Q It’s been more than a year since the guy I thought I would be married to broke up with me. He said he was just scared to make the commitment. I tried really hard and did the best I could in this one. I can’t seem to get over it, no matter how hard I try. I keep trying to figure out where I went wrong.

Answer: A year is a long time to feel bad. I’m going to guess about a few things that might be going on here.

Reliving the relationship: Many times when a person is still feeling as bad as you do more than a year later, it’s because you’ve spent the last year reliving the relationship. This comes in the form of trying to figure out exactly what went wrong, fueled by the inaccurate belief that if you could just figure out exactly what went wrong, then you could let go.

Relationships are messy things, and many times we can never really know exactly what went wrong.

Our brains are very obedient at times. If you keep asking your brain to figure out what you did wrong, it’s going to search for all kinds of reasons, and you are going to wind up feeling like a failure.

My guess is while the relationship failed, you did not.

Differences between men and women: In general, men have two doors to their hearts, one marked enter and one marked exit. Women don’t have an exit door to their hearts, which makes getting over someone more difficult.

You need to create an exit door in your heart and then show this guy, and the pain and hurt, right out the door.

Relationships end. But if you handled yourself well, feel good about your behavior and choices, and used what you learned in other relationships in this one, then you were successful.

If you learned what a commitment-challenged guy looks like and that these relationships don’t work out, then it was time well spent.

Make a list of all the things you learned from this relationship that will help you in the future.

Marriage to a commitment-challenged person is a disaster and a divorce looking for a place to happen.

Here’s a little trick to help push this guy out the exit door of your heart:

Imagine a picture of the relationship in your mind. It feels like it’s right out in front of you, a few inches from your face, and difficult to see past. Take that picture and imagine moving it off to the side of you, out of view.

Practice this and you will be able to show him the exit door to your heart, and soon, you will picture it behind you altogether. Then you will be ready to move on.

Jeff Herring, MS, LMFT, is a marriage and family therapist. E-mail him at [email protected].