How to Stop Loving Someone Who Doesnt Love You Loving someone who doesn’t love you is one of the most hopeless feelings in the world because it isn’t something you can control. Then again, this is exactly why you need to start the healing process: it’s not your fault, there’s nothing you could have done differently, and the only thing left to do is move on. For help with this, see step 1. Ad Free Zodiac Horoscope Insert your Birthdate Now and get Answers about Past-Present & 1 2 3 4 5 Allow yourself time to grieve. When you love someone who doesnt love you back, it hurts. To get over them youre going to have to let yourself grieve over that hurt and the missed opportunity. Theres nothing wrong with having to grieve as long as you dont get stuck there. In fact, its healthier to let yourself be sad than it is to try and suppress those emotions. [1] If you can, take some time out of your life to process your sadness. This will help create a healing space for you to deal with your grief. For example: when you first realize (or are told) this person will not love you back, then you should take some time to be alone somewhere, even if its just going for a 15 minute walk at work. Avoid wallowing in despair, however. If you havent left your house in weeks, you arent showering, and youre wearing that ratty old sweatshirt that should really just be burnt, youve gone overboard. Its natural to feel sad, but if you dont try and get focused on your life again, youll just keep thinking about and loving that other person. Take some time away from the other person. Part of creating space for yourself to grieve and to move on, is not having this person as part of your life. You dont have to cut this person out of your life completely, but you do need to take a break from them. [2] You can even talk to them and say something like Hey I know you dont love me in the way I want you to. I just really need some space to get over this. If theyre a good person, theyll give that to you, even if they feel a little hurt by the distance. If the person youre trying to stop loving is someone that youve relied heavily on in the past for emotional support, find a different friend to help fill that roll. Ask a friend if you can reach out to them when you get the urge to talk to the person youre trying to have space from. De-friend them on social media, or at least hide their posts, delete them from your phone so you arent tempted to re-initiate contact. You dont want to be constantly reminded about them and everything theyre doing. It will make it harder to keep your distance. Realize you are better off. It doesnt matter how great the person is, you are better off without loving someone who doesnt love you back. Furthermore, being in love with someone can make you blind to their flaws. Stopping loving them can require looking at the reasons why a relationship between the two of you might just not work. Make a list of their flaws. You dont have to be mean about it, but there are definitely things that are irritating about everyone. Does the person you love wear the most atrocious outfits? Are they rude to waitstaff? Do they tell truly horrific jokes? If youre having difficulty coming up with a list, enlist the help of a trusted friend. Also, look at the places that would have created a difficult relationship between the two of you, if they had loved you back. For example: maybe their extreme social anxiety would make it nearly impossible for them to give you the validation you need in a relationship. Avoid blaming them. Just as you have no control over falling in love with them, they have no control over not falling in with you. If you go around blaming them for friend-zoning you or saying theyre terrible for not loving you back, then youre only going to make yourself look bad, which is going to make them feel like they dodged a bullet. Especially dont write long diatribes about what a catch you are and that they have terrible taste in partners which is why they didnt chose. Frankly, if that is how youre responding to this situation, then they probably were right in not loving you back. You can feel upset about their not love you back without turning it into the blame game. If your friends start blaming them for not loving you back, thank them for their support, but say that it isnt fair to blame them for something they cant help. Lets focus on me getting over them. Get rid of mementos. You can cry over giving up the mementos, but its an important step in the healing process. Having those mementos around will only make it harder to move on and thats not what youre after! You dont have to have a bonfire with the mementos and you should avoid sending them to the person who didnt love you with a note saying Thanks for nothing. As you go through each item, think of the memory associated with it, then imagine putting that memory in a balloon. As you get rid of the thing, imagine the balloon drifting away never to be seen again. If you have physical objects that are in good shape, consider donating them to a thrift store or donate them to a homeless shelter. Imagine the all the happy new memories that oversized sweatshirt / teddy bear / CD will make for its new owner, and then let these new associations symbolize the transformation you’re undergoing in your own life. Part One of Three: Giving Yourself Space 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Avoid