You’re Not Heartbroken. You’re Haunted.

Why moving on takes longer than you think, and what it really takes to heal.

I knew it was over, but I couldn’t stop checking her social media.

Every time I saw her smile in someone else’s photo, my chest would tighten like a fist was clenching my lungs from the inside. It wasn’t jealousy exactly. It was something deeper. Something older.

It felt like I had lost something I didn’t even know I was still trying to find.

I kept telling myself: "It just takes time."

But here’s what no one tells you:
Sometimes time isn't enough.

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The Big Idea

A new 2025 study found that it takes, on average, eight years to fully get over an ex. Not weeks. Not months. Years.

The study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science (Chong & Fraley, 2025), followed 300 adults who had ended long-term relationships. On average, it took over four years just to get halfway emotionally detached. Eight years until their ex felt emotionally equivalent to a stranger.

So if you’re still haunted by someone from your past, you’re not crazy. You’re not broken. You’re just human.

But why does it take so long?

Because you’re not grieving a person. You’re grieving a story.

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The Breakdown

When we fall in love, we don’t just bond to a human. We bond to a future. A fantasy. A feeling.

That feeling gets stored in the body. The nervous system wires it in like a survival code.

And if your past is filled with M.U.D. (Misguided Unconscious Decisions)—abandonments, betrayals, unmet childhood needs—then your system isn’t just falling in love. It’s attaching to the hope that this person might finally end the pain.

So when it ends? You're not just losing them. You're losing the version of you who finally felt chosen. Seen. Safe.

You’re not just heartbroken. You’re haunted.

Haunted by:

• The childhood part of you that finally felt wanted

• The story you told yourself about what it all meant

• The timeline where you finally believed you were whole

That story didn’t start with them. It started with pain.

And no matter how smart or strong you are, the body remembers. The brain freezes the story in time. The nervous system loops the grief. That’s why breakups don’t just sting—they can fracture your sense of self.

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So Why Can’t You Just Let Go?

Because the person wasn’t just a person. They were a projection screen for a subconscious fantasy.

You weren’t just in love. You were in identity fusion.

You thought— whether consciously or not: "Now that they love me, I can finally love myself."

But when they left (or changed, or disappointed, or betrayed you), they didn’t just walk away from your life. They walked out of your story.

And the identity that story gave you? It shattered.

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The Science of Stuck

The 2025 Chong & Fraley study also found that ongoing contact and anxious attachment slowed healing dramatically. Why? Because the memory stays active.

The brain treats it like an unresolved trauma. And trauma doesn’t dissolve with time. It doesn’t dissolve with talk therapy. Or with energy healing. Or even with psychedelics or plant medicine.

All of those things can open a door—but if the story isn’t rewritten, the emotions aren’t rewired, and the behavior isn’t retrained, nothing truly changes.

That’s why most healing modalities fall short. They stop at insight. Or emotion. Or peak experience.

But heartbreak isn’t just psychological. It’s psycho-biological.

It’s a memory encoded into your entire system. And only a full identity intervention can change it.

That’s what we do at Next Level Human. You’ll go through two powerful subconscious reprogramming experiences that guide you through the exact process:

• Rewrite the narrative that created the ache

• Rewire the emotional memory loop

• Retrain your identity to live without the ghost

You don’t move on by forcing closure. You move on by collapsing the timeline that was never real to begin with.

And that’s what we do together—for free.

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Practical Takeaway

If you still feel stuck: Stop asking, "Why did they do this to me?" Start asking, "What belief made this feel like love in the first place?"

That question shifts everything. It turns heartbreak into revelation. It turns pain into power.

And eventually, it makes the person irrelevant. Because they were never the problem. The problem was the story you needed them to play out.

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Closing Thought

You're not crazy for still feeling it. You're not weak for struggling to let go.

But healing won't come from time alone. It comes from truth.

You don’t need closure. You need an exorcism.

An exorcism of the fantasy. The timeline. The inherited story that said love had to hurt to be real.

Let it go. Not for them. For the version of you who finally knows better.

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PS Call-to-Action
PS: If you're ready to stop bleeding in the same place with different people, and finally break the heartbreak loop for good, I have something I want to gift you. It’s what I wish I had when I was stuck in heartbreak for 6 years. It is a system I developed that that allows you to get over and move on for good.
👉 http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/breakup-breakthrough

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APA-Style Reference:
Chong, J. Y., & Fraley, R. C. (2025). The Long-Term Stability of Affective Bonds After Romantic Separation: Do Attachments Simply Fade Away? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506251323624