How To Get Over Someone You Never Had Something Real With

The Grief of the Almost-Relationship

Nobody prepares you for the grief that you feel

for something that was never even real.

A crush that you nursed quietly and secretly, hoping, dreaming,

and planning, but it just never happened.

There was no breakup, perhaps not even a talk about why it

wouldn’t work—just something that almost was, and then wasn’t.

Technically, nothing happened.

No relationship means no loss, right?

Except you are hurting intensely.

The reason why is more interesting than you would think.

You didn’t fall for the actual person;

you fell for a version of them that you built yourself

from the fragments they gave you.

You took those pieces—a playful moment, a text back,

a deep conversation—and your brain did the rest,

filling in everything it didn’t know with everything it wanted to find.

The Brain’s Role in Fantasy

The brain is designed to behave this way.

Early infatuation physically suppresses the way your brain

evaluates people critically because it wants to give them a chance.

You are seeing them incorrectly because your brain switched

off the part that would tell you otherwise.

This means the version of them you fell for in your head

was perfect for you because you made them up.

The real person never stood a chance of competing with that fantasy.

Just like Finn from Adventure Time projecting what he wanted onto

Princess Bubblegum, you project what you want onto somebody else.

You dream of how they will treat you and love you,

but the real them is never like that.

Everything they do in reality might give you chest pains

because it is the exact opposite of what you hoped for.

When they eventually disappoint you,

you suffer alone because they never agreed to anything.

The hopes and dreams were entirely in your head.

Addiction to Uncertainty

That almost-relationship probably felt more intense

and alive than actual relationships you’ve had.

The uncomfortable answer for why this happens is that

your brain fires hardest on things you might get,

not on things you already have.

Unpredictable rewards produce far more dopamine

than predictable ones.

The unpredictability of an almost-relationship—the moments they

were warm, the times they pulled back,

the ambiguous messages—does something chemically to your brain

that a stable, reciprocal relationship does not.

The intensity you felt was just your brain being addicted

to a dopamine cycle.

Every attempt to get a smile or a nice comment is like a drug,

and the comedown is brutal.

The Hidden Cost of Unprocessed Grief

The comedown is particularly brutal

because you don’t allow yourself to fully be sad.

What are you sad about? You weren’t together.

There was no breakup.

You might feel ashamed of being delusional

or living out a fantasy while reality told you otherwise,

so you keep the pain to yourself to avoid judgment.

However, grief that doesn’t get processed doesn’t disappear;

it goes underground.

If you don’t face it, you carry it around, and it starts affecting

you in ways you can’t trace back to the source.

When you finally sit with the grief,

you realize you weren’t just thinking about them as a person.

You were thinking about a version of your life where you were happy.

You had mapped out trips, imagined future kids,

and envisioned the person you were quietly becoming around them.

You may have even changed your habits, your clothes,

or your routines to align with that imagined future.

When that future disappeared,

it took the version of you that existed in that

imagined future and destroyed it.

Letting go of that identity and admitting you suffered

for a relationship that wasn’t real is incredibly difficult.

Mourning an almost-relationship can feel like repaying

a loan you never actually took out in the first place.

How to Move On and Gain Clarity

To get out of this pattern, you must realize that the pain had a point.

The energy and emotion you felt were real,

but they just had nowhere useful to go.

To stop drowning in it, you must shift your perspective.

• Reconstruct Your Perspective: Stop searching for someone to complete a picture of happiness you haven’t fully drawn yet. Ask yourself what this other person represents that you haven’t built for yourself. The almost-relationship shows you exactly where you are, what you need, and what you haven’t figured out yet.
• Stop Trying Not to Think About Them: Telling yourself not to think about them is just thinking about them with an extra step. Think deliberately instead. Set aside time to sit with your thoughts purposely, ask yourself real questions, and then close the session with purpose. This is the difference between obsession and processing.
• Ask the Hard Questions: Stop asking questions with no answers, like “What did I do wrong?” or “What if I did this differently?” Instead, ask: What did I learn about what I actually want? What did this show me about where I am going? What qualities in them did I find attractive that I can look for in someone else?

The intensity, the obsession, the grief,

and the longing are all valuable information.

Do not waste the experience by just waiting to feel better.

Sit with it, learn the right lessons about yourself,

and use that clarity to figure out

what you truly want for your future.