memory triggers. Its hard to heal from unrequited love if youre constantly reminding yourself about the other person. Avoid seeking out that song that reminds you of the person, or a wonderful time you had together. Memory triggers can be anything from seeing a picture of that person on your Facebook feed to hearing a song that you associate with a wonderful time that you had with them. It can even be a smell (like apple pie, because you one time had an apple pie making contest with them, for example). If you do unexpectedly encounter a trigger, as you probably will, its best to acknowledge the moment and move on from it. Dont linger over the feelings that it will inevitably bring up. For example: if the song that you associate with them comes on the radio, turn the radio off or change the station. Acknowledge the sadness and regret that comes over you, and turn your attention to something positive or neutral (what youre going to have for dinner, that trip you have coming up). Remember, youre not going to have to avoid these triggers forever. You just want to make the healing as easy as possible and constant reminders make that process more difficult. When youve moved on, the triggers might still recall the other person but it will be less painful. Talk it out with someone. Its best to get the emotional and difficult aspects of the healing process off your chest. If you cling to those emotions, it will make it harder to release them in the long run. Find someone to talk to about what youre feeling and what youre going through. Make sure that its someone that you trust. This could mean a friend that you know wont try and speed up your healing. It could mean a family member who lets you call them when youre feeling upset. It could even mean a therapist, especially if this is a long term love that youre really struggling with or that is tied up with other issues. You can also journal about your feelings if you dont feel like you can or want to talk to another person. One good thing about journaling these feelings is that youll be able to track your healing process, which will give you proof that its possible to get over your unrequited love. Avoid getting drunk and calling or texting them. This is a big step, and also incredibly embarrassing if you do it. Drunkenly berating the other person for not loving you, or crying about how hurt you are is a surefire way to make sure they want nothing to do with you. Theres no harm in getting drunk as long as you take certain precautions before doing so. Give your phone to your friend (preferably the designated driver) with strict instructions not to give it to you, no matter what excuse you give or how much you drunkenly beg. Delete the other person from your phone. This way you wont have the option to call or text them drunkenly. Distract yourself.While it’s impossible to not think about something, it is possible to divert your thoughts elsewhere whenever you start to go down that rabbit hole. Every time those memories bubble up, distract yourself with another thought, activity, or project. Call a friend. Pick up a real page- turner of a book. Watch a hilarious movie. Build something. Work in the garden. Do math. Find something to engage you for long enough to get the person off your mind for a while. The more of a habit you make of not thinking about the person, the easier it will become. Avoid trying to force yourself to not think about them, because that will just turn your focus their way more often. Instead when you do find yourself thinking about them, divert your attention towards something else. A handy trick is to set aside a certain amount of time that is designated for you to think about them. When you do find thoughts about them creeping into your head, you can say to those thoughts Not now. Ill get to you later. For example: you might set aside an hour each day, in the beginning. During the day you would set aside thoughts about the other person and engage with them during that hour. Once the hour was over, you would go back to your regularly scheduled life. Dont sabotage your own healing. There are certain things that youll need to stop saying to yourself. Certain patterns of thought can sabotage your healing process and make it far more difficult to move on. Stop saying: 1) I cannot live without them; 2) I cannot stop loving them; 3) I love this person more than any other; 4) I cannot love anyone else; 5) There is no one better than this person; 6) They are perfect. Remind yourself that people and situations change. What you feel now is not how youre going to feel for the rest of your life, especially if youre actively working towards feeling differently. Change up your routine. Studies show that doing something new, such as going on vacation or even taking a different route to work, is one of the absolute best ways to you to break old habits and replace them with new ones. [3] If you can’t afford to do this in a big way, make little, everyday changes. Visit a new part of town. Try a new hangout on Saturday night. Get into a new band. Learn a new hobby, like cooking or rock-climbing. Try to avoid doing something super drastic, unless youre sure you really want it. This is a time when a lot of people chop all their hair off, or get a tattoo. Its best to wait until after the initial healing, before making this sort of change. Find