How To Stop Loving Someone
It isn't easy, but it's worth it.
getty How do you stop loving someone after a breakup?
Easy 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, 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 into your next relationship, and the one after that, and the one after that.
That, ladies and germs, is what we call "baggage."
Put yours next to mine. All of us are over the weight requirement and are getting charged an additional handling fee because life is brutal and unfair.
Can you learn how to stop loving someone after a breakup? It's an impossible thing to explain.
When it comes to not loving someone any longer, 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.
1. 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 on 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 "get over" them. Social media makes this a nightmare show. Like donkey-show level nightmare.
Repeat after me: Block, block, oops you unblocked him, so block him again.
2. Ask your friends for their honest opinions.
I did this when I was having a really hard time figuring out how to stop loving someone. The someone in question was an ex who had ghosted me.
I asked my best friend and her husband what they thought of the guy and her husband, and they 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 dope.
3. Go on dating sites.
Sometimes, the only way to move past a breakup is to put your attention on someone else. Plus, an ego-boost doesn't hurt!
This doesn't mean sleeping with a stranger; instead, it means putting yourself out there into the world, no matter how scary it may be. Just don't force yourself to do something you're uncomfortable with.
All of that said, the fastest way to un-love a person is to stop thinking about them. And getting attention from other men can help.
4. Make a list of all their most annoying personality traits.
He cannot let you complete a sentence with interrupting. He's a chronic mansplainer. He's a liar and cheater. He's incapable of cleaning up after himself.
You're 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.
Why waste your love on a person who is just generally a bad person?
5. Think of 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's 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.
6. Remember that he didn't love you.
If he loved you, he wouldn't 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 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.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cats, Batman and Margot. She's the Senior Editor of Pop Culture at Newsweek with a passion for lifestyle, geek news, and true crime.