There are many people who find it a lot easier sticking around in a one-sided relationship. The belief is that their spouse will one day come to his/her senses rather than just walk away. But as a lady, are there things you can do when he doesn’t love you back in a relationship?
To love be in love with someone who doesn’t love you back is a very painful experience to go through. In fact, it’s a whole different ball game just knowing about “unrequited love” and actually experiencing it.
Yet again, despite its hurt, it hardly stops most people, especially ladies, from looking for signs that maybe the love they seek is actually there after all.
For ladies, this is truer as their feelings can often get a better hold of them. Some ladies believe that their guy is still committed to them since he isn’t making any move to end it.
With that said, the truth of the matter is that a lot of guys seriously dislike any form of confrontation. They would rather hang on to a relationship than be the one to call it quit.
For instance, a Harvard University study of about 231 Boston couples found that women were often the ones who suggested the separation.
Why He Doesn’t Love You Back
There are various reasons why a guy may not love you back as you want him to. To begin with, the guy could simply be someone who you shouldn’t be in love with in the first place.
Or they just happen not to know how to love you the way you deserve to be loved. There are other times when the guy you’re in love with just want to “be in love” without embracing the commitment that comes along with it.
A guy may also not love you the way you want because he was mostly interested in the chase and the feeling it gives than you as a person. It might have all been about the dopamine-induced feelings of being in love.
There are also times when all a guy wants is to be friends with you or just “friends with benefits.” Then again, he may simply be interested in only what he’s getting from you and not in you as a person.
Effects of Unrequited Love
Loving a guy who doesn’t love you back makes you feel pain, grief, and an unfortunate sense of shame. In fact, nothing could be more painful than loving someone who doesn’t love you back.
Thinking about it once again, most of the time, ladies find it difficult letting go for a lot of emotional reasons. For most, it is not really about losing the guy but rather the feeling of loneliness that they dread. The fear of not having someone around them and starting all over again.
Yet, hanging onto a faltering relationship can lead to more emotional problems. This is partly because of the sadness and hurt it can cause in a lady’s life. Then, there’s also the issue of her losing her self-esteem altogether.
Unrequited love is a feeling that hits the heart the hardest. It feels like torture and sucks the wind out of your sails.
[adrotate group=”1″]What to Do When He Doesn’t Love You Back
The possible reasons why the guy you love may not love you in return are varied. And at times it might have to do with the particular situations surrounding your relationship.
Irrespective of what the reasons might be, one thing is for sure – he’s not going to start loving you instantly.
Truth is that it might be a waste of your precious time hanging around hoping he’ll eventually realize what he could have with you.
On the lighter side, according to social psychologist Roy Baumeister[1], 98% of us have been through an experience of unrequited love at one time or another in our lives.
So, now you know you’re not alone. There’s hope of you finding true love with someone else once again.
Are you feeling that your guy may no longer be in love with you? Do you currently contemplate what the best options for you might be?
If so, you might want to check out the following tips to help you determine your true course of action and to hopefully “cut the cord” and to do so with your self-esteem unimpaired.
1. Be Honest with Your Feelings
You are human and the feelings for your guy won’t just disappear like that because you’re running from them.
Truth is that you were truly in love with them and you need to stop trying to deny this reality. You cherished them and probably was planning your future with them in it.
It’s never easy to forget someone you’ve truly loved. Pretending that they are not there anymore won’t make them magically go away.
The best way to go about it is to acknowledge the way you truly feel about your guy rather than trying to suppress the feelings.
You need to realize that there’s no need to feel ashamed because you were not loved in return. It doesn’t in any way make you weak, pathetic, or foolish.
Instead of suppressing your feelings of being hurt, you need to rather be brutally honest about how exactly you feel. Attempting to repress your emotions will only make things harder for you in trying to get over him.
This is important as the first step towards resolving any problem is by recognizing the problem. Thus, it’s only when you’re able to express how you truly feel to yourself that you’ll know exactly what you have to deal with.
Otherwise, you’ll find yourself stuck in a place where you’re not allowing yourself to deal properly with the truth behind the pain you’re going through.
2. Avoid the Blame Game
The reason why the blame game is bad for you is that it keeps you trapped in negative thoughts. Such thoughts and state of mind depletes you of the energy you need to stand and move forward.
Blaming yourself or your guy has a bitterness that is often associated with it that holds you back from healing. In fact, blaming yourself can easily create a lack of self-confidence.
Thus, you need to avoid taking it personal or blaming yourself because none of it is actually your fault.
This is because in loving someone, there’s never a 100% chance that they’ll love you in return. It’s the risk everyone takes when falling in love with someone else.