yourself. Because youve been so caught up in loving someone, youve forgotten what its like to be just you. Healing from unrequited love is a great time to find out who you are underneath your feelings for another person. Work on your personal growth, external and internal. Work on getting into shape, or making yourself look nice, to help boost your confidence. Figure out areas of yourself to work on. For example: maybe you have trouble communicating your feelings, you might work on doing better in that area. Develop the things that make you unique. While youve been spending so much time obsessing over this other person, important aspects of you have been languishing on the side of the road. Get involved with the things and the people you didnt have as much time for while you were dealing with this unrequited love. Part Two of Three: Starting to Heal 1 2 3 4 5 Know when youre ready to move on. Theres no set time period for moving on from unrequited love. Everyone goes at a different pace. However, there are some signs that youre ready to move on from the person who wasnt interested in loving you. [4] You start noticing what is going on with other people. A lot of times when youre in the grieving stage you tend to get a little self-absorbed. When you start taking an interest in what everyone else has been doing youll find that youre well on your way into the healing process. Youve stopped wondering if its them having realized how much they actually love you every time you get a call (especially if its from a number you dont recognize). Youve stopped hardcore identifying with songs and movies about unrequited love. In fact, youve started expanding your repertoire to include things that arent about love, or the pain of love. Youve stopped having all these fantasies about your unrequited love suddenly coming to the realization that they do in fact love you and always have and then prostrate themselves at your feet. Avoid relapse. Even when youre ready to move on, you can sometimes hit a relapse if youre not careful. Its like taking the stitches out of a wound too early. Its healing up nicely, but its not ready for strenuous exercise quite yet. Avoid doing things with them or letting them back into your life until youre sure that this wont cause you to get back on the swoon-train. If you do find yourself relapsing, dont sweat it too much! Youve already put in a lot of work to get over them and that work will pay off. Set backs happen and if you give up right away, it will be harder in the long run. Do fun things. The more fun things you do for yourself, the easier it will be to get over them. If youre sitting at home wallowing in misery, then you arent distracting yourself and you arent re- training your brain. Go out and do things. Do things that you know that you enjoy and that you dont get to do often. Give yourself a treat after dealing with the stress of unrequited love. Save up for a vacation that you really want, or buy that new video game that youre excited about. Get outside your comfort zone. Trying new things will help get you out of your normal routine and wont have associations with the person youre trying to get over. This will make it so that youre too busy trying new things to obsess over that person who didnt love you back. Get back in the game. Put yourself out there, meet new people, flirt, and remind yourself how great it feels to be a catch. Your confidence surely needs the boost – and in the meantime, you’ll meet interesting new people. In fact, every time someone is better in some way than the person you’ve been chasing – better looking, funnier, smarter, more down to earth – make note of it. It’ll put things into perspective. You dont necessarily have to be on the look-out for a new relationship. Just enjoying the presence of new people can be a big pick-me-up. Be very careful with rebounding. While sometimes a rebound is just what the doctor ordered, it only works when you’re emotionally ready for it, you’re honest with yourself about the fact that it’s a rebound, and you’re honest with the other person about the fact that it’s a rebound. Don’t make this new person feel as miserably in love with you as you are with the person you’re trying to get over. Don’t get discouraged! Getting over someone youre in love with isnt easy! Any steps you make towards getting over them should be celebrated. You should also remember that just because this person didnt return your love doesnt mean that no one will. Ad Part Three of Three: Moving On Get Prophecy For Free biblicalprophecies.net Know Gods Plan About You in 2014. Receive Free Bible Prophecy Lessons in Meditation New Integral Coaching NY Realize you deserve someone who treats you as well as you treated them. Remember that love must be reciprocal; otherwise, you will lose precious years of your life waiting for something that will never happen! Dont try to hurt yourself or self sabotage; you have just as much worth as a single person and you deserve all the love you want. Focus on other than love life like career, health etc. Add Tips Dont settle for a relationship without love. You may think that youll be able to convince the other person to love you given enough time, but frankly this is incredibly unlikely. You and the other person wont be happy and thats not fair to either of
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 19:52:37 +0000