How To Get Over Someone You Work With? | Office Breakup Tips


It is really hard if an office romance goes wrong because you have to see the person every day. You might even have no other option but to interact with them frequently due to work commitments.

To get over someone you work with, take a week off so that you have time to process the heartbreak. When you’re back, immerse yourself in work to keep yourself distracted. Avoid hanging around the office more than necessary to minimize the chances of any unwanted, painful interaction.

Keep a check on how you behave and what you say when the person is around. Don’t do anything stupid that might invite an action from your boss or the HR.

Getting Over Someone You Work With Or See Every Day

The end goal is to be at a point where this person is just another colleague, and being around them doesn’t give you any negative feelings and doesn’t affect your work.

The biggest issue people face while getting over a co-worker is that they cannot alienate their emotions and memories from their conduct when they see the person.

Here are some key steps to help you glide through the situation and make the journey of moving on as painless as possible.

1. Gift Yourself Closure

Getting closure wouldn’t have mattered if you could just forget the person and move on with your life.

But it becomes necessary when you see the person every day and every hour because they are your co-worker.

Whatever the issue is, it’s a done and dusted chapter now. Train yourself to see just another office colleague in the person rather than an ex or someone you fancied.

It will help you get clarity on the matter and relax your mind a bit.

TABLE: People On What They Regret The Most About Their Breakup With A Co-worker

Biggest RegretPercentage
Behaving rudely publicly at least once with their ex36%
Sharing their breakup details with other colleagues27%
Badmouthing their ex in front of others20%
Letting the breakup affect their work7%
Trying to get back with their ex6%
Breaking down in front of someone else4%
Source: Based on a study by RebootLoveLife.com consisting of 239 individuals who broke up with someone at their workplace.

You’ll eventually stop thinking about what went wrong, and that urge to ask questions would calm down.

You should end things on talking terms so that at least you can face each other comfortably and converse normally in office space without making your colleagues uncomfortable.

Gift Yourself Closure

2. Deal With Your Emotions First

The first step towards moving on is to resolve your unresolved emotions for the person.

You can’t go ahead if you don’t acknowledge how you feel and process what’s happening with you.

You need to understand why it didn’t work out between you two and how important it is for you to leave the past behind and move forward.

Take some time to grieve your loss. Don’t bottle up your emotions but let them out.

You must prepare both mentally and physically before you face them again at your workplace. This will help you avoid an emotional breakdown in front of others.

3. Collect Yourself And Get Up

Falling down is not a problem. We all do once in a while. The problem is not getting up back again.

Once you are done dealing with your emotions, you must encourage yourself to go back and face your fear.

You’ll have to become stronger than you ever were and be your own motivation.

You must learn to control your emotions so that you won’t let your feelings get the better of you when you are around that person.

Pull yourself together and understand what’s more important is you at the end of the day. Not what you had with the person, not the person, but you.

Five years down the line, this person might not even mean anything to you.

All this pain will heal with time, and the person, the pain you feel, will become a distant memory one day.

4. Keep Your Expectations In Check

When we are in love with someone we start expecting a lot of things from them.

We want them to be equally involved with us, to reciprocate our love, express their feelings, be more available, be more romantic, and what not.

But you need to stop this. Explain to yourself that this is it. Perhaps this is the end of the journey with this person.

If you get back together, it’s fine, but if you don’t, don’t beat yourself up about it. What you see and feel is a sad reality but the truth nonetheless.

As long as you are expecting things from that person, you are not going to overcome your feelings for them.

5. Start Accepting The Reality

The sooner you accept the reality of your non-existent relationship, the easier it would be for you to move ahead in life.

Unfortunately, the truth is that you both are no longer together, and whatever you had with them has come to an end.

The bitter part is that you will have to coexist in your workspace with your ex.

You have no choice but to behave professionally by keeping aside all the love, pain, anger, and all those emotions rushing through you.

6. Lose Hope For A Change

That person is not interested in being a part of your life, and if not now, they never will be.

So, quit your hopes that someday they will come to you and express their feelings for you.

Stop imagining fictional scenarios where they will come crawling on their knees and tell you how wrong they were to not see your true love and how much you mean to them.

