My Ex Moved On Fast! (Reasons Why & How To Move On)

Isn’t it pretty disillusioning when your ex, who claimed to love you forever, suddenly moves on within the shortest amount of time after splitting up? It’s upsetting, and rightfully so. Most of us are not accustomed to this behavior. In fact, I recently received an email with this headline: “My ex moved on so fast!”

In the email, this gentleman poured his heart out over the situation and I couldn’t help but feel terrible for him.

It’s an extremely painful and confusing situation to be in because you didn’t expect that your ex would have this side to them.

There are reasons why an ex will move on fast and most of them are indicative of a larger problem within your ex as a person or how they deal with pain.

In this article, I’m going to share all these reasons with you and towards the end, I’m going to share some tips on how you can deal with this situation in a healthy and productive manner.  

Reasons Why Your Ex Moved On Fast

1. They are rebounding.

Someone with an aversion to dealing with loss, change or heartbreak is prone to developing a pattern of escape.

It just so happens that rebounding is one of the forms of escapism from loneliness and heartbreak that follows the end of a romantic relationship.

In my opinion, it is unlikely for someone to love two people at the same time or remain equally romantically attached to two people at the same time.

Time, distance and space are the prerequisites for romantic detachment.

So, when someone jumps right into a rebound relationship and moves on fast from their ex, alarms go off in my head.

It signals a lack of self-awareness and an inability to deal with loneliness or the change associated with a breakup.

This is one of the main reasons why rebound relationships fail.

When the honeymoon phase ends within a few months, unresolved feelings for an ex or an old relationship will surface.

We can’t run from our emotions, nor can we build new attachments for someone on top of the same feeling for someone else.

The proper way of moving on is to remove your attachment to an ex from your feelings before introducing someone new into your life.

But when someone has a history of moving on fast after a breakup, this becomes their default position whenever they face the same circumstances in their life. 

You need to read this article: What to do if your ex is in a rebound relationship

2. They don’t want to deal with the pain of breaking up.

Whether your ex was the dumper or dumpee, they are bound to experience pain after breaking up.

For the dumpee, it’s immediate. For the dumper, it can be immediately felt or it can take a few weeks before the ramifications of ending a relationship show up.

Either way, pain is unavoidable and some people choose to run from it.

The correct way to deal with emotional pain is to feel it until it passes through you. That’s how you heal from pain. 

But not everyone is prepared to do that or equipped with the knowledge to do it.

To avoid pain, they move on as fast as they can.

They may settle for the first person who comes along, they may choose someone who is a toxic partner or they may not even truly care about the person.

Their desire is fueled by fear and avoidance rather than a genuine desire to be with someone else or due to a lack of any feelings for you.

You need to read this article: Do avoidants regret breaking up?

3. They act impulsively.

Impulsivity is another trait responsible for why an ex moved on fast from a relationship. 

When your default position is to be completely reactive to your emotions, there’s no guarantee that you will behave in a reasonable fashion.

As soon as your ex feels the desire to escape their pain or experiences some degree of attraction for someone else, they jump into a relationship with that person.

Logical factors that should be considered before entering a relationship are ignored and the individual makes a rash decision in the heat of the moment.

Often, impulsivity and a lack of emotional self-control can be attributed to immaturity. 

Bear in mind, just because someone is a certain age doesn’t necessarily mean that they have matured in this regard.

I’ve seen men and women in their 60s and 70s completely blow up their lives due to immaturity in certain areas. 

4. They rekindled a relationship from the past.

If I’m being brutally honest with you, I would have to admit that there was a time in my life when I had no idea how to deal with loss.

Instead of dealing with my feelings, I’d push them aside and move on to the next chapter without addressing the past.

This would be my undoing in later years because the lessons I failed to learn from my past caught up to me.

I made stupid decisions in relationships, or I involved myself with the same type of person over and over again and experienced the same type of relationship issues on repeat.

Another issue I faced was comparison.

I overlooked girls who would have been amazing partners and exactly what I am looking for now because I compared them to people from the past who I failed to let go of.

In saying that, it’s possible that your ex never truly let go of an attachment to someone from the past.

When the opportunity arose to be with that person, they moved on fast and entered that relationship in a ridiculously short period of time.

You need to read this article: Why did she leave me for someone else?

5. They want to make you jealous.

When egos are hurt or someone isn’t accepting of a breakup, they act out in weird ways. Weaknesses are truly revealed in heartbreak and I’ve seen people behave completely out of character under such duress.

It just so happens that some people feel the need to move on from their ex in an effort to convince you of their value and to make you jealous.

To explain this with more clarity, we need to accept that they’re operating from a “fight or flight” response after the breakup.

