I get that feeling whenever I hit a milestone in something: if I run a couple miles further than I had previously, if I understand something that was opaque before, if I am able to do something that I couldn't before, I get this "woo hoo!" feeling that I associate with levelling up.

Yeah. I think of it as No Attention rather than No Contact. Out of sight out of mind works.

Upvoted the original comment. Is your goal to do a self-hack to eliminate the (now) troublesome feelings towards the SO or to simply 'move on' while maintaining some of those feelings?

I posted this comment on how to optimally (in the vast majority of situations) handle a break-up.

Since the parent thread was massively downvoted and my comment itself received relatively positive feedback, I thought it may be beneficial to post a link to the comment here.

Also, I'd like to note that LW massively helped me in getting through my break-up. It seems like a sort of trivial/silly situation to talk about on LW, but (at least for me previously) it's tough to understand just how painful heartbreak can be until it actually happens to you. If it were not for concepts like the Outside View or distinguishing between System 1 and System 2 thinking, I'd be in a worse place than I currently am; so, thank you.

I just recently went through a break-up (SO broke up with me, it was a long-term relationship).

To be frank, this is not at all what you should be doing (i.e., doing a Bayesian calculation re the probability that she's over you, or calling her and analyzing why she hasn't called back), regardless of whether your goal is to get back together with her or to move on as quickly as possible.

The best possible piece of advice I could give you is to start a reflection document. Document your feelings, your emotions, everything. It will help, I promise. What also helps is to write down every single negative you can think of about your relationship/ex. (You will be tempted to idealize the relationship/ex, and writing down negatives that you may have looked past while in the relationship will help you.)

Standard break-up advice: do not contact her under any circumstances (No Contact), remove anything that reminds you of her (includes things like unfriending ex on FB), go to the gym (or engage in other activities that'll keep you busy), and talk to friends and family.

Think of a break-up as going through withdrawal: every time you break No Contact, you're relapsing and making it much harder for your brain to get used to being without her. Another way to think about it is that your break-up is a wound, and each time you break No Contact, you're ripping up the forming scab and peeking under it. No Contact is also ideal for getting back together with her (distance makes the heart grow fonder, etc.), if you truly still want that .

Take the Outside View. Lots of people have gone through break-ups thinking that they'll feel crappy forever and then are fine just a few months later. Time really does help.

If you're anything like me, going through a break-up will really make explicit the disconnect between your reptilian, System 1 self and your more deliberative/rational System 2 self.

One final piece of advice: closure does not help in the vast majority of cases. Often, a desire for closure is just your subconscious justifying a desire to talk to her again.

EDIT: If it helps at all, given that it was a 3-year relationship and that the break-up seems pretty recent, she's probably not over you. She may be trying to maintain distance to avoid feeling guilty and confused, and so that she won't feel tempted to second-guess her decision. Also, usually the dumper has been considering this for a while, so even if you feel like she doesn't care or isn't hurting, it may just be that she started the grieving/moving on process earlier than you did (for some insight into how many dumpers think: http://np.reddit.com/r/BreakUps/comments/1htfcn/is_it_true_that_dumper_check_out_of_the/).

I was broken up with recently, and keeping a reflection document has proven tremendously helpful (in dealing with my emotions, feelings, etc.).

That motivated me to start journaling, and this post will likely motivate me to continue journaling, so thank you!

I thought about it, but I still haven't fully grokked the rules and community norms here. E.g. when to post in Main or Discussion, and whether recurring topics should be posted by moderators or particular individuals.

I've been reading A Song of Ice and Fire a.k.a. the source material for HBO's Game of Thrones. It lives up to the hype both in terms of quality and character deaths.

I've read about some test someone developed that was supposed to work fairly well. You give a list of short psudocode problems and ask what values different variables have at the end. If they answer consistently, even if it's not what any actual programming language uses, they'll be able to program. If they answer inconsistently or refuse to answer (because x = x+1 is impossible), then they probably won't be a very good programmer.

I would assume that most of our ideas about the stress of living frugally come from situations in which people are forced to live frugally. Choosing to live frugally is a whole different game, and probably not all that stressful when you have tens to hundreds of thousands in assets to absorb bumps along the way. In fact I could see one deriving lots of enjoyment from mentally gamifying it.