Your partner has broken your trust. You struggle to stop spinning about it. It hurts to take a deep breath with that giant pit in your stomach, and your heart feels broken beyond repair. You may be thinking about how to let go of hurt and betrayal so you can move on with your life. Is it possible to open your heart so you can love again?

Letting go of hurt and betrayal isn’t going to happen overnight. You’re going to experience different stages of grief and loss along the way, but you don’t have to let this experience close your heart to love. If you take a conscious approach to walking away from your ex and healing your heart, you can create a greater love and a stronger partnership than the one you lost.

It’s so easy to get stuck between two opposing feelings. On the one hand, you feel pain and anger from your ex’s disloyalty. On the other hand, you want to put the whole situation behind you and start feeling better. Neither of these strategies is going to help you let go of hurt and betrayal.

Lasting love with a partner you can trust requires you to move past the hurt and betrayal, to heal your heart, and to create love more mindfully from the start.

Choosing to stay and work things out with your partner can be an option if you believe that your partner is serious about repairing the relationship, making amends, and is willing to put in the time to regain your trust.

However, if reconciliation and repair are not an option, you’ll want to know how to let go of hurt and betrayal so you can learn to love and trust again.

How To Let Go Of Hurt And Betrayal In Ways That Actually Motivate You To Walk Away From Your Ex

1. Take It Day By Day

Some days you’ll feel like you’re ready to move on, and other days you’ll wonder if you’ll ever feel like yourself again. That’s normal and to be expected. Letting go of hurt and betrayal (like all healing) is not a straight-line trajectory, it’ll take some time.

Your best approach is to just take it day by day. If you wake up and you feel strong, use that day to get things done. If you wake up feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck, then take extra special care of yourself and don’t pack your schedule as if you’re a superhero. Utilize time off and sick days to schedule time for self-care activities. Be sure to include unscheduled time for puttering — where you have nothing on your calendar and just do whatever you feel like in the moment.

It may seem that your life will never get better or go back to normal. That’s a lie you’re telling yourself. No one was ever so delusional and overcome with joy or happiness and thought, “I’m going to feel like this forever!” And yet, when you feel sadness, grief, or even guilt and shame, you convince yourself that you’ll be stuck in the abyss forever. You won’t. Life will go on. You will feel better. Embrace each day that passes as your best friend because time is on your side.

2. Your Emotions Are Temporary

Allow yourself to feel your feelings, express them, and allow them to move through you. You may uncover deeper layers of hurt and anger, but those emotions will shift and change as well.

Don’t focus on asking “why” this situation happened. Don’t look for the reason. This will only keep you feeling like a victim and keep you from moving forward. There’s no answer to “why did this happen” that will give you the peace you’re looking for. Sometimes bad things happen. Focusing on “why” disempowers you, so reclaim your power by feeling and expressing your emotions because all your feelings are temporary.

Your brain is looking for an answer or an explanation to solve a problem, however, your feelings are not a problem to solve. The only way through a breakup is to feel your feelings so you can move through them.

No matter your feelings, know that they’re appropriate. Just give yourself space and time to let the energy of your emotions move through you.

Embrace the mantra, “Just keep going.” Keep going until you feel better and at some point in the future you will. Borrow from Dory of Finding Nemo fame, “Just keep swimming!” Take it day by day and celebrate your wins along the way.

How to let go of hurt and betrayal? Be patient with yourself and take it one day at a time. Feel all your emotions instead of trying to deny them or ignore them.

3. Up Your Self-Care To Calm Your Nervous System

This betrayal can trigger you into old emotional and behavioral patterns. You can get stuck in a fight/flight/freeze response and your logical rational mind can go offline.

If you’re triggered you’re no longer acting rationally. Calm your nervous system so your problem-solving brain can come back online. Take a warm bath with baking soda, Epsom salts, and essential oils. Go to a restorative yoga class. Get regular massages and chiropractic care. Meditate. Walk in nature. Breathe.

Resist the urge to act out, attack, or run away from your problems. Instead sit down, breathe, put your hands on your chest and say to yourself, “I am loved and I am safe.” Wrap your arms around yourself in a big bear hug. Get a weighted blanket for your bed (it’s like sleeping while someone is holding you tight all night long).

You may feel the urge to numb yourself with TV, alcohol, work, or whatever your distraction of choice is. Instead of numbing yourself, find the courage and commit to calming your nervous system instead of numbing it. You’ll feel better and speed up your healing journey.

Checking out can create a dangerous spiral of isolation. Use your support system to keep you connected to people who care about you.

The connection to yourself and others will help the healing process. You’re not alone and your experience isn’t unique. Everyone has their heart broken and has had setbacks in their love life. Use their experience to comfort and support you.

How to let go of hurt and betrayal? Calm your nervous system, stay engaged with your supportive inner circle, and resist the urge to check out.

4. Cut Out The Source Of Your Pain

Continuing to have contact with your ex will keep the wound open and slow down your healing. Set a clear boundary and exercise your right to take care of yourself. Block your ex on all social media platforms. Change their name in your phone to “Do Not Answer” (and follow the instructions to not pick up).

