It can be hard being around someone who doesn’t love you. Want to get over it? Here’s how to move on when someone doesn’t love you.

How to Move on When Someone Doesn’t Love You

They say: “First cut is the deepest” when it comes to Love and heartbreak and I couldn’t agree more. Exactly 20 years ago, at just 17, I fell in love for the first time; the feeling was quite heady and the guy was all I could think of.

My whole life became centered around seeing him, being around him, or at worse, just hearing his voice. I’d been bitten by the love bug and I couldn’t explain how happy that made me.

Sadly (although I didn’t see it this way at the time), my love interest knew how I felt and did everything in his power to encourage these feelings.

Did he succeed?

Yes, as I fell more deeply in love with him.

However, I felt the feeling was mutual and let myself go completely, which was why I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t making any moves for us to be together. I’d shown him I was very interested in every way I could, but he just….held back.

It was several months of me being warm, approachable, and receptive, yet for some reason, he wasn’t making any moves for us to be together.

Yes, I could very well have asked him out, but I couldn’t. Here’s why?

I got to discover early on that my love interest was quite conservative and believed things should be done a certain way. He was of the old school notion a man is the chaser and the job of starting a relationship should be left to him.

So, I knew going against this was the fastest way to likely get my heart broken before the relationship even started!

However, since he was making no moves on his part I decided to find out why.

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Further Discovery…

It took several months to realize the truth and understand his reason for holding back and I got to know I’d been living in a fool’s paradise. My love interest didn’t love me as I thought, he just loved the idea of someone being in love with him and encouraged the feeling as best he could.

I also discovered another devastating fact: which was that I wasn’t the only one he played this game with. There were other ladies; he would make you so comfortable being around him, even go as far as making you believe the feeling was mutual, until you were completely smitten.

Now, I never fully understood his reason for this, but I guess it was an ego boost for him. I mean, the more ladies were in love with him, the more validated he thought he was if he believed himself a stud.

The realization was devastating and for weeks, I was broken. A love that had burned so deep in my heart suddenly turned to hatred and I also lost whatever high views I’d had for him.

However, I knew he didn’t deserve any emotion from me anymore, not even hatred, so I felt the best thing to do was to move on, which is what I did.

If you find yourself in a similar position (where you love someone who doesn’t quite feel the same) here is how to move on when someone doesn’t love you.

How to Move on When Someone Doesn’t Love You

1. Accept the Fact that It’s Happened

Life happens and unrequited love, while painful, can happen to anyone. It’s usually best if you accept this has happened, so you can move on.

It’s perfectly normal to feel depressed, and humiliated even at it all, however, dwelling on these negative emotions will do you absolutely no good.

2. Forgive Them

This will only come into play if there’s something to forgive in the first place.

If your love interest led you on deceitfully knowing they didn’t feel the same, you should forgive them. Choosing to stay angry at them hurts only you as chances are they aren’t aware of your pain, nor do they care.

Forgive them as this is the first step in your journey to the healing you crave.

3. Understand Not Everyone will Share Your Feelings

If they aren’t responsible for your state, then you should understand and come to accept the fact that not everyone will love us, the same way we do not return the feeling of everyone who loves us.

In my case, my love interest was aware of and encouraged the feelings further, however, there are cases where you might be having these feelings without the guy being aware.

When it comes to intuition and being able to sense things, women take the lead. You could be into a guy for several months, be all up in his face and he still wouldn’t know how you felt.

4. Cut Off All Contact

Whether they are responsible for how you feel or not, you should cut off all ties temporarily as this is the only way you can move on faster.

Cut off all ties for at least three months and this includes contacts on all social media platforms. You want to block your love interest on these platforms if you must. While this might seem harsh, you’re really only looking out for yourself, and it’d only be temporary anyway.

Also, no matter how strong the urge, you want to resist the temptation to “check how things are sith them” from time to time. Doing this will only undermine the progress you’ve made so far.

If you’re in an environment where it’s impossible to block or avoid them entirely, then you should do the next best thing, which is to avoid them as much as possible. Limit your contact to professional ones only and be polite, but slightly distant when you have to meet.

If they notice this development and point it out then you could very easily look for a plausible reason for doing so.

5. Cry the Pain Out

This isn’t the time to try to be an Amazon woman. You have gone through one of the most painful experiences in life and have earned the right to grieve and cry.

Cry in the morning, afternoon, and night if you want; in essence, you should cry every time you feel overwhelmed by the emotion and pain of it all.

While crying might seem like a waste of time, it is actually therapeutic and will help relieve the heaviness and grief you feel inside.

However, you don’t want to spend forever crying. An effective way to get over a “breakup” (which is what this is), is to set a timeframe for being emotional and dwelling on the issue). So, you should give yourself some time, say a week or two, to cry the pain out, then try to get things back on track.

6. Remove Everything from Around You that Reminds You of Them

And that also includes those secret pictures you have stuck between the pages of your favorite book.

While it will be hard, you want to do a complete purge or you’ll only be going around in circles.

You might also want to get rid of those group pictures you’re both in. If there are gifts involved then you also should get rid of these or at the very least, get them out of sight.

Time heals all wounds and several weeks later, you would look at these items with very little of the pain you felt left.

7. Don’t Beat Yourself Up

It’s easy to blame yourself for falling for someone who didn’t show even an iota of interest back from the beginning. I know I did. However, you should know this can happen to even the best of us, and beating yourself up over it would be counterproductive and slow you down.

The best thing to do in this case would be to accept what happened and learn what there is to learn from it if any.

8) Hang Out with Friends

While all you want at this time is to curl up under the sheets relieving whatever little memories you have or to eat a bowl of ice cream while sobbing to your girlfriend, this will do very little good.

Instead, you should strive to get back on track as soon as possible for you. If it helps, dwelling on the thoughts of your love interest out there living his life while you cry yourself to possible ill health should do the trick.

9) Ditch the Idea of Needing Closure

This is one trick that can keep you stuck in that rut for longer. It’s so easy to fall into the pattern of thinking you need closure:

Why could he love you?

Didn’t he think you were good enough?

Why did he lead you on if he felt nothing all this time?

Was there something you did that turned the feelings off at some point?

All these will keep you stuck and only end up hurting you a lot more in the end.

10) Rebuild Your Self -esteem

Your self-esteem has taken a beating at this time and you would need to rebuild it.

At this point, you should focus on yourself: how you can rebuild and regain all you have lost to become the best version of yourself.

Watch videos on self-esteem, read helpful books, and most importantly, get involved in a project you are good at, and practice daily affirmations. The more you do these the better your confidence will get.

11) Ditch the Idea of a Rebound

More often than not, rebound relationships don’t work and you’d be setting yourself up for a fresh heartbreak if you entered one.

Even if there’s someone around willing to take this risk you owe it to yourself and them to be the strong one here.

12) Pick Up a Hobby

Besides hanging out with friends, rediscovering an old hobby or picking up a project are other good ways to take your mind off things.

There are a ton of things you could be doing and you should focus on these.

13) Write It All Down

Talking to your friends will help ease some of the pain at the beginning, however, over time they could get tired of hearing your pain.

If you are finding it hard to let go, a journal can help. With this, you can pour out your pain exactly how you feel it with no fear or hesitancy.

14) Date Again

While not immediately, you want to keep your mind and heart open to love again. Love is beautiful when shared and the right person just might be around the corner waiting for the right time.

Related

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