Honesty is a key to life. It all starts with being honest with myself, even when it involves letting go of lies going through my own mind.

To anyone who has been in a serious, committed relationship that has come to an end, you know the few months after the breakup are—without a doubt—an emotional roller coaster. I’m one of those girls who loves hard and with my entire heart, so when my last relationship ended, I believed every single lie in the book. I’ll even admit that to my own hurt, I let it overtake my life for a while. I’ve grown a lot over the past few months, though, and I’m now able to reflect on the lies I believed, thankful I don’t believe them anymore.

I had to “get over it” in a certain amount of time.

Everyone takes their own amount of time to move on from a relationship. I personally hate the phrase “get over it,” because I think it’s so impersonal and a relationship is nothing but personal. If you truly loved who you were with, it’s not something to “get over” like a failed test, a damaged car or a lost job. Being able to move on quicker doesn’t make any one person stronger, just as moving on slower doesn’t make that person any more attached or devoted. There’s no timeline for moving on from a breakup—everyone does it differently and takes the time they need for their heart to heal, which is what’s truly important.

There was something I could have done to avoid the breakup.

I believe with my whole heart that it was God’s plan for my ex and me to break up when we did. Our relationship had an expiration date if you will, and that was not something either one of us would have been smart to mess with.The longer two people are in a relationship that isn't meant to be, the harder it will be to move on.

My friends got annoyed with my emotional rants.

I have some of the best friends in the entire world (yes, I'm biased but that’s okay) and they refused to let me believe this lie early on. I remember one friend telling me specifically that she would never get tired of listening to me because if I was still talking about it, then I was still hurting and I clearly still needed her. You may feel like a broken record, but your true friends will love you through it all and never become tired of helping you sort out your thoughts and validate your feelings.

I was hurting, and he wasn’t.

People are good at putting on a strong face. Not everyone is comfortable with openly showing they are hurting, and that’s okay. For a while I would watch my ex, thinking he was happier without me and I wondered why he wasn't feeling the same way I was. It seemed he had moved on quickly and that I had become insignificant. No matter what anyone tells you, if they loved you, they are hurting too. A defense mechanism is to try to look as though you have it all together, but most of the time that’s not the case. There’s no one way that’s better or healthier to move on, but know you definitely aren’t the only one hurting from the breakup.

My ex didn’t truly love me.

People and their feelings change; it’s a part of life. I now know without a shadow of a doubt that my ex loved me with all his heart at one point, and he may have at the end as well. If he didn’t and doesn’t now, that doesn’t take away from our relationship and what we had together. The few weeks I believed he never loved me and that our relationship was a lie were awful, and only hurtful to myself. My ex was able to make me feel loved in a way that I had never experienced before, and to doubt that and try to erase it from my memory was foolish. I think this was the worst lie I believed because it changed my entire view of our relationship and ultimately caused me to question the past year of my life.

My view of my ex would be ruined.

For about a month, I let myself believe the boy I knew was no longer there, but that wasn’t true. I dated my ex for nearly a year and in that amount of time, I learned more about him than I had learned about anyone else around me. He may not want to admit it, but I know him better than most people, and that person I knew didn’t go away when we broke up. He will always change and grow, but beneath it all will be the boy I knew and loved. He isn’t gone, he’s just a new version of himself. I too have changed, and will continue to change because it is a part of life. Learning to embrace that change while staying true to who you are is a skill worth learning to appreciate.

I’d never be able to go places where I made memories with my ex without getting upset.

I go to a small university, so it wasn’t going to be possible for me to believe this lie for too long. For a while, I felt that everywhere I went, even home, was one big reminder that he was gone. Eventually, though, I made new memories and learned to cherish the ones I had made in those places with my ex, rather than resenting them.

I had to hate him to get over him and what we had together.

Hate is never necessary. It always makes me sad to see two people who loved each other end up hating each other after their breakup. I truly believe if you loved someone at one point, you will always love them, just in a new way. I don’t need to hate my ex to move on, and I know that to be fully true. Would it have been easy to tell myself to hate him and move on? Sure. It would have been easier, but in the long run, it would only create bitterness and ruin the picture I have of my ex. I appreciate him for all that he is and I, by no means, hate him.

My relationship wasn’t anything special.

To try and say my relationship was not anything special was, and is, ridiculous. Each relationship is special because they are all unique. No two people come together in the same way. There are different memories made, different habits formed, different emotions shared; it’s impossible to compare. The relationship may have ended, but it was different than any relationship I have been in, or will be in—as well as for my ex.

I would never find someone again (dramatic, I know).

When you’re committed for a long time, it’s hard to imagine being with anyone else. My past relationship was the first where I let my heart be 100% devoted, and that was extremely hard to move on from. Even the thought of possibly being with someone else made me feel as though I was cheating, but I had every right to move on. It took time, but eventually, I learned that being single and talking to new people came with its own perks. As much as I loved being devoted to my ex and felt as though he was the one for me, there’s a whole world of amazing people out there to meet, not only to date but just to get to know and learn from. Broadening my horizons was extremely eye opening, and when I learned the value in that, it made moving on much easier.

The relationship wasn’t worth the pain.

It is worth the pain, I promise. The easy route is to regret a relationship when it ends, but I nipped that lie in the bud quickly. I learned and changed more from my last relationship than any other I had been in, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. There’s always something to learn and when you look hard, even the most hurtful breakup has a lesson.

God had messed up.

It was easy for me to believe the lie that God had made a mistake letting my relationship end. I thought I had it all figured out and that my relationship was supposed to last forever, but who am I to decide that? My relationship had a timeline, and the end came right when it was supposed to. Reflecting on it now, there are valid reasons it ended when it did, reasons I didn’t recognize at the time. Often it takes looking back to understand situations and to see the purpose, things you are blinded to when experiencing the breakup.

Breakups are hard, it’s a fact. I hope that if you have believed these lies or others that I didn’t experience, you learn to look past them and remember what is true. Pushing through the hurt and confusion is difficult, but definitely possible.

Coming out on the other end having learned something is well worth sorting through the lies.