on. Away with your lingering fidelity to this person—just because they once meant so much to you doesn’t mean they should remain in your life. Let them go in love and in friendship. 

It’s true that it will take time, but don’t take too long, Taurus. It’s okay to indulge in a little alone time and self-care, but don’t get too caught up in it, letting life pass you by. The best thing you can do for yourself is keep moving. That means staying active physically and socially. Let your friends be there for you. Drop the macaroons and leave the house. Make sure to avoid all the restaurants and bars you used to frequent with them. That oyster bar that became your place with them should remain off-limits for you. Make an effort to change your habits and environment, especially those you associate with your ex. Go out and flirt, a cute distraction would serve you right. If any zodiac sign should casually rebound, it’s you. 

Most importantly, examine how this relationship has been so similar to the ones before, down to the way it ended. Remember that relationships are meant to lift you, grow you, change you, and challenge you. How are you any different after this one? You’ve been wasting too much time entering the same relationships over and over again. What can you do differently next time, Taurus? Ruminate on how you can choose differently, even if the answer lies outside of your comfort zone. 

GEMINI

How you cope:

You will subtweet into oblivion. You won’t think twice about disrespecting someone’s mother in the most brutal way possible. Their dog. Their grandma. “Don’t fall for a Gemini for the *mouth* if you can’t handle it later,” you text into the group chat. The logical side of you could detach, but you give way to the neurotic twin. Let’s be honest, you love the drama, so you will revel in it. A Gemini’s wrath must be felt, after all. 

It’s your birthright to be adored—how dare they leave you? Why? You spiral, overanalyzing every aspect of your dead relationship. Your sharp claws come out, as does your violent nature. You feel betrayed. There are 10 furious drafts sitting in your Notes app. Meanwhile, you’re beginning to play it cool, as if the breakup was NBD. Over drinks with your pals, you ramble on about how much your ex sucked and how it is a blessing that you didn’t have to do the leaving. Your jokes and hateful talk are a counterbalance act to deal with the heartbreak. 

All your personas are on full display during a breakup. The only thing that can be counted on is your unpredictability. You rant about how they ain’t crap, then repeatedly call them hours later at 2 a.m., either crying or proposing a FWB situation. You come to the conclusion that a rebound is the cure of all your ailments, so you go on the prowl for a revenge lay or two. You start posting incessantly to social media because You Couldn’t Care Less™, and you want to make sure your ex knows it. You keep checking to see if they’ve viewed your stories and borrow friends’ accounts to stalk theirs. You shove your sadness down and can’t admit to yourself just how hurt you are. You can’t grasp the fact that you need time to process and heal. 

How you should:

Block them, if not for their sake, then for yours. The passwords of theirs you acquired have got to be shoved into a metaphorical box and then burned. Don’t go peeping at their socials, and most definitely do not sign into them to pry.

Your friends love you and want to be there for you, but they are tired of hearing just how much better off you are. A therapist would be happy to hear all about it and maybe could teach you a thing or two about how to stop laughing when you actually want to cry. You must shed tears, vent, and process, or else you’ll carry all your baggage into your next relationship. Don’t waver on your feelings, talk about them (truthfully) and write about them instead. Get a grip, Gemini, you are strong enough to handle those scary emotions.

You’re typically one to partake in on-and-off again relationships. Bloodily sever the cord on this one, and take the time to heal. You’ll find plenty of adoration in your mob of groupies once you get that spring back into your step. 

CANCER

How you cope:

Once you fall in love, you tend to stay in love. You crave the romance of a lifetime, and when it comes to love, you tend to see everything through rose-colored glasses. You’re idealistic in romance and your dreams are of the white picket fence kind. When they’re shattered, you’re left wondering why you weren’t good enough. Your fear of being alone sweeps you further into fantasy. You continue to romanticize the wrong person post-split. You make up excuses for their bad behavior and even take responsibility for their hurtful actions. 

Sweet, beautiful Cancer, you’re driven by your emotions. After a breakup, you revel in your despair. Sobbing into your pillow, you don’t want to let go of their lingering scent on your sheets. Part of you actually enjoys the sadness, you masochist. Your heart of gold can’t let go, nor can it stop wondering what if and what you could have done to prevent it. Try as you might to put up a tough exterior, under your shell, you’re an absolute mess. Your friends aren’t buying your attempt to vilify your ex in public. 