While trusting your feelings, it’s also important to realize that you can be wrong about things. And there’s nothing wrong with that because as humans none of us is perfect – not by a long shot.
Also, none of us has control over who we fall in love with. For instance, you have no control over falling in love with this person. In like manner, this person doesn’t have total control over his ability of loving or not falling in love with you.
Thus, blaming yourself or this person would be completely unfair to both of you. Just accept the fact that you cannot control what other think, believe or accept into their lives.
The reality is that you can feel upset about your guy not loving you without necessarily blaming him or yourself.
You’ll however need to do whatever you can to ensure that you don’t turn your disappointment into hatred or bitterness towards your guy.
3. Reassess Your Relationship
Also, it’s important that you undertake a sincere assessment of your relationship status. There’s one very important thing you can do that will help you here.
What you can do is to make a list of all what you hoped your relationship should have become by now. Then, compare it with what is on ground at the moment.
If your gut instincts are telling you that you might just be on the edge of losing him, then you just might be right.
Truth is, nothing you can say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. She may never love you, not now or ever. And if you are courageous in initiating, extending, or deepening a difficult conversation, you may feel even more anxious and uncomfortable, at least in the short run.
4. Talk Things Out with a Trustworthy Confidante
When dealing with incidences of unrequited love, it is very important not to keep your feelings to yourself. You must avoid shutting yourself off from the people you trust.
Feeling rejected can put you in an emotionally fragile state. At such periods, the temptation is always very strong to not share your frustration and grief with friends and family. Yet, it’s something you need to avoid at all cost.
Turning to your support network of trusted family and friends at this period will greatly help build up your confidence. They’ll also help you remember that you’re truly worthy of love and can make you feel so much better.
Many people have experienced unrequited love before you and got past it. So, there might be a lot you can take away from listening to their experiences. While describing less to them, they would be able to understand and empathize even more with you.
Also, since the issue of unrequited love is quite popular, you can easily find a lot of books and movies on the subject that might help you get over your guy. This is a good option when you don’t feel like talking about it with someone else.
Also, therapists count. The good ones know how to listen and ask relevant questions that you might not have taken into consideration.
[adrotate group=”1″]5. Try Letting Go
The fear of most ladies for sticking around a guy who no longer loves them is that of being left alone again.
However, things can sometimes be quite difficult depending on how long you have been in the relationship. And more importantly, how much emotional energy you might have put into it.
So, it might require real personal determination to come to terms with the reality of the situation of your relationship. More difficult might be the decision that it’s time to move out and move on with your life.
Going through most of these emotional experiences might become hurtful as there’s the tendency you might start feeling jilted. But you need to remind yourself that it’s all part of the process of letting go and getting your life back on track.
6. Is He Really Worth It?
Is this Romeo really worth all the fuss? Think of all the negatives about this guy that you’ve been brushing aside as inconsequential.
Do you remember 500 Days of Summer? Remember how the guys got a dose of their own medicine?
Maybe you just need to clean those rose-colored glasses you’ve been wearing all along.
He probably wasn’t all that good or fun to be around in the first place. You just made yourself believe he was and now it’s time to get over all that!
7. Give Yourself Time to Heal
Grieving is a natural process involved in any loss that ultimately leads to healing. Yet, healing doesn’t happen in a day as it takes energy, time, and effort.
To heal, it’s requisite that you give yourself the time to grieve the loss of something so valuable as the loss of love. It’s not easy to let go of what you thought you had with your guy or hoped would develop out of the relationship.
In fact, the grieving process is much healthier than trying to suppress, deny, or minimize the emotions you’re feeling. Denying or suppressing your true feelings will only make matters worse in the long run.
Thus, you need to remember to avoid holding back your feelings but instead letting them out. Also, keep in mind that healing from emotional pains can be difficult and take longer than you might expect.
With that said, it’s also important to avoid wallowing in despair. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with grieving as long as you don’t get stuck in it.
While it’s okay to feel sad over not being loved in return by your guy, it’s not okay if you don’t try to get focused on your life again. You must make sure not to allow the act of grieving become a habit of yours.
Try practicing self-care and focus on expressing yourself in various ways even if it’s through crying every once in a while. Just let your emotions loose one way or another and let yourself heal.
[adrotate group=”1″]8. Cut-off All Ties That Bind You
Distancing yourself from the person who has hurt you is probably the first step to healing yourself.
This might sound pretty difficult given the feelings that you’re currently grappling with. However, it’s very important that you cut-off all ties with your guy.
If he doesn’t love you back, then there’s no need giving him the right to contact you whenever he wants to.
