How to stop having feelings for somebody: a practical guide

It’s incredibly common to start developing feelings for somebody you shouldn’t.

Maybe you find them adorable - but they’ve got more red flags than communist Russia.

Maybe they’re already taken.

Maybe you’re already taken.

It happens. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your relationship and you need to explore polyamory or anything.

Despite how common it is, the advice on how to stop having feelings is usually pretty terrible.

Some is OK, but only if you don’t want to still be friends with the person.

For example, “just stop seeing them” works pretty well.

Absence makes the heart grow distracted.

The thing is, often you develop feelings for people you’d very much like to stay friends with. That’s why you developed feelings for them in the first place! Cause they’re pretty cool.

So what do you do then?

Here’s a couple of practical tactics you can take:
Starve the swoon, feed the ick
Imagine the worst

You can’t control what you think or feel - much.

You can a little.

The way you can do this is by purposefully feeding the things you want to feel and purposefully starving the things you don’t want to feel.

You feed feelings by:

• Paying attention to them
• Talking about them
• Identifying as them

In the case of starving your swoon and feeding the ick, this means really pay attention to all of the things you find icky about the person.

Ideally things that would make them a worse partner but not a worse friend.

For example, physical characteristics. Your friends’ attractiveness level doesn’t really matter for friendship. But looks are a factor for dating.

So really pay attention to and sit with all of the things you find gross about the person you want to stop having feelings for. Find photos that are deeply unflattering of them that are still realistic and keep looking at them.

In terms of starving the swoon, don’t try to push down thoughts. That doesn’t work.

Instead, just set an “if-then” intention, where you say “whenever they pop into my head, I’m going to think about [something you find really engrossing] OR [that gross thing they do that is really unattractive] etc”

Don’t talk about your feelings for the person to others. That will just reinforce the neural patterns in your head.

(Don’t talk about your friend’s physical flaws though! That’s not very good friend behavior).

2. Imagine the worst

Infatuated brains naturally imagine the best. You imagine this perfect future you’d have with the object of your affections.

You can counter that by purposefully imagining the worst outcomes.

Imagine you find out that you have completely incompatible sex lives. Imagine you find out that they’ve got a crazy relationship with their family that you’d be drawn into.

Whatever. Pick things that feel like they could be realistic.

Counter your natural tendency to think about the greener grass by imagining toxic poison ivy hidden in that tantalizing field.

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None of these things will work right away.

You’re a set of neural connections, and it takes repetition to rewire them.

So practice this for a bit, and see how you feel.

And remember - they’re just emotions.

Disney has programmed us to believe that emotions are the end all be all. Especially love. [Cue the music]

Just because you have feelings does not mean they are the “true you” and they need to be acted on and they’re telling you true things about the universe.

Your emotions are not “you”, and you can change them.

Listen to your heart, but also listen to your brain.