One of the hardest things in life is seeing the person you love with someone else. Seeing another person receive love and attention you badly wish to receive yourself can break your heart, trigger your longings for validation, and make you jealous.
It can affect you so deeply that all you think about is what you could have done differently to attract this person and what the new person has that you don’t.
It’s hard to watch someone you love being affectionate with someone else. It’s beyond painful to think about their emotional and sexual relationship and forget all the plans and visualizations you’ve created in your head.
It’s especially hard to do that if the person in question is an ex-partner who left you and/or wouldn’t give you another chance.
An ex is someone you had a close relationship with and got to know intimately, so seeing that person move on with someone else is inexplicably excruciating. The thought of your ex being happy while you’re still figuring out what went wrong and picking up the remnants of your self-esteem feels worse than a stab in the chest.
No physical pain compares to the pain an ex causes you by dating someone else right away and showing you the breakup didn’t affect him or her at all. That’s because you expect an ex you love to respect the relationship and your feelings enough not to date for a while.
You expect the dumper to take some responsibility for the breakup and work on himself or herself rather than jumping into another relationship and making you think you were entirely responsible for the breakup.
Whether this person is someone you dated or wanted to date, seeing him or her with someone else will hurt for a while. It will cause you pain and make you analyze their relationship obsessively.
The stronger the attachment and craving for love and security, the more and the longer you can expect to suffer when you see him or her dating someone else.
People get attached and develop expectations, so what you’re going through is completely normal. You want this person to love you and plan relationship matters with you rather than with someone else.
You’ve already decided this was the right person for you and invested your heart into him or her. You didn’t expect to lose him or her before you gave it your best. You especially didn’t expect to lose him or her to someone else.
You hoped to be noticed and receive a chance to show who you are and what you can do.
Since you didn’t get a chance to express your thoughts and feelings, you now feel stuck with them and don’t know what to do with them. You badly want the person you love to accept and reciprocate them, but that won’t happen (at least not anytime soon) because he or she is already seeing someone else.
They’ve just fallen in love, and it could take months for them to get to know each other. It could take them years to break up, depending on the quality of their relationship.
You don’t have years to wait for someone who doesn’t love you.
If you wait for them to break up, you’ll keep checking up on them, overthinking, and hurting yourself. You’ll convince yourself it’s worth waiting for love even if this person doesn’t love you back. Essentially, you’ll gaslight yourself into believing you can’t find a more suitable partner for you and that you need to go all-in with this person.
Such beliefs will hinder your healing and prevent you from meeting someone who is available and wants to have a romantic relationship with you.
In this post, we discuss how seeing the person you love with someone else can affect you and what you can do to ensure a quick recovery.
Seeing the person you love with someone else
If you saw the person you love with someone else, you’re probably in a lot of pain right now. You feel replaced and wonder why you weren’t good enough. Your self-esteem has taken a dive and triggered all kinds of insecurities and childhood issues.
You’re struggling to accept that someone else has taken your spot in the relationship and that you may not get a chance to experience true love.
Of course, this isn’t the last person you’ll ever fall in love with, but pain sure is making you feel like it is. It’s constantly reminding you that you could have ended up with a person you wanted to be with if you were different, better, or played your cards right.
What your pain isn’t telling you though is that this person doesn’t define your worth and that you’ll get more chances at love. As long as you’re willing to open up to people and develop feelings for them, you’ll find love and have a relationship again.
It won’t be like your current love, but who says it needs to be the same? You don’t want another unrequited love that doesn’t lead anywhere. You want it to be two-sided and strong enough to withstand the tide.
At the moment, you’re probably only interested in one specific kind of love – the love from this person. You’re not open to the idea of dating someone else and seeing how things go. That’s okay. You’re not ready for a new connection at this point. You’re still processing rejection or indirect rejection and rebuilding your self-esteem.
If you were to date someone else, you’d likely rebound and fail because you’d expect the new person to think, talk, and act like your current love interest. To have a proper chance at being happy in love, you need to fully process the current relationship or desire for a relationship and regain your independence.
Once you’re happy on your own and okay with the thought of this person being happy, you can put yourself back out there and look for someone who sees your value and wants to reciprocate your feelings.
Just don’t look for love while you’re still processing things. It won’t end well for you or the person you rely on for healing.
There will be plenty of time for dating later. For now, you need to understand that it’s normal to experience shock, pain, anxiety, and obsessive thoughts when you see the person you love with someone else. It’s normal to perspire, shake, overanalyze things, and question your self-worth.
It’s not normal though to pester the man or woman and make your problems his or her problems. If you act on your pain and say or do something mean and unattractive, you’ll appear insecure and risk receiving a negative response from this person.
A response that will worsen his or her perception of you or even worse, affect your perception of yourself.
So don’t interact with the person you love when he or she is with someone else. Don’t even watch his or her posts and look for signs that their relationship isn’t working. Instead, protect yourself from obsessive thoughts and ensure a smooth recovery by going no contact and not knowing how they’re doing.
You don’t need to be around when their relationship ends just to be there for the person you love. There’s no guarantee that he or she will choose you. If you’re not careful, you could become his or her rebound and get hurt again. That would make you feel foolish for trusting the same person with your feelings twice.
If you run into this person or see him or her dating someone else at work (at a place you can’t escape), you must keep your distance. If you respect this person and want to be polite, by all means, say hello. But other than that, don’t engage in conversation and talk about things you don’t need to know.
Ignorance is bliss. The less you know about his or her new life, the less troubled you will be by it.
So avoid seeing him or her (dating someone else) and focus on healing and growth. Focus on things that help you let go of your one-sided feelings and encourage you to process pain.
If you do that right, you should eventually fall out of love and see the situation from a more rational (less emotional) standpoint.
That being said, here’s why you should avoid seeing the person you love with someone else.
What if you can’t avoid seeing the person you love with someone else?
If you can’t avoid seeing the person you love with someone else, what you should do depends on the situation.
If you own or rent a place with this person, initiate a talk about house boundaries. Discuss who and when can visit the place and make it so new romantic interests can’t enter your shared home. That way, you’ll respect each other’s feelings and avoid unnecessary drama.
If you work together and you’re on speaking terms with your ex, you can probably ask your ex not to bring the new person to work or not to show affection around you. An ex who cares about your feelings will take your request seriously and respect your boundaries. He or she will avoid rubbing the new person in your face and distracting you at work.
Only an immature/disrespectful ex will try to get back at you and make your life miserable. Such a person probably isn’t speaking to you anyway and shouldn’t be reasoned with.
If you run into the person you love and he or she is with someone else, you want to make sure not to ask too many questions. You don’t want to know how they get along and what their plans are.
Details about their relationship will likely make you anxious and cause you to think about their chances of making the relationship work.
So simply greet them, say a few quick words if you must, and walk away. Don’t converse with a person who will make you feel undesirable.
If you can’t do anything to avoid this person and his or her new partner (because you work together or live together), then either put up with it or find a new job or place to live. Rejections and breakups complicate situations. You need to adapt in order to protect yourself and recover as quickly as possible.
It may be inconvenient to change jobs because of someone who rejected you, but if staying at the same place means suffering every time you see the person you love act lovey-dovey with someone else, finding work somewhere else is a no-brainer. Your health and well-being will benefit from the change significantly.
So do everything in your power to stop seeing the person you love with someone else. The sooner you get him or her out of your life, the quicker you’ll recover emotionally.
Are you seeing the person you love with someone else? Where are you seeing this person? Comment below and let us know.
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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.