Limit all communication with your ex to the absolute necessities. If you must have contact regarding children, joint business, or settling finances you must set clear rules about how, when, and where, and most importantly — for how long. Release the need to respond immediately if your ex contacts you. Wait before you say or do something that will re-engage the two of you in a dialogue.

How to let go of hurt and betrayal? Set clear boundaries between you and your ex.

5. Feel Your Feelings While Managing Your Thoughts & Actions

Whether you are replaying past events repeatedly in your mind, or using social media to spy on your ex, keeps you stuck and reengaging with the pain of being betrayed. It will also exacerbate the pain.

Obsessing over the details and searching for answers prolongs your feelings of hurt and betrayal. It’s normal to allow your imagination to run amuck and wish bad things upon the person who hurt you. You’re not a bad person because you entertain these thoughts or feelings.

There’s a big difference between entertaining fantasies of revenge and acting on them. Just because you wish bad things would happen to someone doesn’t make you a bad person, it simply makes you human. However, continuing to nurture thoughts of revenge or focusing on your pain will exacerbate your suffering.

Take control of your thoughts by managing your inner dialog. When helpless thoughts arise, change your thoughts to positive ones and focus on who you’re becoming. Create a vision of the future you, one that is no longer in pain, and choose thoughts that support this vision.

Affirm your belief that you can and will overcome this situation. Find an anthem that supports your journey and sing along as loudly as you can. Decide that living well is the best revenge.

How to let go of hurt and betrayal? Choose thoughts that nurture your growth and your belief in love. Find an anthem that supports the vision of the new and improved you and sing it loud and often.

6. Decide You’ll Be Better For The Experience

This is probably the most important step in this process. You get to decide how or if this experience changes you.

You can’t change the circumstances of what happened. The betrayal and hurt have already occurred. Wishing it didn’t happen or focusing on regrets and wishing things were different only keeps you stuck in the hurt and trauma of the event.

To stand in your power, decide on how you’re going to transform through what happened. Make it a conscious choice to be changed for the better.

Decide you’re going to be better, smarter, or ___[fill in the blank]___ because of this experience. Decide that you’ll become a better version of yourself for having gone through it.

Let go of hurt and betrayal and move on by becoming the best version of yourself — like a sparkling diamond that has withstood the pressures that created it.

7. Nothing Has Meaning Except The Meaning You Give It

This is an essential part of the process to reinvent yourself for the better. YOU and you alone get to decide the meaning you assign to the events you have experienced. Choose wisely the meaning you’d like to give to this experience of hurt and betrayal.

You aren’t limited by the events that happened to you, what defines you is how you behave after they have occurred.

You’ll falter along the way because healing is not a straight trajectory; it’s more like peaks and valleys. It is not whether you stumble on your journey that determines your success. It is getting back up again after you stumble and fall.

Just keep telling yourself that there’s something here for you to learn about yourself so that you can be better for this experience, and you’ll find the gold that will transform your life for the better.

How to let go of hurt and betrayal? Keep getting back up and opening your heart to new possibilities.

8. Forgive

When you’re ready, and only after you’ve invested time on the journey outlined above, decide to forgive.

Forgive yourself for any mistakes you made, and forgive the person who betrayed you. This doesn’t mean that you forget what they did or who they’ve shown themselves to be. It also doesn’t mean you ever have to speak with them again. However, without forgiveness, you’ll struggle to move forward with your life.

Ultimately forgiveness is for you. Practicing forgiveness frees you from your ex so you can move on. It doesn’t mean that you’ll forget what happened and allow a toxic person back into your life.

How do let go of hurt and betrayal? Embrace forgiveness so you can move on and find a partner better suited for you.

9. Forgiveness Sets You Free

Our favorite practice of forgiveness is the Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono. This forgiveness practice is about coming back into wholeness and integrity with yourself.

‘Pono’ is the Hawaiian word for integrity, and Ho’oponopono is coming back into integrity with yourself.

Commit to this ritual to allow the magic of forgiveness in your life.

Here are the steps to practice Ho’oponopono:

1. Picture who you wish to forgive in your mind. This can be the person who hurt you. It can be you. It can even be you (or the other person) at an earlier age.
2. Place your hands on your heart center (the center of your chest on your sternum) and repeat these four phrases:
   I’m Sorry
   Please Forgive Me
   Thank You
   I Love You
3. Practice this daily for 5-10 minutes until you feel the energy and emotion shift and you feel whole again.

The Buddha says:

“Holding on to anger and resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

This is exactly why forgiveness is essential. The anger and resentment you may hold against another person will ultimately poison you, limit you, and hold you back from living at your full potential.

10. Don’t Let Hurt And Betrayal Stop You From Living Your Best Life

No one is immune to being betrayed. Relationships are complex and people are multi-faceted. There is some evolution that you must go through to ensure this won’t happen to you again.

Caring about another person and loving another person does not come with any guarantees. You must risk when it comes to love.

The rewards are always greater than the setbacks and pain if you find the silver lining and grow.

The growth is your ticket to a new level of living and loving. Healing your heart allows you to connect more deeply with other people, likely new people who will love and accept you and support you more than you ever imagined was possible.

Is your heart broken? Looking for a path out of the pain and back into hope? Register for a complimentary Soulmate Strategy Session. We’ll give insight into your situation, and guide you towards healing your heart and learning to love again.