If they tap into the fight response, it can manifest in some outlandish ways like pretending to move on from an ex or using someone else to make their ex jealous.

Their intention is to make you feel enough jealousy and fear to make you reconsider your decision about walking away from the relationship or letting them go.

6. They have a habit of monkey branching.

For a long time, I had no idea that “monkey branching” was a term coined to describe the act of jumping from one romantic partner to the other without any break between the relationships.

It’s more common than you’d imagine and the only way to identify it is by acquiring past information about your partner’s history of breakups or watching them do it to you.

More often than not, they aren’t going to divulge this information unless they are extremely honest and self-aware of their flaws.

People who have an issue with monkey branching begin lining up a replacement before they even end the relationship.

They begin to check out of the relationship long before you find out about it. By the time they end the relationship, most of their feelings have passed and they jump into the arms of the replacement.

To you, it may seem like your ex moved on fast but in reality, they have been moving on from you while still being in a relationship with you.

Tips On How To Move On From Your Ex

1. Don’t chase your ex.

The quickest and easiest way to chase your ex out of your life and into the arms of another person is by chasing them.

More love, attention, begging, pleading and rationalizing will not change anything in a positive way.

We must love in such a way that the other person feels free.

The minute you ‘fight’ for an ex to be with you, it changes the dynamic from a loving relationship to a dependent or needy relationship.

It doesn’t work.

When someone makes the decision to end a relationship, it is now up to them to put in the effort needed to rebuild that relationship in the future.

This means that you cannot be the one trying to save the relationship and you certainly cannot be the one to offer all this love, attention and energy.

It has to come from your ex.

If you don’t take this path, the alternative is to chase your ex as I described above.

You’ll be offering all these valuable things for free. What incentive does your ex have for coming back to you then?

Absolutely nothing because you’re offering your time, energy and love to someone who chose to leave the relationship.

Do the self-respecting thing and don’t chase your ex, especially if they moved on fast.

You need to read this article: How to make an avoidant ex miss you

2. Learn how to miss your ex without doing anything to change it.

I’ve come to realize that most of us make critical mistakes with our ex-partners when we are overwhelmed by feelings of loss.

We miss them so much that we are willing to forsake our dignity and respect to avoid this feeling.

What if you were to accept the fact that you would miss people in your life? Would you be able to tolerate this situation? I think so.

Accepting that you will suffer losses in life puts things into perspective.

Most of the people who enter our lives will leave at some point.

Whoever we are meant to spend a significant period of our lives with is the one who will stick around.

If a person chooses to leave, it means that they were only meant to be in your life for that period of time.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed by missing your ex, choose to accept these feelings and channel the energy from this painful emotion to do something healthy, beneficial and productive in your life.

If you can do this for an extended period of time, you will learn how to miss someone in a non-destructive manner.

This can be a game-changer in your love life.

You need to read this article: Why can’t I move on from my ex?

3. Grow as an individual.

The best way to move on from an ex is to grow as a person.

There was a version of you that existed within the relationship. That version of you was not the same as the version that hadn’t met your ex.

Now that your ex has moved on fast, it only makes sense that you grow as an individual once again.

You need a newer version of yourself who has learned valuable lessons from this loss.

Take those lessons, examine them and keep the ones that are best for your well-being.

Thereafter, indulge yourself in self-development.

Avoid any forms of escapism in the form of vices. Instead, turn toward your inner purpose as a person and let God guide you through this loss in your life.

What you’ll find at the other end of suffering is a whole lot of light and peace.

The person you will become using this method of moving on from heartbreak will be the best version of yourself.

This new version cannot remain in love with your ex because you have grown and changed.

That’s when you will meet someone who is better suited for this newer version of yourself.

In some cases, your ex may go through some growth and come back to you even though they moved on quickly after the breakup.

Day one will be incredibly difficult. 

Around the middle of your journey, you’ll experience a high that is followed by a low.

You’ll question your own abilities and your current course.

That’s when belief and consistency become instrumental in your journey toward growth.

You’ll experience these highs and lows intermittently until you find a new normal.

At that point, you would have moved on from your ex and grown tremendously as a person.

You need to read this article: How to become the hottest version of yourself

Final Thoughts

The best thing you can do for your mental and emotional health when your ex moves on quickly is to stop communicating with them.

Don’t subject yourself to the torture that comes from seeing them with another person.

This might require you to remove them from social media altogether and block them. If that is the case, you must do it, even if your heart doesn’t want you to.

You deserve to be happy and the journey toward that may not be an easy or comfortable one. But, it will be a journey that is worth the hassle.

With that being said, I hope you found this article on the reasons why your ex moved on fast to be eye-opening and a source of closure. If you would like my personal help with a matter like this, please check out my services page for more information on my email coaching package.