by E.A. Paul

Created on: June 20, 2009   Last Updated: June 21, 2009

When a relationship ends, it's like having a piece of you broken off. No longer can you lean on and depend on your partner anymore. The change is profound. You literally have to start living a whole new life. Whether the breakup was ugly or friendly, it still has the same effect. That is, your emotions start to surface and you actually go through the stages of the grieving process. This is quite natural and healthy. Time is on your side and eventually the break up will be behind you and you can start moving on.

A bad breakup involves a lot of hurt, anguish and resentment. Of course, it didn't start out that way, but somewhere during the course of the relationship, things started to go bad. At first, this may happen on an unconscious level, as there might be a certain amount of denial that plays a big role. For most couples, it's a scary thing for the relationship to exist on shaky ground. Most people want their relationship to succeed and may even go to counseling together. If the problems can't be resolved, the only resolution will be a breakup, with the worst being a bad breakup.

So the big question is, how does someone move on from a bad breakup? Moving on can be interpreted as either moving on to another relationship, or just moving on to live a life free of a relationship. There is a lot that comes into play here. This means that after a bad breakup, a person should try and get to know themselves and their motives, before rushing right into another relationship.

It's like getting burned with fire, pulling away and jumping right back into the fire again. There are some good reasons why a person's relationship didn't succeed and the majority of those reasons might be that, they were at fault. If they jump into another relationship without resolving those issues, the same bad breakup will happen over again. At the least, they need some time to go through the grieving process and let some time go by.

This brings us to the first thing someone should do in order to move on from a bad breakup. That is, allow themselves to go through the grieving process. Losing a partner is just that, a loss. And when there are losses, there is grieving. Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is the pioneer who labeled the five stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This is a natural process which happens automatically when one encounters a loss. It may take months or years. After the person in a bad breakup goes through the first four stages of grief and

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