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If you've fallen in love with someone just out of reach, it's time to cut it off.
By Elizabeth Stone — Written on Aug 05, 2019
Unrequited love is one of the most painful things to experience so if you've fallen for someone you can't have, it's time to learn how to stop loving someone and move on.
If you're asking yourself, "Am I in love with him?", you're probably scratching your head, wondering how to manifest the love you really want...from that specific person.
The teachings of the Law of Attraction make it sound so easy to manifest true love with a specific person. But, the truth is, like most things, there is more to attraction and falling in love.
Maybe unrequited love is a frustrating, sickening pattern in your life. You see someone and just get sucked in. Before you know it, you’re counting the seconds before you see them again. Hoping to catch a glimpse, dying to get more.
Maybe you’ve stayed up late, googling why you fall in love with someone you can’t have or wonder how to attract a specific person, even though right now the odds seem completely stacked against you.
Maybe you’ve tried endless law of attraction methods to attract a specific person, meditated, and even used magic to attract someone. Maybe you’ve even been to hours of therapy to sort this out.
Ever wonder why you fall in love with emotionally unavailable people in the first place?
The answer is simple but crushing: Unrequited love keeps you unavailable as you wait.
Since you’ve already been auto-rejected by your love object’s total unavailability from the start, the risk of rejection is completely removed since you aren’t even a real option as a partner for them.
You’re completely free to love them from afar without the risk of them abandoning you since they (but also you) weren’t available from the start.
Since you put them out of your orbit from the beginning, you get the added ego benefit of striving and working for this lofty new goal. You have a cause, grand journey.
"I just have to learn how to manifest that specific person," you tell yourself.
Then, in the chance you succeed in turning this situation around, you get to pretend it’s because you’re so irresistible and flawless at the law of attraction you couldn’t possibly be rejected after all that “work.”
But, behind closed doors, you’ve been dealing out that rejection to yourself — for years.
A controlled burn can’t get that out of hand. Falling in love with someone who has the capacity to actually love you back represents the real dragon.
After all, what if you opened up and let him see your real, soft, sweet, squishy dark heart and then he rejected you? What if he leaves? What if you let go of all this icky control, let someone genuinely love you back and you’re still not good enough? What if he dies?
Falling in love with someone you can’t have might be frustrating — soul-crushing, even — but it’s pretty "safe" because they can’t even really choose to reject you since "the situation" already has.
If you just fall for someone who can’t love you back, you get to stall. You’re also completely free to distract yourself with fast food, bad connections with disposable people you don’t even want to see again since your “real” lover isn’t there.
Your real self gets to play in her playpen, safe from judgment. Never truly seen or heard, but completely devoid of accountability.
You are safe from risking any gut-wrenching, soul-destroying, painful experience which might point out that she’s actually as unworthy and crappy and empty as you knew all along.
"Better keep her to myself. She’s deformed. If he sees her, oh my God, then my secret will finally be out. There’s no way anyone would stick around if they knew the real me. Better stick with this (safely) impossible situation."
Then you get to spend your precious time and vast amounts of emotional energy distracting yourself with plotting, planning and scheming over "when the conditions change" or when you finally "win" him over and convince him to leave his wife, stop being a workaholic, return to your stone-dead relationship or seduce him.
Then, you would have real evidence of your irresistibility since you "won" at this impossible game you rigged from the start. Then you’ll be ready for prime time. Then you’ll be good enough.
You’ll even have the added bonus of undeniable (right?) proof he’s so smitten with you he could never change his mind…could he?
On the off chance that you win, you get to hide in the illusion that since you turned this icky situation around with your complete irresistibility then you have nothing to fear. You’re safe. Overcoming the odds just might prove your true worthiness.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
He couldn’t possibly go to to all this trouble to overcome the odds and jump through all these hoops and then dump you. No way.
The sick, sad truth is: Your self-worth is in the toilet.
If it wasn’t, you would absolutely refuse to put yourself in this position or anything like it — ever.
You might vaguely fantasize about some random person’s sheer physical hotness (since we all do) but you would never lower yourself to "helplessly" falling in love with someone you can’t have.
You would never even dream of saying to your precious, irresistible, goddess-self: "You know what? You are not worth big, amazing, vulnerable love. You have no choice but to play small because you’re not good enough. You should keep going with this impossible situation since you definitely don’t measure up to what you’re afraid to even admit you really want."
You wouldn’t sit around wishing, waiting, and hoping for "your turn" with this person who isn’t yours. You wouldn’t scheme about getting rid of his relationship to insert yourself.
You wouldn’t find ways to change the situation "in your favor". You wouldn’t even care. He would be a non-issue for you. You can’t be hurt by anyone except yourself when you’re this committed to hiding.
So…let me ask you: Where did you get this faulty idea that you are so broken and second-rate that you have no choice but to lower yourself?
After all, it’s you who insists this is the way it has to be. That you’re some hapless victim of your feelings around some situation that you rigged.
What if you stopped trying to control other people’s reactions to your carefully cultivated, fake persona built on nothing except people-pleasing and reputation management?
Even with the people closest to you who you love but don’t even know you?
What if you just stopped running that inner gauntlet of fun-house mirror insecurities and committed to doing this whole "love thing" straight…as you?
What if you stopped telling yourself about everything wrong with you and started noticing everything that’s oh so right?
What if you dropped this whole struggle to attract someone specific, started building your gorgeous castle on bedrock and then attracted whoever you want?
It's time to learn how to let go of someone you love. Haven’t you had enough?
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Elizabeth Stone is a love coach, author, and founder of Attract The One. If you keep ending up in dead-end relationships with guys who dump, ghost and ignore you, get the love you really deserve with your free copy of her book, Why Men Lose Interest and free email series now.
This article was originally published at Attract The One. Reprinted with permission from the author.