The goal should be to make it difficult for them to contact you and vice versa. You’re to avoid anything that will make you come in contact with your guy.
This is where application of the No Contact Rule becomes extremely important. You need to keep him out of your sight while at the same time purging and disengaging your thoughts, mind, and soul of him.
Thus, you need to reclaim whatever space in your life they once held. It’s a space reserved only for the people who truly love and care for you.
If you feel you’ll call or negatively text them, you might want to consider blocking and altogether deleting their number. And it’s not going to the extreme if you unfriend/unfollow them and block them on all your social media accounts.
Also, it’s important to avoid places you know you might meet him. At the same time, try to avoid people or things that might remind you of him.
Get Rid of All Souvenirs
In this vein, you might want to also get rid of his pictures, the various gifts he bought you, and in fact just about anything that might remind you of him.
A good thing you can do as you go through each item you are saying goodbye to, is to think of the memory associated it and also saying goodbye to it in your mind. Harsh you might say, but very therapeutic and necessary.
There might also be the very unpleasant need for you to stop listening to the songs that you connect with them. This is necessary even if its just in the beginning.
You need to do everything necessary to break the addiction you have to him. Thus, the need to change some of your current habits.
Try to effectively distract yourself from him and redirecting your energy and thoughts towards other important things.
This is the best way to effectively remove him from your mind and heart. It is one thing that will greatly help you to quickly get over him.
9. Believe You’ll Find True Love Again
While settle for some “love crumbs” when you can have a totally devoted love you can call yours forever?
As earlier mentioned, a lot of ladies dread being alone and starting all over again. This is one of the main reasons why a lady would remain with a guy who does not love her in return.
Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of all of this is the fact that many ladies believe there will never be another man for them. Thus, they feel they’ll remain alone forever if they break up with their current guy.
But I want you to know that you’re dead wrong if you’re thinking that you’ll never love this much again.
Except this is your first love, you must have realized by now that the heart can always find space for a new and even more exciting love.
This guy is not perfect by a long shot and you can certainly live happily without him in your life. You need to realize that you’re fully capable of loving someone else again.
The fact that your guy is not returning your love simply means that you’re not meant for each other. It’s probably a pointer to the fact that there is someone better for you out there.
Thus, you need to learn to never give up on love, no matter what. Keep the faith believing that one day your Prince in Shining Armor will come and sweep you off your feet.
[adrotate group=”1″]10. Self-Love, Baby!
The true and only cure for unrequited love is simply self-love. There’s a need for you to refocus all your energy from this guy and redirect it towards loving yourself again.
Use this period to appreciate yourself, now more than ever. You need to first fully detach and distract yourself from your guy. Then, plunge yourself into stuffs that make you truly happy.
Spend quality time with yourself and with your trusted friends and family as you get to know who you are all over again. Give yourself some good self-care and self-love.
This period of being alone is a really great time to actually get to know yourself and what exactly you want from life and love going forward.
Make taking good care of your physical appearance as well as your physical and mental health a new priority.
Embrace your new single life and start working on your personal growth.
If there are aspects of your life that you’d like to develop, then go for it not necessarily because your guy didn’t like it.
Always remember that you’re not doing any of these in an attempt to win his love. You’re doing them simply because they bring you joy and they’re what you truly want.
Avoid trying to put your life on hold until you’re in a new relationship. Instead, try and live a full and interesting life every day that passes by. Before long, you’ll come to realize that you’re the true creator of your own happiness.
Your internal and outwardly radiating new happiness increases the chances of you finding the true love you seek.
11. No More Self-Pity, Please!
Make a reverse and don’t you try going down the “what’s wrong with me?” road. If a guy doesn’t love you back, it simply holds nothing good for you.
No matter how you may be feeling presently, realize that you are not a loser. Just think about all the situations in the past that appeared insurmountable to you. If you got over them, this present situation will not be an exception.
Once again, remember that you’re not a loser, he just doesn’t realize what he is missing.
So, stop dwelling in the past and hanging on to a small sliver of hope that this guy will one day come around. You need to accept reality for what it is and move on with your life.
In Conclusion…
If the love you dreamt of blossoming between both of you didn’t blossom, then maybe you were just not meant for each other. So, it might be time to let him go and move on with your beautiful life.
You need to let go of all the negative emotions that might start building up within you during this process. They will do you no good on your new journey to true happiness and love.
Start pulling your life back together again – no one but you can do this. Get involved in ego-boosting diversions like fitness training, or improving your career. You might also consider getting involved in community service or restarting a former favorite hubby.
Learn to be free again and let happiness radiate through you making you a sexier catch for your Mr. Right.
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