Love your former boo as you might, part of you feels like you lost something that belonged to you. You secretly like to dominate, and part of your pain is due to the fact that you had zero control of the situation. You’re a dog without a bone or a crab who has had a shrimp forcibly removed from its claw. 

How you should:

If you’re not careful, spending too much time in your depression den will allow you to harden your shell. You’ll wind up closing up to the right people. You felt safe with them, and you didn’t want it to end, but the sooner you realize this is a situation you can’t turn around to your advantage, the faster you can reach catharsis. Keep it moving, Cancer! Take a walk and stop nursing your wounds.

Get your ass out of bed. Don’t wash your sheets, throw them away and buy new ones—ones they have never touched. Take down every picture and reminder of them and delete every digital one. Quite literally, please let go. That includes the hoodie they left at your place and that you haven’t taken off in five days. Toss everything they ever gifted you into the trash bin. Pawn what’s valuable and use it to fly your mom in for the weekend. You need nurturing right now. If it isn’t your mother, then turn to the maternal figure in your life. 

Find poetic ways to release. Write poetry, make a clay sculpture that signifies the end of your relationship, or even just journal. Channel your energy elsewhere and find a new place to pour your love and emotions into. Eventually, getting through each day won’t feel like a daunting task. 

LEO

How you cope:

Leo, you are more comfortable giving than receiving, and chances are that you put up with breakup-worthy behavior before finally being dumped or calling it quits. You are all fire, and the way you love is as fiery as the sun. You love being in love, and rarely is breaking up an option for you. You saw the best in your partner and held on for longer than was good for your mental health. You self-identified in your relationship, and if the decision to end it wasn’t yours, you feel like you’ve lost yourself. 

There’s no surer way to knock a Leo off their golden pedestal than breaking up with them. It is a huge blow to your pride. Your ego bruises as black and blue as your heart. Your devastation and shock at the disrespect leave you roaring. You entered the relationship passionately, and you will exit it even more dramatically. Not even an hour in, you’re already posting to your IG stories, making a theatrical pageant of your split. Venting there, you disclose the gritty, nitty details. You perceive the breakup as humiliation, feeling wild indignation, so you’re mercilessly vindictive and petty. 

You busy yourself with uploading thirst traps onto main, ensuring that everyone is aware of your newfound singledom. You love the attention, so you publicize your breakup, spilling tea to anyone who will listen. You do it looking for validation.

You are histrionic even in your suffering, if you even admit it to close loved ones. You call your friends looking to celebrate because you’re afraid to appear weak. Over drinks, you talk poorly about your ex in an attempt to hide your insecurity and broken heart. You act like you’re on the prowl, but deep down you’re not excited about it. You start dating too soon, looking for someone to nurse your ego back into health. 

How you should:

You should handle your breakup with privacy and discretion. Put the phone down. Have your bestie change the passwords to your socials until the need to be petty passes. Tweet away to yourself in your notes app. The details of your breakup should remain between you and your ex. What you disclose should only be disclosed to people you trust, and should be done with dignity. 

Let your friends comfort you without badmouthing your ex. Stop denying what the relationship meant to you and honor it instead. Spend quality time with loved ones and open up about how you’re really feeling. You can’t have a true support system without letting those who love you see how really hurt you are. Heartbreak is not a sign of weakness or fault but emblematic of the capacity of your depth.

Avoid dating apps and casual hookups. Don’t try to move on by getting under someone new too quickly. Work out the baggage of your dead relationship before you start rifling through the pages of your admirers for a distraction. It would be too easy for you to jump into a new future with someone else. Dive into a new creative project instead. Finding a creative outlet will get you back into feeling your vivacious self in no time. Soon you’ll realize no one can dim your light. 

Doing something symbolic like burning mementos or wearing impeccable black attire for some time might help with the mourning. Take every picture down and cut it into little pieces. Hell, even make a dart board out of their photograph. If theatrics soothe you, enjoy them in the privacy of your own home. 

VIRGO

How you cope:

Ruled by Mercury, you can’t help but overthink and overanalyze. You dwell on every detail of how it could have gone wrong and try to find meaning beneath it all. Obsessing over how you could have missed the red flags, you almost blame yourself. You have high expectations of everyone, and you hate yourself a little for not picking up on any signs sooner. You are your own worst enemy after a split. 

You disappear and fall into a deep depression from bottling up all your emotions. Not even your bestie has heard from you. You only show people what you want them to see, and the truth is you’re hurting and neglecting yourself. Your world has turned to gray. You’re numb and slowly becoming apathetic to everything and everyone around you. You can’t remember the last time you took a shower or picked up anybody’s phone call. 

