5 Reasons Why You Keep Holding On To Someone Who Doesn't Love You
Why do you hang on when things are so bad?
Getty You continue waking every morning, loving someone who doesn't love you.
You want more than anything to love and be loved but you're sabotaging that dream because you can’t walk away from somebody who doesn’t love you, and it's making you miserable.
Holding on to someone who doesn’t love you is not an unusual thing. You just want your relationship to work so you keep on trying and trying, often to no avail.
But, if you know the reasons why you keep holding onto someone who doesn’t love you, it will help you understand why you're doing what you’re doing, help you make changes, and give you time to heal.
Here are 5 reasons why you're holding on and loving someone who doesn't love you back.
1. You believe that you love them.
Many of my clients tell me that the reason that they're staying in their relationship is because they love their person.
When I ask them what it is that they love about their person, their response is always, "Things were wonderful in the beginning," "We have great sex," "We have fun sometimes," or even "We're soulmates."
Then I ask, "When was the last time they did something to make you happy?" That question is usually met with silence.
The reality is, if you're with someone who doesn’t love you, you're most likely no longer in love with them either. It’s hard to stay in love with someone who treats you badly.
What you're in love with is being in a relationship and not being alone. It's important not to confuse the two!
And, this person certainly isn’t your soulmate. Why would your soulmate hurt you, on purpose, every day?
Take stock of why you think you still love your person. What you discover might surprise you.
2. You're afraid of more pain.
Chances are, if you're holding onto someone who doesn’t love you, you've been in a lot of pain recently.
There's nothing worse than spending time with someone who doesn’t treat you with love and respect. This is called "a thousand little cuts" — those daily small cuts that are deep and painful.
So, at this point, you're exhausted from suffering through all this pain and you're worried that, if you let go of your person, having more pain just might be more than you can bear.
But, if you stay in this relationship, the pain will never ease. Every day that goes by, being with someone who doesn’t love you gets increasingly painful. It’s like the pain stacks up on itself until, finally, it’s so heavy that you can’t carry it anymore.
If you do let go of this relationship, you will feel some pain. It might even be some intense pain. But that pain will fade. And what will also fade is pain from the "thousand little cuts" that you get every day.
So, if you're afraid of the pain and that is why you were holding onto someone who doesn’t love you, I can promise you letting go of that person is the only way to truly let go of the pain and move forward.
3. You're holding out hope.
Be honest, are you hoping that if you just hold on long enough, your relationship will heal?
Are you hoping that if you just love them enough they will realize how wonderful you are and start loving you again?
Are you hoping things will go back to the way they were at the beginning when you were happy?
Holding out hope is a big part of holding onto someone who doesn’t love you. No one wants to let go of hope. No one wants to walk away from a relationship that was once so promising. No one wants to just give up.
But, if the person you love — the person they are right now, doesn’t love you — they won’t just start loving you again, no matter how kind you are, how much you do for them, or how much sex you have with them.
A person who doesn’t love someone is not going to change unless they want to change.
However, spending even a minute more holding out hope that this relationship will work if you can just be better, is a minute that could be spent being hopeful about the future — a future with the love that's out there waiting for you.
So, unless the person in front of you is telling you that they are actively working to love you again, holding out hope is futile. Let it go!
4. You're scared of them.
This is one of those things that people don’t often talk about. For many people who are holding onto someone who doesn’t love them, they're doing so because they're scared.
They're scared of how their person will react if they leave, of the words of anger that they might hear, and that things might get physical.
They might also be scared that their person won’t let them go.
This happens a lot when someone breaks up with someone else — their person can’t let them go. They say they don’t want to be in a relationship, but they keep coming back for sex and companionship.
You might be scared that if you let go of this person who doesn’t love you, they might keep holding onto you, leaving you in this no man’s land for a long time.
So, take stock of why you are scared to leave the person who doesn’t love you. Are you afraid of their reaction? Are you afraid that they might get physical? Are you afraid that they just won’t let you go and you won’t be able to move forward?
Knowing what you're scared of is the best way to deal with that fear so that you can let go and move on to a life of happiness.
5. You're worried about the future.
Many people who keep holding on to someone who doesn’t love them do so because they’re worried about the future. More specifically, they're scared that they will never love or be loved again.
Many people in toxic relationships don’t leave the relationship because they're sure that there will never be another person out there for them, that this person is their person, and that walking away from them means they will be left with nothing and no one.
The only reason that you should be afraid of the future is if you choose to stay with your person.
Being with someone who doesn’t love you, staying with someone who doesn’t treat you the way you want to be treated, will only doom you to a future of unhappiness, kind of like the life you are living now!
I've never yet met a person who didn’t find someone after they let go of the person who didn’t love them. Once they healed, they moved back out into the world and found somebody who could love them the way they want to be loved.
That can be you!
Holding on and loving someone who doesn’t love you is very self-destructive and it’s time for you to stop.
You think you love them and you're holding out hope for the future. You're scared of pain and of them maybe not letting you go, but the worst thing that you can do for yourself is to stay in a situation that makes you unhappy.
Staying guarantees that you will never be happy.
You can do this. It seems scary but millions of people have done it before you and not only survived it but thrived after. You can be one of those people.
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based, certified life and love coach. Let her help you find, and keep, love in this crazy world in which we live. Email her at mitzi@letyourdreamsbegin.com and get started!