Not so long ago, erasing an ex from your life involved avoiding his street and writing endless journal entries about your emotional journey. Today? The path looks quite a bit different.
Blocking your ex on social media is the easy part (though continuing to “unfollow” him could take the willpower of an actress on a diet the day before the Oscars).
But what about the other baggage: literal and psychological?
Love is an actual addiction, says Helen Fisher, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and New York-based author of Anatomy of Love, who did a study linking love with substance abuse. In fact, the region of your brain that lights up when you’re romantically rejected is the same one that lights up during all the substance addictions: gambling, alcohol and even heroin.
Yes, there are rehabs for those addictions, but there’s also help for getting that ex out of your life and out of your head.
First, you need to remove his stuff. A new service called ExBox by storage solution MakeSpace will box up everything he left in your place — including items as large as a mattress. It will store the stuff for as long as at least three months before you instruct them to burn it or ship it somewhere. The really cool part: You get to rank your ex; the worse the breakup, the less you have to pay. For example, if you rate your ex as an 8 out of 10 on a scale of awfulness (you may never date again), you’ll get $20 off.
What happens if you return to your somewhat empty nest and you’re feeling a little weepy? Check out the recently launched app called Break-Up Boss, which offers pocket tools and techniques to get rid of your ex whenever and wherever you’re feeling a little angry or teary.
Break-up Boss was founded by Zoë Foster Blake, relationship columnist at Cosmopolitan and author of Textbook Romance. Via the app, you can send fake texts to your ex, receive encouraging notes, and get virtual support whenever you need it.
But let’s say you’re doing well (or as well as can be), and you log on to your social media of choice, only for it to remind you of a “memory” from a year or three ago, when you and your ex were blissfully happy, or so it appeared.
Don’t let this happen. A new app called Krome will remove your ex from any photos you upload ($3-$12, depending on the editing level), so your pictures stay awesome and ex-free.
Now it’s time for some self-care. Download the free Mend app, which will track your progress (you can actually see the number of days you’ve been able to stay ex-free). You also can listen to meditations and other calming advice, and will be able to log your self-care (every day, you can log whether you got outside, exercised, went to therapy, went on a date, etc.). We especially love the My Mend dashboard that charts how you feel over time, which is very encouraging. This app can make sure you’re doing your best to get over him stat.
It’s time to live your best life … ex-free.
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