You come with built-in protective walls, but you’re a softie underneath it all. You let this person in, dedicated yourself to them, and nurtured them. You pushed your paranoia aside in order to place your trust in them, and now they’ve left you once again afraid to be vulnerable. You’re generous to a fault, and that is also true in love, but if you’re not careful, heartbreak can make you stone-cold and cynical. 

How you should:

Be gentle with yourself. You are incredible at being gentle with others but are too harsh on yourself. Stop dwelling on the why and replaying every angle over and over. Let people in and be real with them. You’re a great listener, and right now is the time to let others be that person for you. It’s rough for you to talk about yourself, but you can’t begin to heal without honesty and support. Stop self-isolating and putting on an act. 

Move, Virgo! Do something physical to distract from the spirals and avoid shutting down. While you’re at it, go get a mani and pedi. Treat yourself to a massage and buy yourself some new houseplants to take care of. Now is the time to show off your green thumb. Pour all the love you showered your ex with into your lush new green babies. Don’t forget to pour into yourself.

Viewing your breakup and pain as a failure is the reason you take too long to move on. Are you in love with them, or are you still hung up on their potential? Do you miss them, or do you miss your idea of the relationship? 

Find solace in the fact that once you’re over them, you’re really done—it will be almost as if they never existed. 

LIBRA

How you cope:

While it’s true that you take your time weighing through your options and rifling through your horde of fans, once you decide to give your heart away, it’s for the long-run. Governed by Venus, you’re a dedicated, fierce partner and lover. You’re naturally flirtatious and enjoy playing the game, but you feel your absolute best in a relationship. If they’ve broken up with you, it’s not beneath you to try to change their mind. When it comes to matters of the heart, you often let fear get in the way of your good sense. You may even barter and negotiate, promising ways to make your relationship work. The fact is that you will say and do absolutely anything to keep even a dead relationship alive. Sometimes that includes remaining friends when you should cut off communication. 

When reconciliation doesn’t work, you make desperate attempts to prove you have moved on. You grab your tallest pair of pumps and reddest shade of lipstick. You stop by the mirror to push up your cleavage on the way out. You go looking for any hot piece that will prevent you from thinking about the breakup. You seek solace in bandage hookups, and this often leads you into entangling yourself with questionable characters. You will do anything to avoid acknowledging the breakup and your heartache. It’s likely that you will jump into a new monogamous relationship soon after, even if you’re not completely into it. 

How you should:

Suppress the diplomatic urge to remain friends with your ex. Stop sending them memes. Take them off your close friends list on IG. Absolutely do not try to revive a hopeless relationship. You don’t need to be in one to be happy, and you don’t need to be in one to feel validated. 

Enjoy yourself, you need it, but don’t go shopping for a new partner so quickly. Dance the night away with your friends in the hottest number, but do it dressing for yourself and dancing for no one but your own joy. Laugh, flirt, and maybe even kiss someone, but for now, leave it as just that—fun. Love them and leave them without your number. Loving them means just a rompy makeout sesh for the night—just enough to stroke your ego and lift your spirits. It would be wise for you to avoid sex for a while. Absolutely under no circumstances should you begin to date too quickly. Learn ways to provide your own validation.

What you really need right now is to let yourself grieve. Be sentimental and nostalgic, Libra. Cry it out when you need to. Until you process, you’ll be searching for your ex in everyone you meet. When the heartache gets to be too much, pamper yourself with retail therapy and a day at the spa. 

SCORPIO

How you cope:

If your ex is lucky, then you go stone-cold, block them, and freeze them out forever. That’s a big if. You love intensely, and opening up for you takes a lot of work. You could be in a committed relationship without truly ever letting someone in, but when you fall, you give a piece of yourself away. This leaves you with a great sense of loss and abandonment after a breakup. First, you fall into a scary depth of despair. You may even delude yourself into believing that they’ll come back to you. You wait around for them to realize the huge mistake they have made, resorting to manipulative tactics to reel them back in.

You’re willful and stubborn, determined to get your way. This is one of the reasons you stay in relationships longer than you should. Your jealousy and possessiveness during the relationship only intensify after its end. There’s nothing that triggers your control issues more like heartbreak. It isn’t too long before you trade in your sorrow for rage. You are the most toxic bygone lover out of all the zodiac signs. Whether you got broken up with or did the breaking up yourself, you feel jilted. You are a lethal, dangerous ex to have, Scorpio. 

