Why trying to make someone love you again is not the solution.
Many people fall into the trap of making their happiness dependent on how someone else feels.
For some time now, the idea that each person is an island has been gaining momentum in our society. Individuals are born, develop a set of skills and interests, and try to live as well as possible through them. But this philosophy of life, which of course is no more than a simplification of what is really going on, explodes into a thousand pieces when love enters the picture.
In a healthy relationship, love makes us question where our own interests end and where those of the other person end. This logic is exciting and captivating, because sharing existence on a very intimate level gives meaning to what happens to us and what we do. But if a breakup or falling out of love occurs, it turns against us: the almost enslaving need for the other person to love us again appears. the almost enslaving necessity that the other person returns to love us..
How to make someone love me again? The trick question
Looking at it from a certain perspective, it makes sense that if before we thought we were living immersed in a kind of superorganism made up of two people, when one of them leaves the remains of the relationship try to to attract back the one who has decided to leave. Since in theory a very intense emotional bond can make a couple become more than the sum of two individuals, once this bond is formed there is no turning back.
However, this way of looking at relationships, and couple relationships in particular, is harmful. Why? This is discussed below, along with some recommendations on what it would be advisable to do.
1. It prevents us from seeing aspects in which we can improve
Sometimes, emotional ruptures between two people are caused by purely subjective aspects, such as the inability to overcome a traumatic event experienced with another person (the loss of a child, the fact of contracting an illness, etc.). But on other occasions the phenomenon has to do with a personal defect, something that really can be improved in objective terms. in objective terms.
The fact of trying to look for a solution by making the other person love us again masks this type of errors and personal defects, since although it is not an effective measure to be happy, placing the problem in the other person and not in oneself is a way of not having to face a task as complex as the change itself.
Those who live in this way always have reason to regret, but they do not have to but does not have to make the effort to make relevant decisions and carry them out through a plan of learning and personal development.
2. Dehumanizes the other person
It may not seem like it at first, but trying to make someone trying to make someone love us again is to assume that the person we want to get back is a manipulable object.. It is a matter of assuming not only that we can help them to have more information with which to decide whether they want to stay by our side or not, but also that we can change their emotions to suit them. Is there anything more Machiavellian than that?
3. It sets the precedents for harassment.
Trying to make someone love you again is not in itself a form of stalking, but it does make it easier for stalking behavior to appear. If we shift the focus of the problem to the other person, interpreting the situation as if what is wrong is what the other person feels, that paves the way for future controlling attitudes..
That is why it is good to keep in mind that the other person is fully capable of captaining his or her own life, being responsible for himself or herself and making valid decisions.
4. It diminishes one's own dignity
Attempting to change another person's feelings about oneself not only detracts from the dignity of the person you are trying to restore, but also serves to demean yourself. Normally, this type of experience goes hand in hand with damage to self-esteem, and pretending that it is all due to the absence of love or affection from the other person makes it very easy for us to make our value synonymous with that of the other person, our value becomes synonymous with the value that the other person confers on us..
In other words, in these situations we forget that the other person also does not have the capacity to judge our value in an unbiased way, seeing us as we really are, so that making him or her love us again is equivalent to recovering all the lost value.
This, then, is a paradox: if we try to make someone else feel love for us again, we can assume that they have no judgment and the wrong feelings, but at the same time it will cost a lot to keep our self-esteem intact at the same time that the person whose emotions we give so much importance to acts as if we were not important to him/her..
The best thing to do is to start over
It may sound typical, but it is nonetheless true: when a personal relationship breaks down and this is not due to a communication failure, it is best to respect the other person's decision to the last consequences, and to give up setting the timetable for future contact.
So, in these cases we only have to follow two steps that, although simple in theory, require effort: firstly, make sure that the other person has not fallen for a deception, and secondly, if he or she really does not lack relevant information, let it go and go back to build a life that stimulates us and has meaning.. It is complicated, but not impossible, and with the help of psychological assistance, it is best overcome.
(Updated at Apr 13 / 2024)