Letting Go Of A Relationship (You Never Had)

Ever had a crush or a one-night stand that you caught feelings for and took it too far? Obsessing over him over, and over again? Creating an illusion of fairytale love in your own head? Well you NEED to read this. It's extremely long, but so enlightening, so bear with me.

There are two big questions hovering in the comments recently that pretty much amount to the same thing:

How do I let go of the guy that didn’t reciprocate my feelings?

How do I let go of the guy that I didn’t actually have a relationship with?

In essence, how do you let go of a one-sided attraction which in your mind has created a relationship out of…your feelings?


For a start, you can’t ‘break up’ when there is nothing to break up from. The only person you have to break up with is you and your rather overactive imagination and feelings.

The issue here isn’t really about ‘him’ as he’s not really part of the equation when you’ve created an illusion rather than keeping your feet in the real world – the issue is about you and the fact that you don’t want to let go of your feelings, your obsession, your drama.

There are four key reasons why these situations come about:

You are a queen of projection. You choose men that cater to your own negative self-fulfilling prophecy and are likely to leave you ‘crushing’ on them and then you project the feelings that you think you have on them and assume that because you think you feel a certain way about them, they should feel that way about you too. You want them to notice you, to see you in the way that you see them, and you conduct the great majority of this stuff in your head without communicating it to them and then wonder why they haven’t reciprocated your feelings.

You think that your feelings are big enough for the two of you. You lose all sense of proportion and become so consumed in how you feel that you want him to be swept up in all the love you have to give and that one day he’ll catch up to how you feel and return it. Trust me, they don’t.

You don’t actually want to be in a relationship. You’re living in a dream world and afraid of being rejected in the real world. In choosing men who are aloof and unlikely to be interested in you, you get to avoid having to be hurt in a way that you’re trying to avoid. Instead, you build sandcastles in the sky in your head and then feel rejected by your own daydreams because the reality is that you need some sort of inspiration for these illusions and he is not a part of your life. You’re very emotionally unavailable.

You don’t want to let go. As many of us have discovered, even if it’s the most toxic thing to continue feeling as we do or being involved with someone, we continue, not only because it’s a bit like ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ but also because even when there is nothing or it’s crap, we don’t want to let go. We don’t want to get real with ourselves in case we find that we have something difficult or painful to look at, we don’t want to admit that we’re often creators of our own pain, and we certainly don’t want to admit that we’re letting go of something that didn’t exist, and if it did, it was for the most part in our heads.

Remember, it’s a bit difficult to make someone accountable for something that is a grand illusion in your head when you could have been making them accountable for real behaviours. Likewise, you can’t wonder why someone isn’t being and feeling what you want them to be when they’re not part of the relationship in your head.

These men end up acting as ‘inspiration’ for our latest round of feelings and it’s like they put some input in at the beginning and then we just take it from there, refusing to acknowledge whether they are even there or not and if they are behaving in line with what’s in our heads and if not, why not.

Quite frankly, any misery you are feeling is for the most part, your own creation because you are not interested in keeping your feet in reality and have been too busy wallowing in your own world. In doing this, you’re not seeing signs that you need to get real, and you’re not hearing signs that you need to get real. In fact, the person may have no clue that you are even interested in them, or if they do, they may have told you that they’re not interested and you switched to unreciprocated feelings mode and hovered there expecting him to see you in the way that you want to be seen and magically catch up with your feelings.

It doesn’t matter what they feel – you’re only interested in the fact that you feel what you feel and you want them to feel that too.

The thing is, from the moment that you recognise that you 1) are not having your feelings reciprocated and/or 2) that you’re not in a relationship with them, major warning signals should be going to your brain that there is something seriously wrong if you are still trying to get them to reciprocate and obsessing about them over an extended period of time.

It’s one thing to have a crush and it’s the other to crush the crap out of yourself in a self-destructive pursuit of pain and then blame it on someone else.

If you have made the choice to continue loving and chasing him with much of it taking place from your head as you wait for crumbs or nothing at all, you’re on a serious avoidance mission because it’s like you want to hide away on these self-created feelings of rejection rather than get out there in the real world and risk yourself in a real relationship.

Whilst I recognise that in some instances, we can be misled by a guy to believe that he feels more than he does, I tend to find that women who are in this situation are invariably in it because they decided that they were crazy about someone and don’t want to let that, and the fantasy go.

You’ve decided that you want him, love him, and to hell with it, you’ll find a way to show him that he should notice and love you too. You’re gonna ride this imaginary donkey of love till it collapses.

We’re back at the juncture again where we think that deciding that we love or feel something about someone creates an automatic IOU.

We’re also back at that juncture where we’re loving without any foundation for loving and then refusing to opt out because we don’t want to let go of the fantasy or the illusion and get real…and deal with our problems.

And trust me, if you’re doing this, you have some big issues to deal with because you’re engaging in incredibly self-destructive behaviour and repeatedly creating a rejection situation for yourself and then wondering why you’re in pain – because you did it, not him!

In all honesty, the only way that these situations end is when YOU end ‘it’. You don’t need to say anything because to be honest, I think some of these men would be a touch confused if you told them that something was over that they didn’t think had started.

Stop calling, stop chasing, stop texting, stop seeing a bread loaf when there is barely a crumb.

Stop waiting, stop hoping, stop projecting, stop the madness.

Stop creating drama and then wondering why you are miserable – as it’s all one sided, you are the master orchestrator of your own soap opera.

Commit to being in the real world. Take things at face value so when he doesn’t call, it’s because he doesn’t want to speak with you, not because he’s waiting for you to make a move. When you don’t hear from him for months, it’s not because you did something wrong that you need to figure out – it’s because you are not in a relationship and whilst you are daydreaming the crap out of your life, he is out there living his.

Yes that’s right living and if you spend your energy wanting men that don’t want you and then obsessing about why they don’t want you, your life will be at one mega grandstill.

If you point blank cannot accept that 1) it’s for the most part in your head, 2) if he doesn’t want you then it’s time to start learning to stop wanting him, 3) you’re creating your own drama and pain, then you must at least accept that you are 100% responsible for where you are now and that you don’t get to let yourself off the hook and blame him.

And then go and talk to someone because spending your life and brain time escaping from the real world whilst hurting yourself and not wanting that to change says that it’s time you spoke to someone and got to the heart of your issues.

But if you are at that point where you want to and can do something about this, don’t try to make things anymore complicated than they are because when you let go of something that doesn’t and didn’t exist, you have that power and are in the driving seat of what happens to you. Don’t make out like he has to do something to end this – you have to do something and cold turkey it out so that you can gain some real perspective and get to the heart of why you are engaging in this self-destructive behaviour so that you don’t go back.

Edited by Jess - Aug 12 2012 at 2:20pm

GOTDAMN!!! That was a good article!

I wanted to quote some but EVERYTHING was just so well said I'd be quoting the whole article. Kept getting hit; bang, bang, bang with the truth lol.

But seriously, I enjoyed this. It really made me see what I already knew what I was doing wrong in a past 'relationship.' I took his words rather than looked at his actions for what they truly were. I have since changed and will never be that fool again. Thanks for sharing.

Edited by ummmok - Aug 13 2012 at 3:39pm

Truth.com. But fantasies are like natural drugs...they are highly addictive. I am guilty of doing this but in my heart I do tell myself that it isn't real and not to make something out of nothing. 

real sh*t

 Stop telling the truth girl... this was one POINT.