How do you stop loving someone after a break up? It isn’t easy. The true and terrible answer: You don’t. Love isn’t a light switch. You can’t just turn it off. The feelings you have for ex after a breakup, no matter how horrible it was, are always going to be a part of your emotional landscape. For better or worse, the love you feel for that person (or did feel) will shape the way you enter your next relationship, and the one after that, and the one after that… and so on. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call “baggage.” Put yours next to mine. All of us are over the weight requirement and getting charged an additional handling fee because life is brutal and unfair.
How to stop loving someone after a break up? It’s an impossible thing to explain. There is no set of directions to follow. You can’t tell a person how to stop loving someone in a list of seven easy steps, but you can try. When it comes to how you stop loving someone, all you can do is go through it. Believe your feelings for them will never change, and then watch in wonder as time passes and they finally do. To that end, here are 7 things you can do to help you stop loving someone.
Block them on social media, unblock them, block them again.
If you really block your ex, it will help you stop loving him. It really will. Sometimes you will unblock him and binge of photos of him happy with some other woman in Hawaii, and it will fill your soul with wrath. But then you will reblock him and things will get better. You need to give yourself time and space away from a person if you ever hope to move one from them. Social media makes this a fucking nightmare. Like donkey-show level nightmare. Repeat after me: Block, block, oops you unblocked him, so block him again.
Get your friends drunk and find out what they really think about him.
I did this when I was having a really hard time figuring out how to stop loving someone. The ex in question then had ghosted me. I asked my best friend and her husband what they thought of the guy and her husband, after a couple of cocktails, said “He’s a slob! A lazy slob!” It was the best thing I’d heard in weeks. Your friends will hold back because they don’t want to hurt you. Sometimes you must trick them with booze to get the straight answer.
F*ck a stranger.
People say this but it’s true: sometimes the only way to get over someone is to get under someone else. Sleeping with a stranger isn’t for everyone even at the best of times so if the idea of having sex with a stranger makes you shudder, don’t force yourself to do something you’re uncomfortable with. All of that said, the fastest way to un-love a person is a to have an orgasm with someone else and then awkwardly sob in front of them while you look for your bra.
Make a list of all their most annoying personality traits.
He cannot let you complete a sentence with interrupting.
He is a chronic mansplainer.
He is a liar and cheater.
He is incapable of cleaning up after himself.
You are pretty sure that he has never washed the jeans he wears every single day.
He’s lazy in bed, always making you get on top.
He never lets you hang out with his friends.
Remember all of the reasons you broke up.
He was saving up for a vasectomy and your plan has always been to have a couple of kids.
He wanted to live in the city forever, and you need to be back by the water.
He is an angry atheist and you’re still exploring religion.
You don’t need to hold on to love for someone whose life plan is so different than your own. You don’t need to hate him either, but you can definitely let go of that love or at least use its spark to guide you towards a love that’s right for you. Or some shit.
Remember that he didn’t love you.
If he loved you he would not have forgotten your birthday and then, when you reminded him of it, bought tickets to see a movie he really wanted to see and then sent you home early and unfucked because he was “so tired.” If he loved you he wouldn’t have made you sleep on his couch that one night because he “needs his space.” If he loved you he would have actually broken up with you instead of just leaving you to figure it out when he stopped talking to you after a year of dating exclusively. How to stop loving someone? Remember that they had actual trash they treated better than you (what up, pile of cum tissues by his bed for months).
F*ck another stranger.
Seriously, do it. You can’t fill the hole left behind when someone you love stops loving you, but you can fill another hole. And by ‘other hole’, I definitely mean your vagina.
It isn’t always easy and it’s certainly different for everyone but hopefully some of these work for you. Only time will really heal those wounds, and even then, some days it will all flood back to your brain. But it’s normal! Learn from your relationships and from your breakups and, if there is a next time, you’ll be ready to move on.
Originally published on YourTango by Rebecca Jane Stokes
Featured image via George Gvasalia on Unsplash
