Love Quotes & Advice
How To Emotionally Detach From Someone You Love
Healthy emotional detachment is a valuable life skill. It’s also necessary to learn how to detach emotionally from someone you love after a breakup, divorce, or death. In life we create certain ties with certain people at certain times and in certain places, but sometimes these certain ties need to be broken or ended. Detachment isn’t always an easy (or quick) process. It can be messy and sometimes even dry up all of the patience you have. It takes both time and effort. The problem is, we’re wired to love and connect. So, this can make something like emotional detachment seem cold and unhealthy, when it really isn’t. The truth is, emotional detachment is healthy – even when you’re in a happy, committed relationship. Emotionally detaching from someone doesn’t mean you’ll never fall in love or have a healthy relationship again! It simply means that even though you love your ex-boyfriend or ex-husband, you have to let him go. You need to become free to heal your heart so you can love again one day. Listed below are some helpful tips on how to emotionally detach from someone you love.
How To Emotionally Detach Yourself From Someone
1. Quit Torturing Yourself – By holding on to what could have been, the only one you’re hurting is yourself. Make a resolution within yourself to change your thoughts every time he (or she) pops into your head. Thinking about how he always parted his hair to the side? Instead, think about how popular and fashionable mullets are becoming these days. Change the subject, even if it’s only in your mind.
2. Give Yourself (And Your Ex) Time To Heal – One of the most important tips on emotional detachment from someone you care about is to take a step back. Instead of turning towards your ex, listen to the still small voice from deep within. Figure out who you are apart from your friendships, relationship, marriage, kids, and family. Give yourself room to breath by developing your own interests and life. This is difficult when you’re emotionally involved with someone, but it’s also very important.
3. Unfollow Them On Social Media – You can’t really call it “detaching” if you’re still connected to this person online. If you’re really cutting them out of your life completely, commence the mass unfriending. You don’t need his new relationship status update or his favorite Sunday brunch popping up in your feed when you least expect it. You’ll never get over him (or her) by remaining friends with them on social media.
4. Ask Your Friends To Avoid Mentioning Them – Of course, it’s not always you who brings it up. If this man (or woman) knows your friends, they might bring them up in different conversations. Request that your friends keep you in the dark. If it helps, you can always give them a time limit. Something like, “I know you work with John, but could you avoid telling me about him for a few months? I need some time to get over him.” should do the trick.
5. Stop Talking About Them – It’s the classic story. You’re with friends and spend an hour rehashing your interactions with this guy. Where it went wrong, why you cut him off – it’s all been discussed. I’m sure your friends will appreciate it when you start talking about anything other than this guy. Best of all, when you stop talking about him you will probably find that it helps you get over him a lot quicker.
6. Don’t Check Their Posts – Even after unfriending your former partner on Instagram and Twitter, there will still be that self-sabotaging voice in your head that convinces you to check his (or her) status. After all, you just want a peek, right? What could it hurt? But it can hurt, and it will. What’s the point of unfollowing someone if you’re going to be visiting his profiles anyway? Don’t do it, no matter how badly you want to.
7. Stand Your Ground If They Try To Contact You – Has this happened to you before? This guy knows you like him but chooses other girls, so you stand your ground and go no-contact only for him to start texting you weeks later because he “misses you.” He doesn’t really miss you, he just misses having the ego-boost of a girl who has a crush on him. If the guy you like starts sending you messages of “what’s up?” then ignore him. You’ve decided you’re done with him, so stick to it.
