You Can’t Force Someone To Love You!

One of the most important lessons we tend to skip out on in life is that we can’t force people to love us. We can woo them, lower our pride and apologize to them, appear confident, and even fake our skills and importance—and the people who’ve decided not to love us still won’t love us.

Why is that?

It’s because changing someone’s perception and feelings is impossible. We don’t have the capability to manipulate another person’s beliefs because his or her beliefs took weeks, months, or years to form. Beliefs are deep-rooted and can only be changed with awareness and sea-deep introspection.

In other words, a person must want to change beliefs. And knowing how stubborn people are, they want to change them only when they feel forced to change them. Something must go so wrong for them that they feel they have no other choice but to mature and adapt.

That’s how it is for most people. We’re so convinced we’re right that we see only what we want to see until we’re proven otherwise. That’s when we finally do something about it.

So if there’s a person you love and that person doesn’t love you back, know that you can’t just say a few magic words and miraculously change the way this person feels about you. If you could, there would be no broken families, friends suing one another, heart-shattering breakups, and nasty divorces.

People would be able to force the person they love to fall in love with them and get their happy ever after ending. It would be like in the movies where ex-couples always reunite and live perfect ever-afters.

But unfortunately, relationships (especially romantic ones) don’t always turn out the way we want them to. Sometimes they come to an end because one person (the dumper) isn’t willing to change his or her mind about the dumpee.

The dumper is normally too stubborn to look at the relationship from a different angle and admit to making mistakes. That’s why the dumper chooses to hold on to the past by continuing to view the dumpee in whichever light he or she prefers.

If the light the dumper sees the dumpee in is bad, the dumper doesn’t want the dumpee around anymore. In his or her mind, the relationship has ended and so has the dumper’s cooperative attitude to meet each other halfway.

Nothing and no one can change the dumper’s determined mind anymore. Not even the dumper’s friends and family. They can just make matters worse if they try to tell the dumper that what he or she thinks and feels is wrong.

That’s why I’d like you to know that you can’t force someone to love you no matter how much you love him or her. You can’t do it even if you apologize, promise to change, or pretend that you’re the wisest and most relationship-material person in the world.

Insecure, forceful, or pretentious behavior will inarguably just smother, anger, and annoy this person—and make him or her treat you with the kind of respect that you’re giving him/her.

So don’t resort to begging and pleading, crying, screaming, and explaining to the man or woman that he or she is the most perfect person for you. Don’t say that you’re capable of becoming the best couple in the world either.

Deep inside, you know that it’s not true because if you were that compatible, the breakup wouldn’t have happened. You would have found ways to avoid the disconnection that led to the separation.

If you go against this basic breakup advice, you’ll likely end up boosting this person’s ego, decreasing your self-worth, and increasing your pain and suffering. You’ll complicate things and make yourself feel much worse in the process.

I know this sounds pessimistic, but the cold truth is that you can’t force someone to love you or fall back in love with you after he or she has stopped believing in your ability to make him or her happy.

You just can’t do it.

All you can do is maximize your chances of reconciliation by leaving the person in question alone to process unhealthy breakup emotions and enjoy your absence.

By leaving your unrequited love alone, I’m not talking about giving him or her just a little bit of room to breathe.

Leaving the guy or woman you love alone means no texting, no calling, no showing up unannounced, no nothing. It means you must cease all contact and start following one of the most difficult self-imposed rules on the planet; the indefinite no contact rule.

This rule will help you get some distance between you and the person you love, encourage you to lose reconciliation hope and fall out of love—and at the same time, empower you with badly-needed self-love.

The moment you recover to the point where you emotionally discern that you lack control over others’ romantic thoughts and feelings, everything will suddenly make sense to you.

That’s because you’ll stop competing for people’s love and recognition—and instead, understand that the only person you need to impress and surpass is the person you were yesterday. That’s what truly matters after the breakup. Focusing on your ex or the person who doesn’t love you doesn’t.

