How to stop thinking about someone you can’t be with

Getting stuck in romantic obsession sucks.

One day you meet an amazing, attractive person.

You find yourself daydreaming about them, fantasizing about them,

thrilled by the idea of being with them.

But life often throws obstacles in the way.

And for one reason or another, you can’t be together.

But there’s a part of you that refuses to give up hope.

You think about them obsessively until you can’t get them

out of your head.

Without a clear understanding of the steps that have led you there,

you find yourself mentally enslaved, strung out,

and sleep-deprived, assailed by intrusive thoughts

and a craving that won’t turn off.

That mental state of romantic obsession is known as limerence.

And those intrusive thoughts are a sign

that you’ve become addicted to another person.

The root of the problem is that you’ve become limerent

for someone who isn’t available to you.

Whatever the cause—whether they don’t like you back,

or there are barriers and uncertainty in the way that mean

you can’t be with them—the delirious rush of early limerence

can slowly transform into the relentless obsession of person addiction.

All that pent-up energy and thwarted action turns inwards

and traps you in apparently inescapable thought loops.

But there are ways out.

The ultimate solution is to do the patient work of understanding

how your personal history has led you to this point,

and then to take decisive, purposeful action to undo the

mental training that you inadvertently undertook.

But there are also some psychological techniques and mindset tweaks

that can help speed up recovery.

Here are some of the best.

Step One: Understand What’s Happened

The starting point for limerence is desire.

You meet someone who excites you in just the right way.

Their company is intoxicating. Just being with them is exhilarating.

Daydreaming about them is so pleasurable that you indulge

it whenever you get a chance.

The reason that you can’t stop thinking about them

is that they’re sending your arousal, reward,

and motivation systems into overdrive.

They’ve become a primary source of emotional reward in your world,

and your brain will push you to seek more.

But if that desire can’t be satisfied, it doesn’t just fade away.

It transforms into an obsession. Instead of healthy attraction,

you become addicted to them, or rather to the idea of them.

Unrequited limerence turns toxic

when you can’t emotionally give up hope.

Your mind gets trapped in a state of relentless wanting.

At that point, when you realize that you can no longer stop thinking

about them even if you want to,

new emotional challenges bubble up as well: fear, anxiety, shame.

You’ve lost control of your own thoughts.

Step Two: Don’t View It As a Fight

The easiest way to win a fight is not take part.

Limerence is better understood as a personal wake-up call than

an external force that needs to be battled.

It’s an internal state brought on by your own psychological needs

and subconscious desires.

Limerence is going on in your head,

and you won’t recover from it by fighting yourself.

You need to calm your overexcited subconscious.

You need to wean yourself off that inappropriate reward.

To achieve that, nothing needs to be slain.

The resolution can be peaceful.

Trying to suppress intrusive thoughts doesn’t work;

you just feel worse, and they keep coming back.

Much more effective is to accept the thoughts, process them,

and then detach from them.

The thoughts will come, but you can learn to sort of watch them

pass by as though you’re a dispassionate observer.

Even just labeling the mental event when it happens

(e.g., “that was a limerent thought”) can be useful for diffusing

some of the emotional power.

The goal is to recognize intrusive thoughts as the product

of subconscious hopes and fears that can be faced and neutralized.

The goal isn’t to eliminate them through mental dominance.

Another reason why framing limerence as a fight

is counterproductive is that it keeps the person

that you’re obsessed with central in your mind.

They’re still a primary source of motivation for you,

but in a negative rather than positive way.

Your goal is to leave both your intrusive thoughts

and your limerent object behind, not to destroy them.

Step Three: Use It To Understand Yourself

A psychological shock as profound as limerence

is a formative experience, not a minor inconvenience.

One way to get some value from the crisis is to use it

to understand yourself better.

Your limerent object seems extraordinarily special,

but they’re only special to you

because of your own personal emotional makeup.

Figuring out why they triggered limerence in you is useful.

What was it about them that started the infatuation?

What was missing in your life that they seemed to promise to supply:

emotional support, romantic bliss, adventure, escape?

For most people, answering these questions isn’t a quick

and easy process.

It takes time and focused thought to start to unearth the events

and experiences that have shaped you.

The goal here is to stop seeing your limerent object

as an unattainable romantic prize and start seeing them instead

as a key to unlock knowledge about yourself.

Shift your mindset from “I must have them” to “What do they mean to me?”

Step Four: Start Retraining Your Brain

Many people with a tendency towards limerence develop a habit

over the years of using daydreaming and fantasy for mood repair.

It’s a safe way to get a nice endorphin rush

and an escapist fantasy that temporarily soothes the stresses

and suffering of life.

Unfortunately, that habit can rapidly get out of control

and escalate to the point where you can’t stop.

With social media, the temptation to supplement those fantasies

with hours of immersive browsing can be irresistible.

For recovery, you need to stop feeding the obsession.

Habits can be broken. Brains can be reprogrammed.

Self-discipline can be cultivated.

By changing the methods that you use to cope with stress

and disrupting the old routines that led you into limerence,

it is possible to reverse that mental training.+1

Step Five: Look To The Future

Ultimately, the best way to free yourself of the desire

for someone you can’t have is to find other,

better rewards to meet your needs.

There’s some obvious advice here: cut all contact with them,

find someone else, try out a new hobby, or join a sports team.

This advice isn’t wrong, but it’s more helpful to look

at the underlying reason why these tactics are effective.

First, one cause of the problem is that you’re thinking

about someone that you can’t have, which means you can’t take action.

The energy that builds up doesn’t just disappear;

it turns into frustration, obsession, and it can turn into resentment.

It’s much better to spend that energy on something else,

something worthwhile.

That’s why exercise, new hobbies, and new pursuits are useful.

They don’t just distract you; they allow you to take action

on something productive rather than being trapped by inaction.

The second, bigger truth is that you need

to have something to look forward to.

It’s a lot easier to walk away from a bad situation if you’re happy

about where you’re going.

If you find new directions, new people,

and new places that stimulate you,

you can meet needs that you’ve probably been neglecting.

That principle is why living

with purpose is the best cure for limerence.

Those intrusive thoughts are your brain motivating you to try

and get emotional satisfaction from limerent rewards.

If you can find healthier rewards, you can satisfy that restlessness

and improve your life at the same time.

Then you can look back on this time of obsession and think,

“That was when I finally sorted my life out,”

rather than staying trapped in the prison of limerence limbo.