Before we talk about how to stop loving someone who loves you, we need to make some things clear. Just because your partner hurts you from time to time, doesn’t mean that he or she doesn’t love you or deserve to be with you.
Relationships have ups and downs—and unless they’re unhealthy, you need to work on them and ensure that your love and commitment for your partner remain strong. By keeping them strong, you can avoid falling out of love due to occasional disagreements and doubts.
So don’t give up on the relationship the moment your partner does something that indirectly hurts you. Give up on your partner if he or she continues to hurt you despite asking him/her not to and trying to work on problems together.
That would be a good reason to fall out of love and protect yourself from additional pain and suffering.
To stop loving someone who has hurt you multiple times, you’ll have to do a few things. The most important tip I have for you is that you distance yourself from the cause of pain completely. Getting this person out of sight will allow you to partially block him or her out of mind as well.
It won’t instantly make you feel better, but it will slowly let you detach and decrease your emotional dependency. When that happens, you’ll feel disconnected from your ex and won’t worry that you might be making a huge mistake.
That’s because you’ll know that leaving was your only option.
When you leave your partner, keep in mind that technically, you’ll be the dumper. But emotionally, you’ll be the dumpee because you’ll have unprocessed feelings for your ex. You’ll need to accept that the relationship has ended and that you can’t change how your partner is no matter how badly you want to change your partner.
That’s why you should act like a dumpee and start the no contact rule immediately. This rule entails no texting, calling, liking your ex’s pictures, sending closure letters, or anything your ex didn’t ask for. No contact means no interaction with your ex, period.
If you do talk to your ex, you could feel guilty for leaving your ex and start doubting your decision. This is especially likely to happen if your ex promises to change once and for all and asks for one final chance.
What you need to understand is that a person who keeps hurting you needs a lot of time to change for the better. He or she also needs to stay away from you because that way, the person in question can see and feel that you’re gone and feel the need to make some positive changes.
In other words, if you resume the relationship and start investing in your ex again, you’re most likely going to show your ex that he or she can relax and stop investing in himself or herself.
And less investment doesn’t encourage self-growth. It hinders it significantly.
You need to be aware of that so you don’t take pity on your ex and cave in to the temptation. I’m not saying people can’t change because many dumpees certainly do. But most of them need months to see positive results and a few additional months to put their new skills to the test.
They need to put themselves in new (although similar) situations that trigger their automatic responses.
Pain can turn them into better people, but you need to understand you’re not someone exes start entirely fresh with. Exes already have certain perceptions of you and ways of communicating with you, so they feel tempted to operate on autopilot and treat you the way they always did.
To treat you differently, they need to regret their actions very much—and for a long time. They basically need to suffer because that’s the only way they can see they have things to work on and that if they don’t take you seriously that they’ll lose you.
If you can’t trust your partner (or ex-partner) not to hurt you again, you shouldn’t force yourself to give him or her another chance. You should first detach and regain your strength and rationality.
When you see things from a non-emotional perspective, you’ll also see whether your ex is a good person and worthy of your love and attention. You’ll see if he or she was the right person for you and if you want him or her back.
Right now, you feel (not think) that he or she is as you feel pulled toward this person. But that’s mainly because of everything you went through and because you feel hesitant about ending a relationship you’ve invested so much in.
Rest assured that this will change when you get some space from your ex and focus on yourself.
There are many things you can do if you want to stop loving someone who hurts you. We’ll discuss them in this article.
How to stop loving someone who hurts you?
Once you’ve broken up with your partner and got some space from him or her, it’s an absolute must that you figure out why you continued to allow this person to hurt you over and over again.
Was it because he/she kept promising to do better? Did you believe your ex would change and communicate better? Were you codependent on your ex?
It likely has something to do with your naivety and self-esteem. You probably didn’t love yourself enough and thought things would improve on their own. Because of such thinking, you continued to get hurt and felt that you still loved your partner.
What you actually felt (and still do) wasn’t just love, though. It was fear of letting go. You felt that if you let go of your partner is that you’d lose the time and emotional investment you’d put into the relationship.
This is now stopping you from stepping back from the relationship and doing what’s best for your health and emotional well-being.
It’s time to do something about that. You need to recognize that staying attached to your partner is hurting you and making you unhappy and that you’re not a bad person for detaching from a person who hurts you and doesn’t do anything to stop hurting you.
The best way to realize your partner isn’t good for you is to convince yourself he or she doesn’t have your best interests at heart, doesn’t communicate/do well in a relationship, and doesn’t care about your feelings.
Understanding what’s going on is very important because once you understand that you’re not getting what you’re supposed to be getting, you’ll see that the only thing left is to initiate the breakup and begin your healing process.