It’s a waste of time and emotions because no matter what you say or do, you’ll never impress that person. You’ll just get rejected and become more desperate for love and recognition.

This article is for those who are in denial or in any stage of romantic rejection, contemplating whether it’s possible to force someone to love you.

Why can’t you force someone to love you?

As you’re aware, people have a mind of their own. They decide what they think and how they feel about you. If they decide that you’re not a good person or that you don’t make them happy, forcing them to think differently will go against their understanding, pressure them, and make it extremely difficult for them to agree with you.

Due to their mentality (the way they think), they won’t budge an inch. They’ll refuse to change their decision and believe they’re right even if they think you made a good point.

People do this because they’re ruled by the ego. They would rather take a butt whooping than admit that there’s a slight possibility that they may be wrong and that they’ve made a rash decision.

Sticking with their decisions essentially feeds their ego. It empowers them with a strong sense of control and enables them to continue to feel victimized.

That’s why you can’t force them to love you. You can’t do it the nice way by staying friends with them and you certainly can’t do it the hard way by proving how loyal and supportive you can be. People like to think they have the power to control people around them, but that’s just an illusion.

As people, we are powerless. Those who think differently tend to suffer a lot when they try to manifest people into their lives and meet their resistance. They tend to feel rejected and as a result, think they must try harder to reattract them.

In reality, they must do the opposite, which is to accept their human limits and let the universe take care of that which is out of their control. You need to know that you’ll be much happier and more secure if you accept the fact that you’re just an ordinary human being who doesn’t have to seek approval by convincing people to appreciate you and stay with you.

You are who you are. And if they don’t like you, love you, and accept you, it’s not your fault. It’s theirs because they’re the ones who are focusing on your shortcomings and pointing out things they don’t like.

It’s their fault for refusing to communicate with you and working hard on improving their perceptions of you. So be proud of yourself for giving it your very best until the end. No matter how the relationship ended, you are the real winner because you made sure to keep your thoughts and beliefs good enough to maintain the relationship.

People almost always take romantic rejections very personally and suffer immensely. It sucks, but most of the time there’s not much we can do to prevent them. They’re out of our control as we’re not responsible for other people’s lack of positive thoughts and emotions. Not when they’ve absentmindedly destroyed their image of us and pretended it’s all our fault.

You’re probably in a lot of pain because your love wasn’t reciprocated, but you need to understand that people are entitled to their opinion and that breakups are almost never just one person’s fault.

Self-awareness and feelings of love come from within, which means that each and every person on this planet is in charge of his or her thinking patterns. Each one of us has to think positive thoughts and understand that negative thoughts beget negative feelings.

As Napoleon Hill, an author among the 10 best-selling self-help books of all time said (affiliate link to Amazon, “You become what you think about.” The thoughts you produce shape you into the person you are and the success you achieve.

You need to be aware of the kind of thoughts you think and make sure they’re healthy so that the results can be healthy too.

Below is a picture explaining why you can’t force someone to love you.

Romantic relationships require mutual agreement. They require couples to think the same thoughts and feel the same emotions.

If thoughts and feelings aren’t aligned, couples won’t be able to get/stay in a relationship. They’ll want different things from each other and face big incompatibility issues when they get to know each other. Maybe even sooner.

Don’t force someone to love you! Let him/her come to you

Since it’s impossible to make someone love you by force, it might be for the best to let go of that person as well as the expectations that come with it—and look after your own emotional and physical well-being.

By doing so, you’ll prove to yourself (and others) that your self-love doesn’t depend on someone else’s love, but rather on your self-esteem (the way you think of yourself).

The higher your self-esteem is, the less anxiety a person’s rejection will make you feel, and the quicker you’ll recover from rejection. So work on improving your perception of yourself and strive to become the best version of yourself.

If you take self-improvement seriously, you’ll soon stop feeling the need to run after someone who doesn’t want you and develop new healthy beliefs. Beliefs that you respect yourself far too much to allow yourself to seek people’s love.