It’s all in your head. It’s not going to happen, and this hope will only hurt you more when time progresses, and there is no such action from their side.

No matter how much you try, they cannot control or change how they feel about you. In fact, the more desperately you act, the more you’re going to repel the person.

Lose Hope For A Change

7. Avoiding The Person Won’t Help

If it was a temporary thing, it could have been easier for you to just avoid the person.

But you know that you are going to have to face them every day at work. You won’t be able to keep avoiding them for long.

Sooner or later, you’ll have to take the bull by its horns, be it for work or something else.

You don’t have to be all nice and friendly but just acknowledge their presence in a dignified way.

Keep it strictly professional and limit your interaction with them as much as possible.

8. Their Personal Life Is None Of Your Concern

Never get involved in a conversation where your colleagues are talking about your love interest’s personal life. It is going to slow you down.

It will hurt hard if you come to know how good their love life is going, and here you are, trying to conceal your feelings and swallow the pain.

So, if you find yourself trying to get information about their life, either through colleagues or by stalking their social media profiles, remind yourself that you’re only prolonging your agony.

9. Don’t Let Their Actions Affect You

It is very difficult not to get affected by seeing your ex daily when you are trying hard to move on in life.

All that progress you make after going home comes down to level zero when you see their face in the morning.

You don’t know what to do or how to react without letting them see your emotions. But at the same time, you don’t want them to see that you are vulnerable.

Forget that you have feelings for them and tell yourself they are nothing but a co-worker to you, and you two have no history.

Treat them like you would treat your other colleagues. It sounds hard, and it is. But you have to trick your brain into doing so. Fake it till you make it.

10. Reframe Your Thoughts

When we break up with someone, we are still in love with the image of the person we imagined ourselves with.

Not finding the person around to turn that image into reality is what hurts the most. We often live in the illusion that we cannot find someone better than this person.

You put your ex on a pedestal and convince yourself that you won’t have what you had with your ex with any other person.

It includes showing love and being loved.

To make things easier for you, you need to bring your ex down from that pedestal and see them for who they actually are and not what you think they are.

Tell yourself that they are like any other person in your life, and they also have a ton of flaws. Remember the bad moments to convince yourself even strongly.

You deserve better than them, and you’ll find someone who will bring their own flaws to the table but at least you know better what flaws are a dealbreaker for you.

A past relationship is nothing but a much-needed experience to make the future ones better.

They came into your life to teach you something, and you should learn from this experience and move on.

11. Do Not Indulge In Gossip

If you plan on taking revenge by tarnishing their image in the office by gossiping about them, then drop that thought right away.

It’s not going to help you in any way but ruin your peace of mind. You should not indulge in such useless activities. It only shows you in a bad light.

Plus, it can even invite some action, either a memo from the authority or a defamation lawsuit from your ex.

Even if someone is trying to get the details about the status of your relationship, do not share anything as it can lead to misunderstanding and unnecessary arguments.

Remember, we are trying to keep our distance as much as possible. Don’t do or say anything that will sabotage the healthy distance you are trying to build.

Do Not Indulge In Gossip

12. Look At Their Negative Side

You would often find yourself reminiscing how happy you were with the person.

Your thoughts would drift to what you had was something special and how you made terrible mistakes to squander it all away.

All these thoughts are only going to make you sad and regret your separation.

What you need to do is focus on the negative aspect of your relationship with the person.

Think about the things that you hated in them and about the times where they mistreated you or the times they wouldn’t understand and support you.

Remind yourself that the experience was far from perfect, which is why it had to end for your own good.

13. Stop Trying To Win Their Attention

It is not unusual that you would find yourself seeking your ex’s attention subconsciously or intentionally.

Either you want your ex to see that you are doing great without them and they should regret their actions, or you might want to get back together and hence trying to get closer.

You need to stop as you’ll only be making a fool out of yourself. You need to let go and not care at all.

Their opinion should not matter. Only then you’ll be able to actually move past this tough phase.

14. Don’t Overthink A Situation

See things for what they actually are, not what you think they are like.

Do not try to manipulate the meanings of the so-called signs you’ve been getting from your ex and twist them into something you want to think.

If you get a courteous ‘hi’ from them, that doesn’t mean they are missing you and want you back.

