How to stop loving someone who doesn't value me?

Love arrives suddenly, for greater or worse. It is unconcerned with reasonable assessments of what is best for us from a pragmatic standpoint. It just appears as a wave of feelings when we fall in love and affects our way of perceiving life in a matter of days or weeks.

As a result, there is nothing to prohibit unrequited love or an obviously asymmetrical one in which one member of the pair provides a lot while the other does not devote much time, effort, or passion. As a result, many people find themselves asking the age-old question: "How can I quit loving someone who does not appreciate me?" This is precisely what we shall discuss in the following lines.

Characteristics of unrequited love

As we have seen, although couple relationships are made up (or should be made up) of two people who love each other and who form an emotional bond, love can perfectly occur unilaterally. Loving someone does not imply that someone loves us , as many people painfully discover throughout their lives. But that does not mean that we should resign ourselves to passively suffer the consequences of that disappointment.

True, one cannot directly manage their own emotions, but we can take different steps to ensure that the terrible time passes as fast as possible and that our attention is focused on life projects that allow us to be happy.

So the key is to stop making it a priority to spend time with or think about the person who didn't love us back. Returning love does not stop hurting overnight, but if we do not nurture it by obsessing and ruminating about it, its psychological ramifications and relevance will fade away in a matter of weeks.

How to stop loving someone who doesn't value you

To learn how to get on your way without obsessively worrying that someone doesn't love you, follow these steps.

1. Avoid reminders

As much as possible, avoid exposing yourself to contexts that bring back memories related to that person. Do it in a reasonable way, since in practice it is impossible to avoid this kind of stimuli. Take into account the most relevant ones, and adopt habits that do not make you think about them.

On weekends, for example, switch bars for drinks or go for walks to different locations. Similarly, it is preferable that you avoid contact with this person at first, but this does not imply that you should engage in a hostile relationship with him.

2. Take a distance perspective

In almost any situation, it is possible to adopt a detached perspective that allows us to analyze what is happening in a calmer and more objective way. This is very useful when working on love problems, since it helps to discard the idea that the psychological pain we feel in the face of the frustration of not feeling loved describes what we are worth.

Thus, it is a way to have a more realistic and reasonable view of oneself, one that is not subject to the pessimistic biases that appear when experiencing heartbreak due to rejection by someone who does not value us.

After all, that person does not know us completely and precisely: his perception of us is influenced by how we have related to him, which is a way of interacting that we have not used with others.

3. Think about what you know about yourself and that the other does not know

Make a list of positive things you know about yourself that you believe the person who does not value you enough does not know. The point of this is not to prepare a list of arguments to persuade her to love you, but rather to remind you that, beyond the image of you that reflects how that person relates to you, you have many strengths that you must not overlook.

4. Give yourself time

It is important not to set unrealistic goals for how long it should take to recover emotionally. If you think that in three days you will be fine and this does not happen, that can make you more obsessed with the problem , make it last longer.

As a result, it is best not to set a short-term goal that marks a time when you should feel good. Set yourself daily goals that have nothing to do with feeling one way or the other, but with doing specific actions that lead you to be excited about other projects, whether in company or alone.