By separating from your partner who hurts you, you’ll regain your emotional independence and realize that your ex was the cause of most of your suffering.
You don’t need to look down on your partner and make your partner solely responsible for everything that went wrong because that will create a victim mentality and stop you from growing and making healthy internal changes.
But you should admit to yourself that your partner is no angel and that he or she neglected you and took you for granted.
Your partner also didn’t do anything to stop his or her harmful tendencies and merely continued to respond to negative stimuli. That’s why your partner failed to mature and let the relationship deteriorate rather than improve.
If you’re attached or in love with your partner but want to stop feeling that you need your partner, you need to gather the strength to disconnect from your partner. You must convince yourself that staying emotionally close to your partner is making you unhappy and that it’s dragging the breakup on.
How you do that is up to you.
But many people find the strength to pull away by talking to their friends and family. Their loved ones show them that it’s okay to feel sad, uncertain, and scared but that bad relationships need to end so they can give better ones a try.
If you don’t have anyone to confide in but want to stop loving a person who hurts you, there are other methods too. Write down your partner’s negative traits and behaviors on a piece of paper and try to convince yourself that someone who loved you and cared about you wouldn’t be treating you so horribly.
Yes, he or she might hurt you occasionally, but it wouldn’t happen that frequently, deliberately, and in such a vicious manner.
Give journaling, speaking to friends and family, and anything self-convincing that helps you see things from a rational perspective a try whenever you feel that attachment to your partner is preventing you from breaking up and being happy.
It may not feel right in the moment, but it will certainly make a lot of sense when you start to detach and realize you’ve been afraid of standing up for yourself and doing the right thing because of your emotional attachment to your partner.
Here are some tips on how to stop loving someone who hurts you. The tips may be easier said than followed, but you should try to be strong and follow them anyway.
If you keep getting hurt by a person who loves you, that person doesn’t love you or doesn’t know how to love you. It doesn’t matter what his or her deal is because he or she had plenty of chances to develop self-awareness and empathy but chose not to.
Now, the only reasonable thing left is to terminate the relationship with this person and recover emotionally.
It will likely take a while to process that the relationship has ended, but that’s because your partner has taken your strength and doesn’t make you angry (lots of hurt people do). You need to regain your power by remembering the things your ex said and did to hurt you and put you in the situation you are in today.
Therefore, to stop loving someone who hurts you, you have to want to respect and love yourself. You have to put yourself before your partner/ex-partner and stop being afraid of what your life will look like after the breakup.
Accept that it will take time to disconnect
If you feel connected to your ex after you’ve broken up, you probably feel that you had no choice but to break up with your ex. Your ex kept hurting you, but you needed to pull away and protect yourself.
This doesn’t mean that you love your ex but rather that you’re attached and that you made a rational decision to break up with your partner. You’ll need some time to disconnect emotionally and regain your composure.
How much time you’ll need I can’t say, but you probably won’t need as long as a typical dumpee (8 months). You made a decision to leave, so you’ll probably need a few months to process things. A few months should be enough for you to come to terms with the breakup and realize your ex wasn’t going to make you happy no matter what you said or did.
If you notice that you’re not over your ex after a few months, though, that doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you but that you need a bit more time. You need to continue to self-prioritize and be patient with your healing.
So if you want to stop loving someone you’ve broken up with, remember that it will take some time to accept the breakup and deal with its aftereffects. Try to stay busy and surround yourself with friends and family.
What are you doing to stop loving someone who hurts you? Have you initiated the breakup yet? Let us know in the comments below.
And if you’re not sure what to do yet and want to talk to us about it, sign up for coaching with us.
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. Learn more about me or get in touch today.
Dear Zan,
Thanks a lot for the interesting article. My Ex broke up with me about 6 months ago. We were together for 4 years, long distance for the most part due to Covid.
She was hurting so much, wanted to be close to me, she has an exteme anxious attchment style. She felt that she was never enough and cried after breaking up with me. I tried to talk to her for a week, she was hot and cold and would not believe that I could change. I went into no contact.
Fast forward 5 month, I traveled to her country, we talked. Apparently she went into a depression quickly after and jumped into a new relationship within a month. The new guy consold her and helped her through her childhood trauma. She moved in to his place within weeks and apartently loves him. Telling me he is my total opposite.
Once we met we talked about the past, she said I would not want to marry her and she was never enough for me. I told her she was and she said she loves me, so did I. We kissed multiple times and spent a few hours together.
The next time she left for holidays with him. Returning 2 weeks later she was totally different and closed off. The behaviour totally surprised me and I even pleaded a bit for the first time ever. I did sent her a short and brief thank you and goodbye mes the next day.
