Can't stop thinking about your ex at night?

It's normal, and night makes it worse because nothing else is competing for your attention. What helps comes down to four moves: stop checking their profile, use distraction to feel better tonight, save the hard thinking for daytime, and put the 1 a.m. message somewhere other than their phone. None of it is willpower. It's just not feeding the loop.

Why it hurts this much

A breakup isn't only sad. It can register a lot like pain. When Ethan Kross and colleagues scanned the brains of 40 people who'd been through an unwanted breakup in the past six months, looking at a photo of their ex activated brain areas that also respond to physical pain. So if it feels like more than "just" missing someone, that's not you being dramatic.

At night it gets louder. During the day you have work, people and a hundred small decisions. At 1 a.m. there's just you, the ceiling and a highlight reel of the relationship that mostly skips the bad parts.

Stop checking their profile

This is the one most people skip, and it matters most. In a study of 464 people, Tara Marshall found that the more someone checked up on an ex on Facebook, the more distress, longing and negative feelings they reported about the breakup, and the less they felt they'd grown from it. Every check reopens the wound a little.

Mute them, unfollow, or archive the chat so it isn't the first thing you see. It's not a statement and nobody has to know. You're just taking the trigger off your home screen.

Two tricks with two different jobs

A 2018 study by Sandra Langeslag and Michelle Sanchez tested what people could do while looking at a photo of their ex. Two results matter here. Thinking about the ex's flaws lowered people's love feelings, but made them feel worse in the moment. Distraction, thinking about something pleasant and unrelated, made them feel better but didn't change their feelings for the ex. It was a small study, but the split is useful:

• At 1 a.m., distract. Your goal tonight is to feel okay enough to sleep. Put on a show you know by heart, do a puzzle, or try a slow breathing exercise. Here's what helps when your head won't stop at night.
• In daylight, write the honest list. The things that bugged you, the ways you shrank to fit, the reasons it ended. It stings, which is why it's a daytime job. Over time, it's what helps you let go.

Don't text them. Say it somewhere else.

The 1 a.m. text almost never says what you mean, and the silence afterward is worse. But the urge is real: there's something you need to say. So say it, just not to them. Write the whole message out, every word, then send it nowhere. Or say it out loud. Saying a feeling in words takes some of the charge out of it, and talking it out is often faster than typing when your head is racing.

That's a good job for Moodu. Its Heartfelt Breakup conversation opens gently, "I'm really sorry. Breakups hurt in ways that are hard to explain. How are you holding up today?", and lets you say everything you wanted to send them to something that won't leave you on read. It listens, asks what you're really missing, and in the daytime it can help you write that honest list. Chats are encrypted before they're saved and never used for ads. Moodu is $39.99 a year after a 3-day free trial, or $4.99 a week.

Rebuild the parts of you that got folded in

Long relationships blur where you end and they begin: their friends, their shows, their Sunday routine. Some of the ache is losing those pieces too. Pick one thing that was yours before, or one you always wanted to try, and do it this week. It won't fix tonight, but it's how the nights get shorter.

If what you're feeling now is less "them" and more just alone, read why you can feel lonely even around people, or what to do when there's nobody to text.