Photo: Lisa5201 | Canva
How to effectively get him off your mind.
By Lisa Hawkins
Last updated on Jan 11, 2024
First love is an experiment for everyone because we were very new to relationships.
If you're still in love with your first love, you feel the love and emotions for them based on those old memories and unprocessed emotions.
What can you do with these feelings when you are still in love, they are married with children, and you know they are your soulmate?
Here are 8 practical ways to move on when you literally can't stop thinking about him:
1. Press pause on the feelings
Pausing is a great way to reset the brain. When old feelings show up, it’s an opportunity to investigate, not act impulsively.
2. Stop looking externally for a fix
Look at ways you are looking for something outside yourself to “fix” your current situation.
3. Find an alternate dopamine boost
Do something to boost your dopamine outside of obsession over an old love. Take a run, go out in nature, listen to music, meditate, or dance. Start a new hobby.
Photo: Emotions studio via Shutterstock
4. Create a gratitude list
Make a list of what you are grateful for right now in this moment. Take this to the basics: breathing, the ability to see, hear, taste, touch, feel, and love. Notice your heart beating. Sit with this.
5. Talk to a trusted advisor
Talk to a friend, a coach, or a counselor before acting on these feelings.
6. Realize you are not your feelings
Understand that while you are feeling strong feelings - you are not your feelings, and acting on them could cause something you might regret later.
7. Journal it out
Journal about these strong feelings. Get it out. Be as petty as you need to be to feel a release. As you journal often when feeling these feelings, later you can go back and read it to get perspective on it.
8. Emrabce acceptance
Finally, realize that this person might very well be “your one,” and they are married now with children, and if they are your one and only, they are not “the one” right now.
Step into the reality of acceptance of what is now. This doesn’t mean your lives won’t change, but we are moving from a different mindset and being clear with our intentions.
Often, you might use denial as a way to cope with fear. The brain gets hijacked when situations like this pop up. You feel the love you had for the person as if it's happening now.
The brain chemistry can make you feel that high of being in love again. You believe this is a sign you're still in love with someone — a sign of true love.
What do you do with these feelings?
You feel them! You honor them and understand them for what they are: the past. And, possibly, a projected future with them.
It can also be a clue that you might not be satisfied or happy with your current situation.
Look at your life and yourself and see if you can find where you are dissatisfied with yourself, feeling lonely, or not getting your needs met in your current marriage.
Perhaps you have decisions in the past that you regret, and now this new opportunity comes along, and you want it to rekindle the feelings you had back then.
1. When these things come up at times, you might take your feelings as "truth."
Feelings aren’t the truth. They're just part of the equation for you to inquire. Actual love is more than those feelings. Perhaps those feelings were never allowed to surface and let go.
When you only see your life through your feelings, you often decide based on something that isn’t in your best interest. Emotions result from your mind attaching to a belief.
Your feelings have validity and not the totality of the answer we seek. You have the job of looking at those feelings and getting clear on the origin and the reality.
You might truly love someone still. It’s what you do with those feelings that is the most important.
2. You don’t have to act on them just be with them and feel them.
Acting on past feelings such as this can break up families, cause betrayal, and even traumatize in some cases.
Saying someone is truly "the one" based on the past isn’t realistic unless you’ve taken the time to reconnect, investigate the person as they are now, and spend quality time together.
Go through the process of allowing a new relationship to blossom. Everyone changes, and if you're falling in love with the idea of who they are instead of who they are now, you set yourself up for another unhappy relationship.
Acting on impulse based on feelings happens when we do not stop, pause, and look at it from the aspect of reality.
3. Heal and wipe the slate
Healing that old wound and starting with a clean slate can be difficult.
At times, your feelings are so intense it feels like they engulf you.
Acting impulsively based on unprocessed emotions could bring about situations that could strain a new relationship. Breaking up a family isn’t a matter to take lightly.
Love is a foundation, but it isn’t all required to build a relationship. Mindful couples will communicate, look with curiosity, and respond after they have worked through their feelings.
They know what they feel in the moment is an opportunity to grow as a person and as a couple. They work to find ways to deflate impulsivity.
If this is the love of your life, you’ve finally reunited, that is wonderful. Treat it as something to cherish and handle with care. Both partner’s feelings are valid, and finding their desires is paramount to moving forward. Do it with an open heart and no agenda.
More for You:
Lisa Hawkins is a certified life coach, certified cognitive-behavioral therapy coach, and a dating and relationship coach. She has 26 years of experience in personal growth and development, psychology, and human behavior with an emphasis on relationships.