Heartbreak

How To Forget About Someone You Love

Photo: Getty
woman looking up toward the sky

The hardest part of breaking up isn't the actual breakup — it's trying to forget someone you love and move on to live your life without them.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of regrettably ending a loving relationship with someone you cared about, then you’re fully aware that breaking up sucks. Heck, I’ve broken up with several cats I had and that sucked. Human breakups tend to hurt perhaps a million times more.

You can get listless, depressed, scarf down multiple cartons of Häagen-Dazs, a bag of Doritos, or maybe just not eat anything at all for days on end. You can bore your friends with all of the memories or totally isolate yourself and not talk to anyone. You can feel like your life has ended, and to be real, a part of it has. You can wallow in that for days and weeks.

Or you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and rejoin the human race. Learn how to forget someone you love, and move on.

Please choose the latter, because reliving that searing, knife-in-the-heart emotion is so detrimental to your well-being . . . it really is.

RELATED: How To Get Over Someone And Move On After A Breakup As Soon As Humanly Possible

Six ways to forget someone you love

1. Allow yourself to grieve.

You’ve lost someone. You’ve lost your Smoochy-Face, your Honey-Bear, your Boo. It’s over. Allow yourself to curl up on your bed and cry until your eyeballs feel like they’re about to drop out.

Give yourself one good week of crying, sniffing, boo-hoo’ing, and just plain ole feeling miserable. One Week.

Granted, you’re probably not going to feel healed after one week, but lying around depressed as hell for any longer than that is not good. You can still grieve but grieve on your feet. Get up.

2. Forgive him — and yourself.

If there is any amount of hatred inside you toward him, even an infinitesimal amount, do try to forgive.

Forgiveness really isn’t about the other person, it’s all about you — you're letting go of old, ugly hurtful feelings so that you can live again — because you’re not tied to the past.

And definitely forgive yourself for any mistakes you made. No one’s perfect no matter how much we think we are. You’re not the first and certainly not the last to make mistakes in a relationship. Don’t be hard on yourself.

3. Figure out the lesson you can learn.

Look at the whole relationship objectively if you can (I know that’s hard, but put on your Big Girl panties and just do it).

What mistakes did you make? What would you have done differently? What lesson did you learn from this?

Was it that relationships take a ton of work? Was it that you need to pick your battles? Could it have been an excess of jealousy? Or, perhaps, an inability to listen more attentively?

Perhaps, it was something positive such as, “I’m worth more than I’m being given credit for and I need someone who will appreciate me.” If that’s it, then you get major applause!

RELATED: How Long It Takes To Get Over A Breakup (And What Can Speed Things Up)

4. Really let go.

Oftentimes, there is such an urge to “be friends.” Just give each other a call every now and then to “see how you’re doing.” Uh-huh! Let go. Breaking up is hard enough. Keeping the person around, even if just on the periphery of your life is much harder.

You need your space. And your space should exclude him, his friends, his family, his dog, his cat and his pet gerbil. Do not tweet him, Facebook him, or technologically contact him in any way.

Cleanse your home of every vestige of him. If he left sweaters, an old pair of sneakers or a toothbrush at your place, mail them to him. Have a friend hold on to any special pictures or memorabilia that you feel you can’t destroy until you’re strong enough to deal with them. Don't read all his old letters and cry yourself to sleep.

And, if you really want to let go of it all, think about the yucky stuff he did — he was cheap, he snored like a buffalo, he was obnoxious at your parent’s house, he didn’t like the way you dressed, he ignored your birthday (anniversary, etc.). Don’t get too into that or you’ll feel resentment.

5. Stay active.

As you learn how to forget someone you love, there are about a billion feelings swirling around. Your emotions seem to be either on fire or dead. You want to cry, you want to scream out of anger. Emotions can and will catch up with you and do a number on you if you let them.

Stay active. Find a physical activity that lets you put all those emotions out there, but in a constructive way. Take Salsa lessons, go roller-blading, join a gym. For those more cerebral, go to a spa and get the whole zen treatment. Let a masseuse knead you, rub you and massage all those worries away.

But don’t, for goodness sake, stay alone until you’ve gotten over your funk.

6. Talk to your closest friends.

Hopefully, you didn’t neglect all your friends while you were tied up with your relationship. Talk it out and listen as they give their opinions. Hear what they have to say.

It doesn’t mean they’re right but it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. But gain whatever insight they may have on the situation.

RELATED: 12 Ways To Get Over A Crush (Even When It Feels Impossible)

Mari Lyles is a YourTango contributor, and a Certified Life Coach (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC)) and Certified Relationship Coach (Relationship Coaching Institute (RCI)).