EFR 930: How to Make Heartbreak Suck LESS - Why You Can't Let Go of Your Ex (And How to Finally Move On for Good) with Cole Zesiger
Ever Forward Radio with Chase Chewning
Chase Chewning
5.0 • 947 Ratings
🗓️ 27 March 2026
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is brought to you by Audible, Ancient + Brave and Fatty15.
Breakups don't just hurt emotionally—they rewire your brain. Cole Zesiger is here to unpack the science of heartbreak, why it can feel like addiction, and what actually helps you move forward. He dives into the truth about no-contact, attachment styles, and why many people stay stuck chasing closure or clinging to the idea of "the one." Cole also shares practical strategies to rebuild your life after a breakup, explaining how healing comes from creating meaning, regulating your emotions, and building a life that feels better than the one you lost. Whether you're trying to get an ex back or finally let go, this conversation reframes heartbreak as a powerful opportunity for growth and becoming your best self.
Follow Cole @coachcolezesiger
Follow Chase @chase_chewning
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00:00 – Heartbreak activates the brain like addiction
01:27 – Why no-contact feels harder before it helps
02:04 – What to do after no-contact actually works
03:13 – Why you feel obsessed with your ex
04:21 – The 2 keys to healing after a breakup
05:57 – Rejection, confusion, and creating meaning
07:53 – "Detoxing" from your ex like a drug
08:18 – Attachment styles explained (secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized)
12:41 – Love bombing and why it works on anxious attachment
14:32 – Why avoidant partners pull away
15:26 – Who is most likely to get back together
17:10 – If YOU broke up with them… what now?
18:24 – Relief vs regret after ending a relationship
20:15 – How to know if you made the right decision
22:03 – When words don't match actions in relationships
27:26 – Why people don't change (Tony Robbins insight)
29:01 – The "teeter-totter" of love vs fear
31:32 – When to stop trying to fix the relationship
33:24 – Show vs tell: why actions matter more than words
34:07 – Turning heartbreak into your best life
36:20 – Is hope helping you or hurting you?
39:33 – The myth of "the one"
42:35 – Why you can find connection again
45:11 – You don't find love—you build it
48:05 – Why you're attracted to certain people (empathic resonance)
50:10 – Should you date after a breakup?
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Episode resources:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is an Operation Podcast Production. |
| 0:04.7 | They've done studies and actually found that, like, the pathways in the brain that cocaine hijacks and uses for addictions are the exact same ones that light up with heartbreak. |
| 0:13.4 | If you're feeling really addicted to an X and all of your friends are saying, just move on, it's nothing. |
| 0:18.1 | It is something. |
| 0:19.6 | It's actually real. |
| 0:20.4 | It's actually something that's difficult to |
| 0:22.1 | get through. And that's why no contact acts like rehab a little bit, which is why as soon as you |
| 0:26.2 | begin it, generally it gets a lot worse before it gets better. First thing in no contact, |
| 0:32.1 | like detox from the person, stop talking to them, put all the pictures and the stuff they've |
| 0:35.8 | given you somewhere where you can't see it. But second is create a narrative of why it makes sense as much as you can. And if it doesn't |
| 0:43.2 | make sense like the skiing example, you have to start with what you learned from it. About five |
| 0:47.6 | months in, I saw that my ex-girlfriend had a boyfriend like she was dating someone else. And it |
| 0:52.8 | confused me because I didn't really care. I thought I would. This my whole fire that was burning to get me to do all this stuff, which I, in that time, I started a business. I had like 100,000 followers on TikTok by that point. I was like liking my health. I love the things I was doing. I had this huge friend group. I liked where I lived. Like I liked all the stuff that I built. |
| 1:10.9 | And I built it for her originally was the motivation. |
| 1:13.4 | But I kind of just accidentally stumbled on to really liking my life. |
| 1:17.2 | Hey, I'm Cole Zeziger. |
| 1:18.2 | I'm a dating and breakup coach. |
| 1:19.5 | Welcome to Ever Forward Radio. |
| 1:27.4 | So a lot of your work now is around, and the upcoming book is around getting through heart break, heartache, breakups. And I think some of us, maybe more of us than we want to admit, can relate to this whole aspect of, you know, going back to our ex. |
| 1:41.4 | There's no contact kind of policy I've seen to talk about. |
| 1:47.4 | And I think everyone's pretty familiar with this no contact policy. |
| 1:50.3 | You know, they say it's just like the solution to get over a breakup, right? |
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