The next time your current partner says that you need to get over your ex, you can tell them that it isn’t your fault. Partners all the time might think that you are hung up on your ex when you really are not, but something, you don’t know what it is, is holding you back. Whether the relationship was six months or six years, you develop something. You develop an attachment to the relationship and to that specific person. Physically you can break up with someone in a hot second, but mentally, the breakup can last for years depending on how long the two of you were together.
When you are in a relationship you build an attachment to this person. You create a mental tether that keeps the two of you connected in some way. This is more than feelings. This is providing safety for your regulatory system. You know the one that keeps you calm and helps you feel better? There are other types of attachments such as anxious or avoidant, but we are going to focus on attachments overall or a default attachment.
Romantic relationships become stamped in our brains. They become a source of support when you need comfort or need someone to talk to. We quickly train the brain to bring our partners to the forefront of our thoughts and seek them out for comfort or excitement and what tell them something. When you have periods throughout your day that are stressful, you look to your partner for support. In that instance you are training your brain to find comfort for the pain that you are feeling. Excited, you are training your brain to go to that person to share in your joy. The brain quickly has learned and been programmed to think of them and hopefully get comforted either positively or negatively.
So, when you think it is over, is it really over? YES! Physically and in the present tense, the relationship is over, but in the subconscious mind you might spend years nurturing these thoughts and feelings. People ask me all the time, how long does it take to stop thinking about an ex-partner? Unfortunately, there is no set time or clear answer to this question.
Some say that about half of the time that you were in a relationship. In a relationship for two years, it should potentially take a year. In a relationship for eight years, it will more than likely take four years to be completely over your ex. I know this sounds crazy and will absolutely piss off your new partner, but there are some things you can not change no matter how hard you try.
There is a recent study that has focused on this specific subject and what it means to truly “get over” an ex-partner. Published in January of this year, Chong and Fraley published an article called The Long-Term Stability of Affective Bonds After Romantic Separation: Do Attachments Simply Fade Away? That focuses specifically on this topic. The article discusses that there are two potential paths that a person (or their mind) can take. The first one is the attachment simply fades after the breakup and only persists from time to time. The thoughts never really go away but linger from time to time. The second path is the bond that once mattered most to a person can become ineffective and eventually no longer play a role in the persons attachment method within their subconscious brain.
Eventually, it won’t matter what path you have chosen, the ex-romantic partner will dissipate and fade to nothing more than a distant memory and feel like that person is someone you used to know at one point in your life like a childhood friend.
Now, the above is an average person, and we know that many of us are not average. Some of us can let go quicker than others and others tend to hang on longer than they probably should. People with anxiety or avoidant attachment may hang on much longer than they should, but these patterns align with what we know about their attachment styles. Don’t worry if you are hanging on longer than you think you should. It doesn’t mean that you fall into a specific attachment category. It just means that it is taking a little longer than you expected.
A couple of other quick notes on this topic, gender doesn’t matter. It seems that men and women take about the same time to get over an ex. Getting into another relationship isn’t going to speed up the process. It has zero effect on the attachment. You would expect this to be different since you are building a new attachment, but the new one isn’t replacing the old one. The new one is a completely different and new attachment that has new responsibilities and new rules and roles than the other old attachment relationship. This is not going to be a clean replacement.
So, the next time your new partner tells you that you need to get over your ex, you can tell them that you are working on it daily, but research shows that unconsciously we tend to hold on to our ex-partners potentially years after the physical break up. This is normal and there is nothing wrong with you, with your new partner or that you are still “hung up” on your ex. It doesn’t mean that you want your ex back or want to re-kindle the relationship. It doesn’t mean meaning about new or future relationships or how they will turn out.
Also remember that this attachment is not a reflection on a hold, spell or power of your ex-partner or the relationship that you had with them. This is a story about your brain and how it works and how you have zero control over some parts of it. The human brain is adaptive towards attachments, and it will take time to be able to let go. The human brain loves connections, and your ex was no different. It was an experience that your brain enjoyed at one period or another in time.
You can tell your current partner the next time that they bring up your ex that over time your mind will release those thoughts, and you will eventually come to see your ex-partner as a stranger in your life or someone you pass on the street. You can tell your partner it has nothing to do with them or your ex. It has to do with the fact that as much as we want the breakup to be instant, it unfortunately is not. This is a good thing. It reminds us about the power of love and the impact and importance of relationships in our lives.
References
Chong, J. Y., & Fraley, R. C. (2026). The long-term stability of affective bonds after romantic separation: Do attachments simply fade away? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 17(1), 120-133.
