What stages of grief do individuals typically experience following a break-up?

When one experiences a break up, irrespective of which side of the break-up you’re on, you go through bereavement stages. These are known as: Denial – when one does not admit or accept that they are no longer in the relationship; Anger – when one feels angry at the other party, either for leaving them or for making them leave; Depression – this is when one listens to their favourite songs on repeat, eats loads of ice-cream, chocolate and comforting food (FACT: eating chocolate releases a love hormone, which is why some tend to go for this food for comfort); Bargaining – when one starts to reflect on what they’re achieving from this break up (“now that I'm single, I can do the voluntary work in India I've been postponing for ages”); Acceptance – when one starts to accept that they are now single and need to focus on moving on. There is no linear way of experiencing these stages, and one can revisit any one of the stages at any point.

What can one do to help themselves move on?

It's never easy to break up, even if you're the one making the decision. I like to say that one knows that they have really moved on from a relationship when they have neutral feelings towards their Ex and the relationship. When one only mentions the good memories or the bad ones exclusively, then there's still a lot of anger or denial going on.

I always suggest to invest in oneself. One of the positives of being single is having more time and energy to invest in yourself: go to the gym, start that project you've been wanting to initiate but never had enough time for, go out with friends, get to know new ones. Reading this, you might think you’ve tried this already but still felt sad and missed your Ex. Going out with friends will not result in you forgetting about your former partner and your hurt. It will, however, help you feel supported and might help distract you from the pain from time to time. It's always better than staying home listening to his/her favourite music whilst scrolling through their Facebook profile.

Years may pass but memories of past relationships still surface. Is this a sign of unresolved feelings or a normal side-effect of past heartbreak?

It all depends on the feelings attached to the memory and how long they linger for. Memories are part of life, and can be pleasurable too. It is good and healthy to remember different moments from past relationships. Some memories will make us feel nostalgic and others thankful that we have moved on. I wouldn’t fight memories too much, if they're periodical and feelings don't last too long.

It’s perfectly normal and natural to think of the Ex you went swimming with at Golden Bay when you're there again. If you refuse to go to a place because it reminds you of someone, you would be choosing to let that feeling linger and turn it into a ‘thing’.

Every time your friends want to go to that place you have to explain why you can't go, and by doing so, you would be reinforcing the association of that place with your Ex. On the contrary, the more you go there with others the weaker the association between the place and your Ex will become. If you choose to not go to places because of your Ex, you will also be limiting your social life by a lot, considering the size of our island.