Why Am I Still Not Over My Ex? Understanding Your Breakup Timeline
It's been six months. Maybe a year. Possibly longer. And you're still thinking about them.
You wake up and they're the first thing on your mind. You see something funny and instinctively reach for your phone before remembering you can't text them anymore. You're doing "all the right things"—therapy, journaling, staying busy, dating again—but nothing seems to make the thoughts stop.
And then comes the question that keeps you up at 2 AM: Why am I still not over my ex?
If you've Googled this question (and let's be honest, you probably have), you're not alone. You're also probably feeling some combination of frustration, shame, and confusion about why your heart hasn't gotten the memo that it's time to move on.
Here's what I want you to know right away: There is nothing wrong with you. The timeline you're experiencing isn't a reflection of weakness, dysfunction, or an inability to "get your shit together." It's a reflection of something much more complex—and much more human.
The Myth of the "Normal" Breakup Timeline
The internet loves to give us formulas. Half the length of the relationship. Three months for every year you were together. The infamous "it takes 11 weeks to feel better" statistic that gets thrown around like gospel.
But here's the truth: those timelines are about as useful as telling someone with complicated grief that they should be "over it" by now because it's been a year since the loss.
Which is to say—not useful at all.
Breakup recovery isn't a math equation. It's a grief process. And grief, as anyone who's experienced real loss knows, doesn't follow a neat, linear trajectory with a clearly marked finish line.
When you're still thinking about your ex months or years later, you're not failing at recovery. You're navigating something that most generic breakup advice completely misses: you're not just grieving the loss of a person. You're grieving invisible losses that are far more complex.
What You're Actually Grieving (It's Not Just Your Ex)
This is where the traditional "how to get over a breakup" advice falls short. It assumes you're mourning one thing—the relationship—when in reality, you're processing multiple, layered losses that don't get acknowledged or validated.
The future you planned. Not just the big milestones like weddings or kids, but the small, mundane ones. The inside jokes you'd keep building. The trips you'd take. The person you'd become together. When a relationship ends, an entire imagined future evaporates, and you're left grieving something that never got to exist.
Your identity within the relationship. If you were together for years, you built an identity around being "we" instead of "me." You made decisions as a unit. You saw yourself through their eyes. You knew who you were in the context of that relationship. Now you're having to figure out who you are without them—which is disorienting as hell, especially if you're someone who tends toward people-pleasing or loses yourself in relationships.
The version of yourself you liked better. Maybe you were more adventurous with them. More relaxed. More confident. Or maybe you just liked who you were becoming while you were together. Losing the relationship can feel like losing access to that version of yourself, even if rationally you know those qualities are still within you.
The story you told yourself about love. If this was your first serious relationship, or the first one where you really believed "this is it," the breakup doesn't just end the relationship—it shatters your understanding of how love works. It makes you question your judgment, your intuition, your ability to trust yourself in future relationships.
The life disruption itself. Breakups are destabilizing. Your routines change. Your friend group might shift. Your living situation could be affected. You're not just healing from emotional loss—you're rebuilding the entire structure of your daily life while simultaneously trying to process grief.
These invisible losses are why you're still not over your ex. Because you're not just getting over one person—you're mourning an entire ecosystem of loss that nobody around you can see.
Why High-Achievers Struggle More With Breakup Timelines
If you're a high-achieving woman—someone who's used to setting goals and meeting them, someone who prides herself on being capable and together—prolonged breakup grief can feel especially maddening.
You've probably handled other hard things in your life with relative grace. You've powered through career challenges, navigated family dynamics, managed anxiety or perfectionism well enough to build a life that looks successful from the outside.
So why can't you just... get over this?
Here's what I see consistently with my clients who struggle with extended breakup timelines:
You're used to controlling outcomes. Breakups are one of those experiences where you can do everything "right"—go to therapy, journal, exercise, practice self-care—and still feel like shit. There's no checklist that guarantees healing by a certain date, which is infuriating for someone who's used to being able to work hard enough to solve problems.
You have impossibly high standards for yourself. You might be willing to extend compassion and patience to friends going through breakups, but when it comes to your own healing? You expect yourself to be over it faster, to handle it better, to not be "that person" who's still hung up on their ex a year later.
You're processing the breakup intellectually but not emotionally. You understand why the relationship ended. You can articulate all the reasons it wasn't working. You might even agree it was the right decision. But understanding something cognitively and actually moving through the grief emotionally are completely different processes—and high achievers often get stuck in their heads, trying to think their way through something that requires feeling.
You're terrified of being "too much." If you struggle with people-pleasing or worry about burdening others, you might be trying to grieve in isolation, minimizing your pain or pretending you're further along in healing than you actually are. This prolongs the process because you're not allowing yourself the support and space you actually need.
When "Still Not Over It" Becomes Something Else
Now, there is a difference between normal, complicated grief over a breakup and being truly stuck in a way that's interfering with your life and wellbeing.