If they smile at you in the office just to avoid awkwardness, it doesn’t mean they are in love with you. Don’t read too much into their gestures.

Let things be how they are, and ignore such thoughts. You need to let them go from your life, and it begins with letting them go from your thoughts.

15. Let Your Office Friends Take Care Of You

Fighting this battle alone and that too in the enemy territory is going to be very difficult.

But it can become a lot easier if you have your friends and family by your side. Don’t isolate yourself in the office.

Instead, hang around with your mates who know what is going on. The really kind ones will even put themselves in front to save you from any heartache.

This also includes sharing some of your work and giving you a much-needed breather. In addition, you’ll have your office friends to talk to when you need someone.

During the breaks, your ex will perhaps avoid you if your friends are always around you.

This way, you won’t pay much attention to them, and their actions would bother you a lot less.

16. Your Main Focus Should Be Your Work

When in the office you need to keep yourself busy all the time. Don’t act like you are working but actually work towards something useful.

Take up projects that you think are difficult, give yourself a goal every day and try to achieve it.

This will keep your mind occupied, and thoughts about the person being around won’t cross your mind as frequently as when you’re sitting idle.

This will motivate you to come and work even when you know that someone you don’t want to see is at the office. You need to see the bigger picture.

What is more important to you? Is it a person who doesn’t value you or your future prospects, which depends on your work?

You’ve worked hard for a career. Don’t mess it up!

Your Main Focus Should Be Your Work

17. Remember The Past

Every time you have thoughts like going to your ex’s desk and talking to them or offering to have lunch together, you need to remind yourself about the pain you are going through because of them.

If you can, put a rubber band on your wrist and pull it every time you see them. Doing this won’t let you forget the pain this person made you go through.

Even in your moments of weakness, you need to stand strong for the bigger goal when they are around you.

Thus, you might win a small battle by making this person feel bad for a moment or two.

But ultimately, you’ll lose the war with this strategy where the ultimate objective is to not let the person affect you in any way.

You need to be at a point where you’ll have nothing against your ex.

18. Take Some Time Off From Work

If it’s possible, take some time off and go on a holiday. Go with your friends or go alone, but just give yourself some change of space.

You’ll get the time and mental peace you need to deal with your feelings. Wait till you feel stable emotionally and ready to face your ex again without losing yourself.

Spend some time alone and introspect. Make a plan about how you’ll manage the office situation without letting it interfere with your work, and stick to it.

Meet your loved ones because they are the ones who know how special you are and actually love you.

It will be good for your confidence and to heal your bruised self-esteem. They will help you to get through this tough time.

19. Make Yourself A Priority

After being let down by the one you loved repeatedly, it is obvious that you will feel insecure about yourself. Self-doubts must be popping in your head.

But you need to know your actual worth. You are not someone who deserves to be treated like that.

Yes, we all make mistakes, and you’ll need to work on your faults, but it takes two to tango. Your ex isn’t free of blame either.

There is more to you than they made you feel. Spend time in your own company. Take good care and nurture yourself.

Introspection will help you better define the kind of people you want in your life and who to avoid in the future.

For your future relationships, you need to set the standards early on.

20. Quit The Job As The Last Resort

If nothing seems to be working even after three to four months and the pain becomes unbearable, leave your job and start seeking work elsewhere.

It does seem like an extreme step, and it is. But when desperate times call for desperate measures. It will save you from further trouble.

The mental pressure and emotional instability are clearly affecting your work, and it is only a matter of time before someone higher in authority notices it too.

Save yourself from the damages of a bad review that will make getting a new job or promotion at this company an impossible task.

Conclusion

It’s easy to run away from someone who broke your heart than to face them every day, especially when you are emotionally vulnerable.

Try not to be fooled by their charm again and fall for their words. You know how it turned out, and the next time won’t be any different.

Keep reminding yourself of the times when you were not happy because of them.

If you get tired of acting as if nothing happened and feel it’s breaking you from within, know that you can always quit the struggle and leave everything behind.

Shashank Verma

A trained theatre actor and a STEM graduate who brings perspectives and methods from these worlds into dating and relationships. Also a big time Krav Maga enthusiast and practitioner.

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