How to Fall Out of Love with Someone

Relationship Advice – I look around Costa Rica and see fake relationships based on materialistic things almost every single day. A 65 year old man and a 22 year old woman “in love.” So I usually go home and watch a movie and pretend that there is still true love out there. I had the pleasure of watching the movie “10 Years” last night, although it was a bit slow for me, the ending really brought some things to light that people face every day.

Some of these things were admitting that they their lives are not the dream that that present to everyone else and acknowledging the truth. Seeing how far you had come from the person you were and letting go of the things you were holding onto in your past.  Then the things that hit home most for me was both expressing your love to the girl that got away in the past and the other end of the spectrum letting that love of your life go.

Reeves (Oscar Isaac) is showing all the signs to Elise (Kate Mara) that he had feelings for her but she does realize his true feelings for her.  He become a famous singer and was famous for a song that Elise never heard. During one the scenes they are looking at high school pictures and there was one of her wearing yellow shoes and he told her he remembered the shoes……..then cut away they are doing karaoke and noticed his song was on the machine….so he sings it to her. This to me is true love but lets be honest most of the time it does not end up like this…..

We unfortunately end most relationships with pain and heartache, not singing a love song to the woman of our dreams and having her feel the same. Love is supposed to be this ultra-great emotion that leads to throbbing feelings of happiness, moments of unforgettable togetherness, and maybe flowers and jewelry, too. Unfortunately, the reality is that love often sucks. You fall in love with people who don’t love you back, you get rejected by your idealized romantic partner, or you find yourself pining for somebody who treats you like crap. But there is hope. Though there is no quick fix for a broken heart, there are things you can do to make it easier to fall out of love with someone. We talked to the experts about the fastest way to turn your love around.

Love and Addiction

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to stop loving somebody, but the two main ones are that they don’t return your feelings or they treat you badly. Love may feel like it’s something beyond your control, but psychological research shows that there are actually ways to tame this wild feeling. Rutgers anthropologist Helen Fisher has worked with neuroscientists to produce images of people’s brains while they are in the throes of deep love for someone else. What they found was that feelings of intense love activated the brain’s nucleus accumbens, a region associated with rewards — and with out-of-control addictions. As Fisher put it to me by phone, love activates the parts of our brains that are also activated in the brains of cocaine and cigarette addicts when they anticipate getting high.

So, Fisher recommends treating your love the way you would treat an addiction. “Throw out their cards and letters, or hide them in a closet,” she said. “Don’t call or look for them online. If you’re trying to give up alcohol, you don’t leave scotch on your desk.” Ideally, you want to stop thinking about the person entirely, so getting rid of objects that remind you of them will help.

How To Stop Obsessing

But how do you prevent yourself from having thoughts of the person? You can’t just throw your memories in a box. Oklahoma State University psychologist Robert Sternberg, author of “The Triangular Theory of Love,”, shared a few tips via email:

1. If you must think about the person, emphasize his or her negative characteristics. (We all have them!) Realize how, in the long run, you will feel lucky you got out of the relationship.

2. Reflect on the fact that relationships can never work unless both people are willing to make them work. In the long run, it never would have worked.

3. Find someone else. Nothing to get over someone like finding someone else to occupy your attention. But realize the risk: Transitional partners usually do not end up being permanent partners.

4. Keep yourself busy. Don’t even allow yourself the time to ruminate.

Let Some Time Pass

When I approached each of these experts with my question about falling out of love, many of them noted that they are rarely asked this question. Instead, they’re usually asked how two people can remain in love over time. And this is good news for those of you who want to carve that painful feeling right out of your brain. Generally, the passionate intensity of love doesn’t last. Sure, it can deepen into a lasting relationship or marriage, but it will never remain as intense or hurt as it is during that new relationship phase.

Fisher explained that there’s truth to the old adage that time does heal, even on a neurological level. She and her research team found that people who had been rejected in love showed reduced activity over time in the vental palladium, an area of the brain associated with feelings of attachment. To help your brain with the loss, she added, try getting lots of exercise to drive up your feel-good hormones like dopamine. And get lots of hugs from friends — touching is a way to drive up oxytocin in your system, which could help you to feel calmer.

Someday we might find that girl or guy that completes us, but the only was to do it is by letting go of the past and approaching the future with an open heart ready to accept the possibility of love and happiness with another person.  If we hold onto that pain and hope that one that got away come back, you may end up living alone with a bunch of cats later in life instead of waking up with that person that makes you smile and who you want to be the last thing you see before you close your eyes and the angel that fills your dreams.