1. Only take one or two really long, hot showers. You may use these allotted shower times to cry, scream, pray, laugh, dance, blame yourself/blame them, curse, or just dramatically stand there and think about life.
2. No sad songs. I mean it. No sad, moody, dark, depressing, heart-wrenching, bittersweet, lonely, or hopeless songs. No cueing up the dramatic, jilted-lover playlist on your iPhone and spending six hours a day in your room. No, instead we’re going to listen to happy songs. Happy, joyful, cheerful, funny, upbeat songs. Got it? Good.
3. No keeping items of theirs or that remind you of them in your room/house/apartment/locker/anything that can possibly hold memorabilia. In fact, let’s burn that s**t. Just light it up. If it’s something you can’t/won’t burn, put it in a box and give it to a friend or ship it back to the ex.
4. The studies don’t over-estimate exercise, especially outdoor exercise. I don't care if you're lazy or tired or just want to lay in bed all day. Think about it this way: if you’re focused on the sweat trickling down your face or the way your thigh muscles seem to have been replaced with molten hot lava, you aren’t thinking about them! Also, as a happy side effect, you get in shape!
5. Give yourself one week of isolation, tops. One week of sitting in your room or your house or wherever and feeling sorry for yourself and probably drinking too much vodka or coffee or something. After a week or less, you gotta get out of the house with friends. Go out to eat, go to a bar, go ice-skating at four in the morning. Anything to try and meet new people.
6. About comfort food(s): Take it easy on those. Try to average about one gallon of ice cream a weekend, or one plate of seafood lasagna a week, or one bottle of wine every two weeks. We’re not eating our feelings here, we’re trying to get rid of them.
7. Let yourself cry as much as you need to for the first few weeks. In the grocery store, at home, with friends, alone, at the movies. But after four weeks, try not to cry every single day. For one, you might get dehydrated. But hopefully, if you’ve followed the other steps, you’ll be past the stage where you fall apart at the littlest thing.
8. This is one of the most important steps: Do not, under any circumstances, keep in touch with the ex. You don’t necessarily have to delete their number or completely get rid of it, but you do have to block it and delete your old text conversations. We don’t want any reminiscing via rereading texts. Also, no showing up at their house, or going to where they work, or going to places you know they go a lot, or casually/desperately asking friends if they have talked about you. Again, I repeat, NO CONTACT WITH THE EX.
9. And now we come to the dreaded time where you’re not asleep but you’re supposed to be. This is the thinking time. There is no way to truly avoid this time. If your goal is to drown out all thoughts of them, you could listen to music and sing along, or read a book, or watch TV until you fall asleep. But eventually, you will be faced with the quiet hour. I am only mortal, and I cannot give you a way to escape this. I can, however, give you ways to cope with it. The first way: try to remember the bad things about the relationship as well as the good. If you can’t think of any bad things, remember that if they broke up with you, that’s a bad thing. If you broke up with them, there must be a reason. The second way: remind yourself that there are always other people. You still have a lot of years ahead of you, and can you really see yourself still being sad about this ten years from now? Basically, just take on a forward-thinking mindset about it. The third and final way: take a dose of melatonin and you’ll be out like a light.
10. Finally, remember that you will get through this. Remember that you are worthy, and it’s them that are not good enough. Remember that you will be okay. Remember that you are perfect.