I am quite confused about the whole situation. Is this rebound even her being the dumper or was her behaving that way just final closure?
Hi Jack.
She’s into the new guy and met up with you/kissed you out of guilt and nostalgia. At the moment, she’s convinced the new guy is a good match for her and wants to give him a proper chance. I suggest you step away from the situation (stop hanging out with her). She’s two-timing you and needs to understand you respect yourself enough not to settle for less than you deserve.
The guy isn’t a rebound, but someone she’s emotionally ready to be with.
Kind regards,
Zan
BR,
Thanks for the context insofar your relationship’s circumstances in your recent comment. I like to think about how lucky we all are to have discovered this forum of Zan’s. I found Magnet of Success by googling “Why didn’t I leave sooner?”
I’m still learning lol. I guess you could say I look at life not so much analytically outside of work, where analytics are my profession, but rather I look at life now as being a state of always trying to learn and grow. So in that sense, I don’t regret meeting my dumper. All I could have done, I did do for that person. The more I neglected my own needs, the less he put forth investing in anything. Finally, contact dwindled to intermittent. It was the norm to be breadcrumbed every 2 months or so, for 2 years. I asked him to stop texting me, he would then text from burner numbers, sending pictures of girls he was seeing. I blocked these every time, but new burner texts would pop up every 2 months. Zan advised this guy was watering a dead plant. I was his mental crutch, a cruel game to make himself feel better. I finally just called the local police in my town, and turned over all the texts. So far I haven’t received anymore, I wish I had done this much sooner.
Hi Claire,
I guess I shouldn’t complain too much then – your situation was a whole new level of toxic…😳
Glad you’ve finally been able to make a clean break.
Re: “… it is almost too theoretical and demands a high degree of maturity and self-awareness from both the dumper and the dumpee.”
BR,
Yes I agree with you that sometimes these scenarios in the articles are incumbent on the dumper being mature and empathetic, and the dumpee not having too many character flaws. Wouldn’t it be great if that were true in the real world? That’s why Zan is actually not in favor of reconciliations. After infatuation has worn off, people are their true selves. The majority of the time that’s when you find out whether or not you’re paired off with someone who is exploitative, weak minded, easily led, immoral, cruel, and so on. Zan rightfully points out that change can take a lifetime, and even then only if the offender has something bad happen that causes self reflection. If the person is insulated enough from hardships, they might never change and forget about you.
Hi Claire,
Thank you for following up. I always enjoy reading your posts. You have a strong analytical mind, which I sense you combine with the lens shaped by your own experiences through which you see things.
Yes, as you point out, the scenarios presented in the articles could be impractical and real life is not as ideal. Such articles may be of no immediate use to someone going through a fresh breakup, other than perhaps subconsciously tempt or encourage the reader to identify with the role of the “good guy” or “good woman” in the relationship, whether that’s the dumper or the dumpee (most often it’s the dumpee, although in the specific article we are discussing, the good guy/woman is the dumper magically having been converted into the dumpee).
Other than alleviating anxiety and finding self-serving answers, the only real applicable use of this information or knowledge is in formulating a better approach to a future relationship and breakup. This is important, but someone who is going through an active breakup most of the times doesn’t want to think about these things. They would probably rather watch some soothing videos by Coach Lee, which are less dark and more forgiving. At the very least, and in the immediate setting, such theoretical articles can help the reader rationalize or explain or justify some things because they can be interpreted any way one pleases and it can also help with the anxiety.
And yes, Zan is not a fan of reconciliation because it encourages hope, which he defines as the number one dumpee enemy. His recipe seems to be very simple – he wants to give post-breakup license to the dumpee (and even this newly formed category of the dumper/dumpee convert) to be extremely “selfish”, focus on themselves, and move on without interfering in any way with the other person. The code name for this approach is “indefinite No Contact”.
Using my own situation as a brief example, I “pseudo-ghosted” my ex for a week because of several problems we had for a long time, and then she dumped me. We then had a complicated post-breakup period for one month. Zan would say it was a toxic relationship that had to end. I suspect that if my ex was in therapy with him voicing her recurrent grievances against me that were never resolved, he would possibly tell her she did the right thing and that she should stop herself from being hurt. Therefore, dumping me was appropriate and she should go No Contact to heal and protect herself from me -in other words, maybe she should act like a dumpee. To me, he would (and did) say this woman was not good for me, I had put up with too much for too long, and that I needed to cut her off and go No Contact in order to heal and protect myself from her. Remember that at any given time, Zan receives input about the relationship from only one of the two people and that’s the one person he is inclined to help. This is not unreasonable because that person may be the one who had been invested in the dysfunctional relationship the most.
