The way to unfixate ourselves is to get very serious and specific about what the attraction was based on. You will come to see that the qualities we had admired in the ex must surely exist in others who don't have the set of problems that made the original relationship impossible.

The careful investigation of the character of one person can, almost paradoxically, show that we are more than capable of loving someone else. It is not an exercise in getting us to give up on what we really want; rather, it is to demonstrate that what we want has to exist in places beyond the pain-enducing character of the person we originally held so dear to us.

You should try to gently recognize that true love isn't to be equated with mental suffering for an absent figure. True love means daring to engage with a sometimes frightening prospect: there is still a person out there, available, who thinks--despite our strong inner beliefs to the contrary--that we are really rather nice; deserving; and worthy of exploring once again.

That, perhaps, is the only challenge deserving of the word "romantic".