I know the way that you feel and why you are searching here. Like
someone throwing you straight up in the air to land flat on your back,
you have had the wind knocked out of you. Likely, when they said
goodbye, your brain was spinning, and a desperate feeling was in your
gut as you stood there, feeling surreal and as if everything that you
had was gone.
Nothing feels right. Like trying on a pair of shorts that are too
small, your feelings are sticking out all over, bulging right out of the
seams. Your heart is throbbing, and you just want to find some magic
cure to take it all away.
You want to wake in the morning and have
everything back to the way it was two minutes before they said it was
over, but you can’t. If you are looking for the answer to how to stop
loving someone overnight, I am sorry: I don’t have the answer to that.
Why I may know something about moving on from loss
In my mid-thirties, with four small children, my life was going along
well. We’d just finished remodeling a home, and my husband and I had a
happy life, family nearby, and were best friends. Then one day, he went
to the hospital, and it all changed. I lost it all, including him, to
cancer. Although a drastic case of losing someone, any loss is truly
tragic.
To give someone your heart and then to lose that someone is a
horrible feeling, like no other. It ruins your faith in what you thought
you knew, makes you wish for things that aren’t possible, and, above
all, makes you long for what you had when you didn’t even know you had
it.
If I can find one shining thing to make it all better, it is this:
nothing is permanent. The way you feel today will be a little less so
tomorrow. The day after, it will be minutely less, until one day, you
wake up, and you find that the sun shines again.
I know that may not
help you in this instant, this moment, and in this time of despair. The
thing is, all you have to do is hold on. Like riding out the wave and
striving to make your head reach the surface, you will see the blue sky
again—that I promise you.
I have never met anyone who has died of a broken heart. Okay, maybe
there are those old people who have lived a lifetime at each other’s
side, and they end up dying within months of each other. Those are the
types of undying love that movies are made of.
It isn’t that I am
belittling your feelings, or making you feel as if what you have in your
heart isn’t real—I am only trying to tell you, from experience, that
things will get better.
How to stop loving someone
The worst thing you can do is dwell on it. Stop ruminating over all
the things you did wrong, how you would have done things differently, or
what you can do to get them back. The best thing you can do is distract
yourself. Think of something new and take some time to focus on
yourself.
If you have to find a cause for the dismantling of your
relationship, then focus solely on yourself. Find things that will make
you feel better.
Many who are trying to get over a broken heart search out things to
try to get the person back. They want desperately to find a way to erase
what happened. The truth is, if it didn’t work, there was something
wrong. When we lose something or someone in our lives, we have a
tendency to only to remember the good times.
#1 Find a hobby. I know that is so cliché. Everyone
is probably telling you to occupy your time or to find something that
you like to do. You know why? Because it works.
When you are out, busy, distracted, and doing things that make you
happy, there is no room for sadness.
As those happy times begin to
encroach upon the times that are not-so-happy, they will begin to take
over, and suddenly you will wake up less lonely than you were the day
before.
#2 Reconnect with old friends. When you are in a
relationship, you likely put your partner first. Now is the time to
reconnect with friends that you may have lost touch with, or to rekindle
friendships you’ve let fade. Find the ones who will tell you that it
wasn’t meant to be, you can do better, and are always on your side.
Don’t turn to those who are likewise going through loss. Despite what
they say, misery does not love company—it has to hang out with it
because no one else wants to. Find that girl or guy that makes you
laugh, and is always good to turn your mood around, and hang onto them
for a while.
#3 Don’t go to the same old places. It may take all
that you have to stay away from the old places you used to go. First of
all, like moving away from home, you can’t ever go back. Second, there
is probably something somewhere inside of you that is hoping you are
going to run into them, and they are going to realize how much they miss
you.
The prospects of that happening are very slim.
If it is meant to be, it isn’t going to happen the way that it does
in the movies. It isn’t going to be some chance meeting where they
confess how much they miss and want you back. If, and when, they are
ready to reach out to you, they will. Running into them on accident
isn’t going to get you what you want–it will only set you back on any
progress you’ve made.
#4 Ride out the ups and downs. The thing that you
have to keep in mind for your own survival is this: as bad as you feel
right now, when you meet the right person, you are going to feel ten
times better than you ever did with the person you just lost.
If they
broke up with you or broke your heart, then they weren’t the right one.
Sure, it is easy for me to say, but it is true. The right person is
someone who will never leave, will stick it out to the end, and will
find a way to muddle through the good times and the bad.
#5 Trust that you deserve better. Okay, this may be
the one that most people will argue against. There are times when the
break up is your fault. If you did something to make them break up with
you, then it is no different. There was a reason you did what you did.
If you hollered at them too many times, were too bitchy all the time, or
you cheated on them, then there was something about them that didn’t
bring out the best you.
You need and deserve someone who will always make you want to be the
best person you can be. That includes not wanting to treat them badly.
If you were miserable and crabby all the time, you have to stop and
think about why you felt that way. What was it about being with them, or
about your life, that made you not so much fun to be around? Instead of
worrying about not loving them, you should try to think of ways to love
yourself.
#6 Make a list. Maybe, instead of stewing about what
you have lost, you can take the time to think about all the things that
you won’t miss without them. Sit down and make a physical list of the
things that hurt your feelings–the things you didn’t like, or the number
of times you wished they wouldn’t be so… well… them.
Those are the
things that you want to think about now. In time, after the hurt is not
so painful, it is okay to remember the relationship fondly, but why
torture yourself now by considering all the ways that they will be
missed?
Ultimately, you should stop trying not to love them,
and allow yourself to feel the love you had, but understand that it
wasn’t right. You can’t make yourself stop loving someone overnight, but
you can see it for what it was. Love comes in all different forms and,
unfortunately, they aren’t always good for us.
You can love many people
in your life who aren’t good for you, don’t make you happy, and don’t
make you feel fulfilled. If it didn’t work, it was a two-way street.
No matter how much you want to say that you were happy, and it was
what you wanted, you have to take a step back, think about it
realistically, and separate emotion from fact.
In time, you will find that the clouds will clear, the sun will
shine, and you will have a clarity you didn’t before about what was real
and what was fabricated. You no doubt loved them, but love is something
that can’t only go one way for it to work.