Your love transforms into hate. You detest them for convincing you to let your guard down. It’s quite sad how fast you let this erase all the beauty you may have experienced with them. Your next obsession becomes vengeance. You don’t care how long you have to wait to hit them where it hurts. When you sting, you sting to kill. You can tolerate the years it would take to get back at them. If you want to get it done fast, you’re not above sleeping with their best friend. 

You’re so busy avoiding the pain with meaningless partners to nurture your heart and allow it to heal. You go dark. You become impulsive and compulsive. You find solace in alcohol and substances. You try to heal in ways that are only detrimental to your wellbeing. Each time you do that one thing you swear will finally numb the pain, you only come home more heartbroken than when you left it. 

How you should:

What you should absolutely not do is curate a fake social media profile to stalk theirs incognito. Find something new to obsess about, not someone. What’s your next career milestone? Focus on hitting it. Pour yourself into a new hobby or class. Write a poetry book. Remember, success is the best revenge. 

Avoid extreme behavior. Don’t partake in any addictive activities—that includes drugs, sex, and alcohol. The best thing you can do is meditate and practice mindfulness to learn how to regulate your rage and sorrow. Learn how to self-soothe, Scorpio. A hiking trip would serve you good, but better yet, plan something near a body of water. Some stargazing by the beach or lake will help you gain a beautiful new perspective on the end of your relationship. You may even find reasons as to why your ex doesn’t actually deserve your life-long grudge. 

The more you engage in new experiences, the more new memories you’ll have to focus on that don’t involve your ex. Stop clinging to that love. Once you find yourself in a healthier place, start dating, but take your time in being physical. If you wait around too long to put yourself back out there, you’ll find endless excuses as to why you want to avoid romance. Don’t let this push you into closing yourself off to love forever. You don’t want to feel this way again, but there is beauty in your unique and intense manner of loving. Someone out there wants to love you just as hard. 

SAGITTARIUS

How you cope:

The archer can go from being the biggest player to the most devoted, loyal partner when they fall in love. Your word is gold, Sagittarius, and you honor commitment. Telling someone you love them means a lot to you. You’ve broken many hearts in the past but now that it’s yours shattered into pieces you feel blindsided. You don’t want to talk about it, though. You deny just how unsettled you are in your new world sans your boo. 

You choose not to dwell on it and instead focus on reinventing yourself. You make it your mission to reclaim yourself. By doing so, you get too caught up on your exterior and how you want to appear to the outside world. You may do things like dramatically change the color or length of your hair. This makes you feel good for the first couple of hours, but you can only find so many ways to change your appearance. 

You may partake in risky behavior. These exploits can seem as harmless as buying a new wardrobe that’s out of your budget but can be as perilous as waking up next to someone you don’t know, with no recollection of how you got there. You act like you are grateful for your newfound independence and romantic freedom, but you’re only hiding your true feelings. It might take some work to get over this one.  

How you should:

Sag, you’re notorious for doing the opposite of what you’re told, but please listen to this advice. 

Focus on the interior. What did this relationship teach you? How did it change you? What are your new philosophies about love? Journal about it. Get online and read therapist reviews. You would benefit from discussing the answers to these questions with a professional. You need to find a new perspective. 

Find healthy coping mechanisms. There’s no time like post-breakup to finally get around to learning the foreign language you’ve always dreamed of speaking. Travel as much as you can afford to take off work. Go wander somewhere new. What you need right now is a change of scenery. Instead of seeking the adrenaline rush through actions detrimental to you and your health, seek it in something like sailing. Go skydiving and post that ridiculous picture of your smile mid-air to your IG. 

CAPRICORN

How you cope:

Though you have a bad rep for being cold, you’re anything but. You have one of the warmest hearts out of the zodiac. You have strong convictions, so you don’t choose a partner without serious consideration. You like to invest in quality, and your time is too precious to share with someone you don’t want for the long haul. When you break up with someone, your mind has been made up. When you’re broken up with, you fall apart.

On the outside, you’re getting along just fine. Finer than fine—you seem to be on the up since the split. The truth is you want your world to continue to spin uninterrupted to avoid the pain. So you exhaust yourself in every imaginable way—work, chores, school, and working out. You might take on something like apartment renovations to insure yourself you don’t have the time to just stop. To take a breath would mean to let yourself feel and admit the magnitude of your ache. 

