The way you feel in the days immediately following a breakup will tell you a lot about whether or not you made the right decision. You could be amazed at how your entire disposition can change after ending a bad relationship.

Whenever someone breaks off a relationship, there is always that lingering question: “Did I do the right thing?” Breaking up is a big decision.

When you are still together, even if things are really bad, you still feel hope of salvaging things. But when you finally call it quits, you really want to be sure it’s the right thing.

Here is how a breakup feels when it was meant to end.

You don’t cry too much: You could feel like you are cry-constipated. You feel like you should cry, but no matter how hard you push your face, no tears come out. If there’s really nothing to be sad about, if this was a win rather than a loss, there won’t be tears. In fact, you probably already cried too much during the relationship, so you are all out of tears.

You feel driven: You suddenly have a head full of steam regarding your career. All of these ideas come rushing to the surface of your mind about how you can get your business more exposure, how you can get that promotion, or whatever it is you need to do to keep striving towards your goals. These ideas have been hiding, because bad relationships stifle creativity.

You don’t feel anger towards your ex: There’s no need or even space for anger when it was meant to end. You are too busy feeling grateful for your new freedom and excited about your future. You don’t want anger muddying any of that.

You want to be social: You thought you would want to hole up, but you want to be social. You want to see everyone. You want to make an appearance at every event to which you are invited. You don’t want to go home at night when the party’s over; you want to keep talking and engaging and connecting with people. That’s probably because you were in a bad relationship that made you close up before. You were too consumed by your relationship to enjoy human interaction, and now you are making up for lost time.

You feel wise: You also got here by learning a lot about yourself, about humans in general, and about relationships. Through some rather painful experiences, you gathered extremely valuable lessons that you know will make the rest of life a lot easier to navigate.

You are thinking about the future: You aren’t thinking about the past, brooding over fights, reminiscing about the good times and wishing you could have it back. You are thinking about the future. Your imagination is running wild with all of the things you can do now, places you can visit and people you might meet.

You want to flirt: The world feels like your oyster and that oyster is filled with adorable men. If you were meant to be with the ex, you would just be comparing everyone to him and finding him to be the winner. But instead, everyone else looks immeasurably better than your ex.

You wake up excited to take on the day: You wake up full of energy. That’s not how people feel when they end things with someone they were meant to be with. If you wake up bright eyed and bushy-tailed, so excited to see what the day holds, you were absolutely meant to leave that recent ex-boyfriend behind.

You want to exercise: Again, you want your exterior to match your interior. You really feel right now that you deserve the best. You feel like a total boss, you have all this new-found energy and you want to look as good as you feel and so of course you want to get in shape.

You feel strong: You don’t feel bad because you ended a relationship that was bad for you. Many people don’t have the strength to do that. Some people just marry the wrong person for fear of ending things but you escaped that. You are one of the few strong persons.

You know something good is around the corner: With all this new wisdom and strength, you know you won’t wind up in a relationship like that again. You know your next relationship will be so much better. You have the tools to find that special one.