Nobody likes break-ups, but there’s a reason why the end of a relationship isn’t the end of the world. Much of the time, the benefit of a breakup is that you dodged a bullet, avoided wasting more time and made room in your life for something better to come along.

Unless you meet ‘the one’ early on in your life, dating will always be a process. Break-ups are an inevitable part of dating, so it’s best to learn resilience and remember that break-ups can actually be a good thing.

Put simply, meeting the right person one day requires that you say goodbye to anyone who isn’t him.

We tend to see breakups as a dramatic experience since they’re emotional, but there’s nothing wrong with experiencing these emotions as you become mindful of what works for you and what doesn’t. The upsides of break-ups are important to keep in mind, especially when you’re feeling low.

Here are 6 reasons why break-ups aren’t actually all that bad:

1. You get the chance to decide what you really want.

Now that your relationship has ended, you get the chance to re-evaluate what you might want in your next relationship. You ex might have been great, but if there was something missing, you deserve to find it the next time around.

It’s possible you’ll realize that you’ve been looking for the wrong qualities in men, and you may feel like its time to revise your deal-breakers a bit. Sometimes, figuring out what you really want includes accepting that it might take some time to figure it out. Be single and date yourself for awhile, now that you have the time to get to know yourself and pay attention to your needs.

2. He wasn’t right for you.

No matter how complicated or sad the breakup was, if it needed to happen it needed to happen. If he left you, then you deserve someone who won’t – because the right guy is going to like the right things about you and want to stay to experience all of who you are.

If you left him because it didn’t feel 100% right, now you have the chance to go find someone even better.

That someone is out there, and now that you’re single, you’re that much closer to finding him.

3. You get a chance to see what went wrong.

What you see in retrospect following the dissolution of a relationship is often quite different than what you see when you’re in it.

It’s hard when you’re blindsided by a breakup that you didn’t see coming, but sometimes the process of evaluating where things went wrong can highlight some important things to avoid next time.

You’ll learn from what went wrong, and you’re next relationship will therefore have a higher chance of success. Be it your own behaviors that could use changing, realizing that you need to pay more attention to your intuition, or refusing to be treated a certain way that you allowed before. It can be a rough process, but that’s how we learn.

4. You can truly admit what wasn’t working for you.

If there was a part of you that was defending the relationship to try to hold it together, now you can relax and admit that it just wasn’t working.

There’s freedom in truth, even if it’s just with yourself.

A failed relationship doesn’t make you a failure, nor does it necessarily have anything to do with how the next relationship will turn out. The brutally honest introspection can trigger a release, and then when the emotions start pouring out you also get to sweep out the excess baggage you were carrying as well.

5. You won’t end up with the wrong guy.

Your comfort level in your relationships can lead to complacency, and it’s not always easy to see that a relationship isn’t right if nothing is glaringly wrong either. You don’t want to be looking for trouble, but having an inkling that something could be better is usually a feeling worth paying attention to. Being complacent isn’t going to get you anywhere.

The unknown can be incredibly frightening, which sometimes means staying in a relationship is easier than breaking it up. But that can also result in you staying in a relationship that isn’t feeding your soul for far longer than necessary. And at the end of the day, it’s healthier to be alone than to be making concessions for the wrong man.

6. You get the time to check in with your needs.

Being in a relationship is all-consuming in a lot of ways, including the fact that you might be putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own.

Having compassion and caring about other people is awesome, but not if you start to lose sight of your own needs. You can’t offer the best to anyone else without being your best self, and sometimes a breakup is the perfect opportunity to get back in touch with your feelings as an individual instead of as a couple. Take care of you, now that you have a little more free time to do so.