How To Stop Loving Someone: 11 Ways To Move On

11 Tips on How To Stop Loving Someone

Although it’s a difficult task, figuring out how to stop loving someone can be an important and meaningful choice — one that involves gaining distance and connecting with other people and activities in your life that bring you joy.

Stopping loving someone may feel impossible and take time, but it is entirely achievable. By letting go, you create space to embrace new relationships — and to nurture love for yourself.

Here are some practical tips to help you stop loving someone:

1. Accept That You Still Love Them

While it may seem counterintuitive, a helpful first step in ceasing to love someone is actually accepting that you love them in the first place. Research shows that avoiding your emotions can actually make it harder to cope and change your thinking patterns.

This can, in turn, change the course of painful emotions like love.¹ To accept your love for this person, carefully examine why you love them and how they make you feel without judging the fact that you still love them.

2. Consider the Relationship for What it Was

Once you’ve accepted that you still love this person and what it is about them you love, it can be helpful to explore other areas of the relationship, such as what needs of yours weren’t met and what you wish were different.

List these out factually (for example, “This person avoided spending time with my family, and that’s something I love doing”) and keep the list somewhere you can return to if you need a reminder of why you need to move on.

3. Identify How Loving Them Is Out of Line With Your Values

Considering the relationship for what it was often illuminates the ways in which loving this person is out of line with your values. To stop loving someone, identify your core values (e.g., “honesty” or “passion”) and list out the ways that loving this person doesn’t align with them.

For example, “Loving someone who is a homebody doesn’t align with my value of spontaneity.” Because one of the functions of values is to influence how you choose to live your life, looking at how loving the person doesn’t align with your values can help you move on from them.

4. Act Opposite to Love

Emotions often trigger “action urges,” which are behaviors you feel compelled to act on. For example, when you feel love for someone, you might want to reach out to them or revisit old photos. To disrupt this cycle, try choosing an opposite action.

Instead of contacting the person, call a friend or turn off your phone entirely. Research shows that acting against emotional urges can break emotional cycles and even reverse them. Remember, consistently practicing opposite actions is key to achieving meaningful change.

5. Remove Reminders of Them

To stop loving someone, try removing reminders of them to help you stop thinking about them. Consider discarding items like shared purchases or photographs, or storing them out of sight. By avoiding as many reminders of the person as you can, you’re changing the way your brain experiences the love you’re trying to stop.

Studies show that specific and unique areas of the brain become activated when viewing the face of someone you love romantically, and that this kind of activation is stronger than simply thinking about someone or hearing their voice.^3,4

6. Get Physical Distance

It can also be helpful to set boundaries around engaging with the person you’re trying to stop loving. While it may not be possible to avoid the person entirely (perhaps you live in the same small town), consider other ways to get distance such as by going to a gym you know they don’t belong to.

Having space between you will help you avoid cues (such as seeing their face) that might prompt feelings of love, and will also help you adjust to — and accept — life without them.

7. Make Contact Hard

Along the lines of getting physical distance, it can also be helpful to increase technological distance by removing them from social media and considering deleting their phone number to help you stop loving them.

While some may choose to (or have to) continue communicating with the person they’re trying to stop loving, it can be helpful if you have the option to take these steps, as communicating with the person may encourage feelings of love or hopefulness that the relationship could work.

8. Prioritize Other Relationships

One way to feel less love toward someone is to direct that energy elsewhere. Feeling love and other emotions (such as happiness, excitement, and compassion) with other people gives you the opportunity to redirect yourself away from the person you’re trying to stop loving and sometimes even away from the emotion “love” altogether.

9. Take Up a New Hobby

Exploring a new hobby can help ease unwanted emotions by providing a healthy distraction and introducing positive feelings like joy and excitement. Choose activities that challenge you—something neither too easy nor too difficult. As an added benefit, a new hobby can help you build a sense of identity separate from the person you’re trying to stop loving.

10. Practice Loving Yourself

Another way to stop loving someone is to redirect that love toward yourself. Loving yourself can take many forms. Consider getting in the habit of asking yourself, “What do I need?”, listening for the answer (e.g., “a bath,” “to call a friend,” etc.), and giving that to yourself. You can also practice loving yourself by self-validating.

A simple way to self-validate involves saying to yourself “It makes sense that I…” and inserting a feeling or desire, such as “…feel lonely,” or “want to feel loved.” Loving yourself will help redirect you away from thoughts such as, “I’d be better with them,” or “What’s wrong with me for still loving them?” which make you more vulnerable to unwanted emotions, including love.

11. Don’t Give Up on Love

Giving up on love altogether may be tempting, however doing so might increase the likelihood that you develop resentment for the person you’re trying to stop loving. You may have thoughts such as, “I can’t believe they ruined love for me.”

These thoughts actually direct more attention and energy toward the person you’re trying to stop loving, making it harder to let them go or find another person who is better able to meet your needs in a loving relationship.

When to Seek Professional Help

Speaking with a therapist can be beneficial if you need extra emotional support, are struggling to handle repeated contact from the person you’re trying to stop loving, or are dealing with symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress. Therapy may also be essential if the person you’re trying to stop loving was abusive.

If you’ve repeatedly tried to end a relationship but find it difficult to let go, a therapist can help you explore the reasons behind this struggle. This is especially important if unhealthy relationships in your past have contributed to insecure romantic attachments.⁵

If you feel professional help would be valuable, consider reaching out to a therapist. You can use an online therapist directory to find a therapist, or use one of the many online therapy platforms for virtual therapy sessions.