The moment you can no longer deny it to yourself, you fall into a dark melancholy. However, you’re stoic and suffer in silence. Part of it is your pride, but mostly you struggle with asking for help. So, you fake it all day only to go back home and lie awake all night. 

How you should:

Check your need to internalize the pain and find healthy ways to emotionally release it. There is no wrong way to go about it. 

Stop turning on your activity status on IG to check to see when they were last active, and then turning it off again. Mute them for a while—it may even be best to fully unfollow them. Reach out to your support system. You are not weak for needing your friends. For once, let someone take care of you. You’d be surprised how much faster you can heal by letting others be there for you. 

Give up your need to be in control of everything, including your emotions, and take a break to just feel. Those feelings may be ugly and uproot your life, but when have you ever run away from a fight? Instead of fixating on distractions, now is the time to slow down. The best thing you can do is embrace spontaneity. In fact, challenge yourself outside of familiarity. If you can afford a little vacation, take a break from work. If not, ask your friends on a weekend road trip. Now might also be the time to finally find out what you look like with seven less inches of hair. Just as your locks will grow back, your heart will go on. 

AQUARIUS

How you cope:

You’re highly independent and free-spirited. You don’t like feeling trapped or having to depend on others. You’re happier answering to no one. You’re a little afraid of commitment. You prefer flings, situationships, and FWB. Some of these have been long-lived, but you never let yourself be tied down to any of them, choosing instead to stay loyal to your freedom. It’s rare for you to find someone you want to emotionally attach yourself to. You don’t give away your heart easily. A breakup for you makes you feel as if that precious organ has been chewed up and spat out.  

You’re notorious for being emotionally detached, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. You feel heartbreak deeply. Behind closed doors, you dig your wounds deeper. And deeper. You spend your nights pouring salt and alcohol over them. Self-isolating, you self-medicate with depressing curated playlists of the soundtrack to your relationship. 

You’re a great liar, though. You act calm, cool, and collected, lashing out by pretending to give zero effs. You may be a pro at concealing emotions, but it’s just another way you compartmentalize. Your attic will eventually come tumbling down. It’s not a pretty sight when it does. 

How you should:

There’s no surer way to get you to stop thinking of them than a night out on the dance floor. Bring your best looks under the mirrorball and put yourself back in the spotlight. Stop making up excuses and start RSVPing yes to the party. Turn off your DND and let your besties drag you off the couch. Start being real with them, too. You have to start processing somehow—the first step is talking about it. Unpack with loved ones

Keep it moving! Now is the time to finally take up yoga. It’ll help you center yourself to be in a better headspace to analyze instead of wallowing in sadness and nostalgia. 

Picking up a few books that will challenge you is an easy way to start lifting your spirits. 

PISCES

How you cope:

You’re still stuck living in a fantasy world in which the love of your life comes back to you in the pouring rain. You’re a dreamer, but one with a goal in mind. Unfortunately for you, that is still your ex. After the breakup, you instinctively (and incorrectly) begin to think that you have lost your soulmate—the one. No matter how wrong they were for you, no matter if you already were beginning to have doubts, you begin to think that they are the one who got away. The breakup makes you see your ex in a better light than they probably deserve. 

You start to think you will never find love again. You feel unworthy and insecure. You’re still keeping tabs on your ex, torturing yourself looking at their recently tagged photos and seeing how much fun they’re having at the bar. You binge eat cookies and ice cream in front of your TV. You watch romcoms and sad movies that only leave you feeling more forlorn. 

You shut out all your friends and avoid social functions. You don’t allow those who love you to be there for you—you’re too lost in the nostalgia and sentimentality to care to hear what anyone has to say to you. You want to go through it on your own because you don’t want to be pulled from your reveries. 

How you should:

Adopt a pet. If your apartment complex doesn’t allow any, then get some fish and buy A LOT of houseplants. The point is to find something new to love and nurture. Pour all your love and affections into keeping a furry baby or a collection of lush green plants alive. 

Let your friends take care of you, just like you take care of everyone else. You are amazing at boosting everyone else’s spirits and ego, you’ve got to start letting others do the same for you, babe. Keep your calendar busy by staying involved in social activities. Be a butterfly, but be careful about overdoing it with partying.

Visit a psychic and let them reaffirm that there is beautiful love out there somewhere waiting for you. Learn tarot to start doing the same for yourself. You’ll be shocked at how much getting into touch with your mystical side can do for heartache. Find your power in spirituality, as well as creating art.