You might need additional support if:
You're unable to function in daily life—missing work, withdrawing from all social connections, unable to take care of basic needs
You're engaging in harmful coping behaviors—excessive drinking, restricting food, compulsive checking of their social media to the point where it's disrupting your sleep and focus
You're experiencing symptoms of clinical depression or anxiety that feel unmanageable
You're stuck in a pattern of obsessive thinking where you can't redirect your thoughts at all, even momentarily
You're isolating completely and have no emotional support system
You're idealizing the relationship to the point where you can't acknowledge any of the real problems or reasons it ended
If any of this resonates, it's worth seeking professional support—not because you're doing recovery "wrong," but because you deserve help navigating something that's become overwhelming.
What Actually Helps When You're Still Not Over Your Ex
If you're tired of generic advice that doesn't address the real complexity of what you're experiencing, here's what actually makes a difference:
Stop comparing your timeline to anyone else's. Seriously. Your college roommate got over her breakup in six weeks? Good for her. That has zero bearing on your healing process. The only timeline that matters is yours, and shaming yourself for where you are only makes everything harder.
Name all the losses, not just the obvious one. Make a list—literally write it down—of everything you're grieving. The person, yes, but also the future, the identity, the routines, the version of yourself you were becoming. When you can see the full scope of what you're mourning, it makes sense why healing takes longer than you expected.
Allow yourself to be ambivalent. You can simultaneously know the relationship needed to end AND miss them terribly. You can recognize all the ways it wasn't working AND still grieve what you lost. You don't have to resolve the ambivalence or have it all figured out. The both/and is real, and it's okay.
Process the relationship honestly, not just the highlights. Our brains have a tendency to romanticize past relationships, remembering the good parts more vividly than the hard ones. It's not about dwelling on everything they did wrong, but it does help to hold a more complete, realistic picture of what the relationship actually was—including the reasons it ended.
Check in with how you're defining "over it." What does being "over your ex" actually mean to you? Never thinking about them? Not feeling sad when you remember good times? Being ready to date again? Sometimes we're holding ourselves to an impossible standard. You don't have to never think about them again to be healed. You just have to get to a place where thinking about them doesn't derail your entire day.
Get real about what you need. If you need to talk about it in therapy every week for six months, do that. If you need to take a break from dating, take the break. If you need to unfollow them on social media (or ask a friend to monitor their profiles for you so you can stop compulsively checking), do it. Stop trying to heal the way you think you "should" and start healing in the way you actually need to.
The Intersection of Breakup Grief and Other Losses
One reason breakup grief can be so destabilizing—especially if you're someone who's experienced other significant losses—is that it can trigger or intersect with older, deeper wounds.
If you've experienced complicated grief before (the death of someone close to you, estrangement from family, fertility struggles, other major life transitions), a breakup can reactivate that grief in unexpected ways. You're not just mourning this relationship—you're mourning every other loss that didn't get fully processed, every other time you had to rebuild yourself, every other moment when life didn't turn out the way you expected.
This is particularly true if the relationship represented safety or stability in the aftermath of an earlier loss. Maybe you met your ex during a difficult time, and being with them helped you feel less alone in your grief. Now you're processing the breakup AND re-experiencing the original loss, which is a lot to hold.
It's also worth noting that if you have a history of anxiety, perfectionism, or people-pleasing, a breakup can intensify those patterns. You might find yourself ruminating more than usual, catastrophizing about the future, or beating yourself up for every perceived mistake you made in the relationship. This isn't you "doing grief wrong"—it's your nervous system trying to create a sense of control in a situation that feels deeply out of control.
Moving Forward (Without Forcing It)
Here's what healing actually looks like: It's messy. Non-linear. Full of days where you think you've turned a corner, followed by days where you're right back in it.
You'll have a good week where you barely think about them, and then you'll hear a song or smell their cologne on someone else and feel like you're starting from scratch. That's not regression. That's how grief works.
Healing isn't about never thinking about your ex again. It's about building a life that feels full and meaningful even while you're still processing the loss. It's about the thoughts becoming less intrusive, less painful, less all-consuming—not about them disappearing entirely.
You'll know you're healing when:
You can think about them without it ruining your entire day
You can acknowledge the good parts of the relationship without immediately wanting them back
You feel curious about your own future again, even if it's scary
You have moments where you forget to check their social media or wonder what they're doing
You can be present with other people without constantly comparing them to your ex
You feel more like yourself again—or like a new version of yourself you're starting to recognize
This doesn't happen on a timeline. It happens when it happens. And the kindest thing you can do for yourself is stop fighting your own pace.
When to Seek Support
If you're reading this and recognizing yourself in every paragraph—if you're exhausted from carrying this alone and tired of pretending you're fine—it might be time to get support.
Breakup recovery work in therapy isn't about speeding up your timeline. It's about creating space to grieve all the invisible losses you're carrying, processing the relationship with honesty and compassion, and building skills to navigate the grief without getting lost in it.
You deserve to understand why you're still not over your ex—not so you can fix it faster, but so you can stop shaming yourself for a perfectly human response to loss.
Your grief isn't a problem to solve. It's an experience to move through. And you don't have to do it alone.
Meet Kim Jaso, LMHC
If you're a woman in New York State struggling with the aftermath of a breakup or relationship ending, I offer virtual therapy that addresses not just the surface-level pain, but the complicated, invisible losses underneath. You can schedule a free 15-minute consultation to discuss what you're going through and whether we're a good fit to work together.