So, the articles could make us think that we get to choose the road and how we get to walk that road. But in some weird way, the truth is that the destination is always the same and that “all roads lead to Rome” – Rome being indefinite No Contact, eliminating reconciliation hope, and (ideally) self-improvement.
Best wishes,
BR
BR,
I like the point you made that the dumper can decide to take on the attributes of the dumpee pursuant to claiming victimhood in a relationship. I can’t speak for Doug, it sounds like he bent over backwards to make his relationship work though. And that’s exactly what Zan is referring to when he mentioned naïveté and self-esteem in the third paragraph after the intro with the pic of the guy teeing off with a heart. On that note, you can definitely do too much or tolerate too much in a relationship, and once your partner sees that you don’t stand up for yourself, any erotic connection disappears. So your choices are, one, stick around and eventually get left for someone else, or two, leave the relationship to preserve what’s left of your well being. Therefore, technically you are the dumper, but your dumpee walked all over you and discarded the relationship long ago.
In my case, that’s exactly what happened. I should have left at the first whiff of dismissiveness from the guy I was interested in. I kept thinking it was just his PTSD. But he was just an asshole using PTSD as an excuse. So while technically I left first, he dumped me long before by stonewalling, texting crazy from burner numbers, refusing to talk, etc. So I made the decision to go NC. I may be the dumper and he is the dumpee, but he checked out long before I got my strength together to see reality. Hope that makes sense.
I experienced this in my last relationship. My ex put me in a position where I had no choice but to break up: verbally abusive, controlling, name calling, rage issues. Issues that were not apparent at All in the beginning of the relationship. I sincerely cared about her, and she had other amazing qualities, but you can only ask them to stop acting the way they’re acting so many times before you have to move on. She couldn’t believe that I actually broke up with her. I tried to talk to her, help her to understand why she gave me no choice, and possibly start over. I went over and above trying to get her to open up and communicate with me. Never happened. She ghosted me. Her ego couldn’t stand that I had done the breaking up. So it was doomed. And I never wanted to break up in the first place
Hi Doug,
Although this article seems to resonate with some of the audience like you and Claire, my skepticism with this article is that it is almost too theoretical and demands a high degree of maturity and self-awareness from both the dumper and the dumpee.
Essentially it gives the green light to dumpers to perceive themselves as dumpees if it so suits them.
All dumpers have major issues with the dumpees – who gets to decide who’s right and who’s wrong? It’s so subjective.
You dumped her but you say she ghosted you. What if it’s her who thought you did not do enough? What if she took the classic role of the dumpee and went into No Contact to protect herself from the breakup?
What is ghosting to you may be No Contact for her, with all the associated post-breakup dynamics and implications.
You broke up with her so she would change but you didn’t want to break up? Maybe she’s staying away because that’s what she thinks you really want. Has she changed since then?
This is also the point I was trying to make in response to Doug’s point above. And this is why I think that while Zan’s article is well-meaning, it’s also a bit confusing. It may also inadvertently give dumpers even more “relief” and empower them even more into thinking they are the victims by rationalizing their actions. At the time of the breakup, emotions usually rule over logic. It is difficult to accurately apply this delicate rationalization that the article presents and it is very easy to use it to convince yourself that you did the right thing by becoming the dumper who should then start acting like a wounded dumpee.
Hi Doug.
Some breakups need to happen for people to think and grow. Your ex couldn’t do that while she was with you, so you had no choice but to leave. Your intention wasn’t to teach her a lesson, of course. You just wanted peace of mind.
Kind regards,
Zan
always learning from the best! I will save it and read it again
thank you Zan 🤍
I’m happy to hear that, Linda.
Have a great start to the week!
Zan
Zan,
Thanks for effortlessly demonstrating how one can be the dumper yet in actuality, be the dumpee. It is truly flawless how you are able to write about this switched-up dynamic and toggle between the 2 parties emotional thinking. You wrote about this situation occurring due to emotional abuse, immaturity, cheating, what have you, on the part of the dumpee. The dumpee continues to hurt the dumper repeatedly. The dumper has no choice but to leave for self preservation. I guess it works completely opposite of a traditional breakup (where the dumper leaves for gigs, monkey branching, etc. The dumpee gets discarded brutally through no fault of his own.)
Also, thanks for addressing how to achieve no contact while sharing a living arrangement or workspace with someone in your prior article. Usually when someone reads your work and asks for a specific topic to be covered, it can take a bit of time to hear from you. This time, it was literally the next day!
Hi Claire.
Thanks for reading and commenting. I want to cover a lot of topics, so thanks for being patient.🙏 I try to prioritize the ones that interest the most people.
Thanks again, Claire.
Zan