Self-love alone will be more than enough to carry on with life.

Basically, you’ll intellectually as well as emotionally understand that breakup/relationship dynamics can’t be forced or manipulated. They must be respected.

So as difficult as it may be, respect them and let the person you love come to you. If he or she finds a reason to do so when the timing is right, you’ll most likely be the first to know about it.

You’ll receive breadcrumbs or a full-on invitation to meet up and immediately sense that the person in question is suddenly interested in talking to you. That’s when you’ll discover that this person either feels bad for hurting you or that he or she regrets pushing you out of his or her life and wants you back.

The only way to figure out what his or her intentions are is to give this person an opportunity to explain himself/herself. That’s when you can decide whether this person has learned his or her lessons or if you should continue moving on and improving yourself.

While you’re waiting, keep in mind that a person who loves you will come back no matter what. You won’t even have to lift a finger because he or she will need you back to stop feeling hurt (probably the way you do right now).

Love yourself no matter what!

Rejections are a part of life and happen to all of us. We encounter them in friendships, interviews, job opportunities, education, romantic relationships, and even families.

One of the main reasons they hurt so much is that as children, we’re always told to avoid them like the plague and to think of them as ultimate rejections – as the end of the world.

But the truth is that rejections are invaluable lessons. To optimistic people who embrace challenges in life, rejections are encouragements to try harder and a reminder that they should consider taking a different approach.

If you learn just one thing from this article, let it be that your failures, losses, and misfortunes don’t have to mean that you’re a failure and that your life will never be the same again.

On the contrary, unpleasant experiences can mean something completely different. They can tell you that your life can be amazing again if you learn from your ordeals and do your best to avoid history from repeating itself.

As you know, occasional rejections are inevitable. The key is to get back up and try again and again, and again until you find something that works and get to your desired destination.

So change the definition of the word “rejection” in your head to “new beginnings” and “new opportunities” and I guarantee that you’ll start to see the positive side of rejections and bad experiences. You’ll see that how affected you get by them depends on your attitude of the mind.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you’ll fall in love with rejections and want to get rejected more often, but that you’ll embrace them when they happen and refuse to let them control your thoughts and feelings.

Become happy with yourself again

People think that they need things to always go their way in order to be happy. But life doesn’t always go the way we want it to go. Sometimes things go against our expectations and disappoint us. That’s when we need to remind ourselves that it’s not the end of the world and that we’ll be okay.

Happiness is a state of mind, meaning that every person requires different things to be happy.

Some are happy with physiological needs such as water, food, clothes, and shelter while some of the richest people in the world who are much higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs require villas and expensive cars—and depress over the slightest financial setbacks.

Why is that?

It’s because of goals, expectations, and perceptions of failures. A rich person, for example, may stress over losing money more than a poor person. The reason for that is that the rich person has a rich person’s mentality and puts a higher priority on money.

He or she lives and breathes money and therefore, worries about it when things don’t go according to plan. A poor or average person, however, may not stress over money to that degree. Financial stability will still be extremely important to him or her, but that person will have different priorities in life. Priorities that aren’t about earning money, meaning that he or she will be able to cope with losing money better than someone who’s used to a luxurious lifestyle.

Earl Nightingale wrote, “Success is a progressive realization of a worthy goal.” What Earl meant was that those who are moving toward their goal and embrace rejections as a part of life are highly successful and much happier.

They accept the inevitable – the good and the bad and do their best every day to obtain that which they desire. They may, of course, not get it on the first, second, or even third try.

But eventually, with understanding, acceptance, and perseverance, they’ll get to the finish line and reap their rewards.

So try to think a bit differently about romantic rejections. Think of them as golden opportunities to identify your shortcomings and find different (better) solutions to your problems.

Do you agree that you can’t force someone to love you? Have you ever tried it and it backfired? Post your thoughts and experiences below.

And if you’d like to discuss how love works with us 1-on-1, check out our coaching options.

Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.