How Do You "Unlove" Someone?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have asked myself this many times, and I keep coing up with the same answer: You (or I) can’t.

Once one has opened himself to that feeling and that person it is there and it will remain there.

I am not saying you should use those words lightly and once they leave your mouth, you had better be sure and mean them, but I am saying that once you experience that feeling the love stays with you, even if it’s just a memory.

I’m not asking anyone’s opinion, okay, just a mundane and “pointless” thing I feel compelled to share.

Thanks

Q

2

Weed and alcohol in combination help to take the edge off it when you need to, in my experience. Not every love is reciprocated, is where I was getting at. :confused:

3

Is it reciprocated when both parties say the words, even if one of them might not be sure?

Those are pretty strong words, after all.

Thanks

Q

4

My wife of 18 years ran off to be with another man and when he was tired of fucking her, he dumped her 1200 miles from home. She called to tell me she was gonna kill herself. She did. I STILL LOVE HER.

5

Not necessarily.

If that person does something you find completely reprehensible and proves themself abjectly morally bankrupt–then it dissapates rather quickly.

6

NO ANSWERS, JUST MY THOUGHTS

I used to say it a LOT.

A girl I still pine for, we said “I love you” all the time to each other. In the beginning, I was married to someone else. We picked up many years later, I was single, and SHE was married.
That relationship ended almost 10 years ago.

I have a hard time saying it since, even though I feel it and mean it
I love my current lady. We’ve been together for almost 6 years. But, I have a hard time saying the words.
I can’t unlove the former girl. I wish I could. She is still in my mind at times. She’s too crazy, but that doesn’t negate the feelings.
I told myself that ours was “true love.”
We lived in the middle of a country & western song, never available to each other, yet the feelings were so strong between us.

7

I see what you did there.

8

I’ve only used the word love with two people, and though I am not really in contact with them anymore and our lives have diverged it is still there. Even the one who I had a number of problems with (naivete and selfishness on my part, selfishness and immaturity on his).

Its still there, a banked ember that burns with happy memories.

9

I’ve said it many times, and meant it every time.

For one reason or another, things didn’t “work out”, but when I said “I love you” to her, it wasn’t said just with my eyes and mouth, but with my heart.

It is for that reason I needed my present wife to understand this about me.

No (before you ask it), I would NOT go back to any one of them, but the words were said, the feeling was there, and I cannot (and will not) undo it.

Flutterby, that last sentence of yours needs to be in a poem or a song.

Thanks

Quasi

10

Kenny Rogers - I Can’t Unlove You

11

Guess I shoulda known, huh, xash? :slight_smile:

One thinks one has an “original” thought or phrase, and then some First Edition desertin’, croaky-voiced, over the hill, razor-faced, wanna-be Jim Reeves, is gonna come along and dick it up.

Nothing personal against you, xash. I just feel “robbed” somehow, ah reckon.

Why couldn’t it have been Elton?

Thanks,

Quasi

12

bD. I thank you for those thoughts and I can tell from what you wrote, how torn you must be.

As you, yourself, wrote: “No Answers”.

You said the words (“I love you”), and you meant them, didn’t you?

I guess I need to give y’all the “disclaimer”: I’m 60 and seriously fucked in the head.

I used to teach English to high school kids, but this post took me over 20 minutes to write, because of the dementia, so I hope this all makes some kinda sense.

Thanks, banjoDavid!

Quasi

13

I don’t think you can force unlove. I’ve known a girl six years. We were married at the time, but not to each other. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. She broke it off 3 years ago because she wanted to stay with her husband but we still talked. I haven’t seen her in about a year and a half now, and it’s easier but sometimes I still think about What Could Have Been.

I don’t think you can force unlove.

14

Love is an extremely complicated emotion.

I don’t think you can just choose not to love someone any more, but you can choose to accept that the person doesn’t love you back and that by continuing to pine for them, you are holding back your own life and potential for finding a new love.

I think that acceptance is the start of the process to unlove someone, and it works by finding other things to think about/keep your attention elsewhere until you reach the point when you realise you don’t think much about that person any more. But that takes a long, long time in some cases.

15

As the old adage goes, “It is easier to fall in love, than out of love.”
So true - but before anyone begins to obsess and pine about the “one that got away” or “the loss of my one true love” - remember that there are billions out there, just like you…and someone else is there to pick up the pieces.
Hard facts, but you have to pick yourself up, and go out and start looking again.
“I’m too old, I’m too ugly, I’m too poor, too…”
Screw it…there are lots of people out there who would love to meet you and start anew - really!
Someone is sitting in a room, crying and waiting for someone like you to come along!
And they are someone who will appreciate you for what, and who, you are - as is.

Hard facts, but you have to pick yourself up, and go out and start looking again.
You have to pick yourself up, and go out and start looking again.
Pick yourself up, and go out and start looking again.
Go out and start looking again.
Go.
Nobody is going to come to your door and knock.
Get out there and meet someone new.
Now.

16

While I agree with this (and have experienced it) I don’t think that all the “love” completely goes away that quickly, no matter how heinous the act(s). Time does help to take the edge off though.

I was reminded of this unfortunate fact of life this morning after waking up from an awful dream about a man who I was in love with more than 15 years ago. He turned out to be just awful and did things to me (not physically) that no human being should even be able to contemplate for the sole purpose of amusing himself with the pain he caused. I have been with my husband (and extremely happily so) for more than 10 years, I am thoroughly in love with my husband, and have no desire to stray ever. But I woke up pining for this man who on the surface I detest, who even deep down I don’t like one single bit, but as my subconscious likes to remind me every now and again will probably always “love”.

17

This was somethign I used to struggle with a lot at a certain time in my life with a certain someone.

She was my best friend in school, starting in grade 2. We did everything that best friends do (and we’d even sign our notes that we’d leave for each other in our lockers “Love, [name]” after a while - those notes were the definitng characteristic of our relationship, they’ll turn up later in the story) although we always thought of each other as “best friends”, it was handy (since both of us were nerds and the school’s social pariahs) for dates and the like.

In time I realized that I grew to have strong feelings for her, and I start telling her “I love you” while meaning more than in a friendly way. A little while later, I proposed to her (in the most symbolic way I could think of, in a note in her mailbox), and I knew that I was in love with her - these were definitely the strongest feelings I’ve ever had for anyone at any time (and I’d even been on a couple of dates with other girls (I think to my best friend’s chagrin) by that time)

After a while, though, I realized that she was a fabulous best friend, but I wasn’t sure about if I wanted to marry her or not. I asked her to come over and discuss it with me, 13 years later I still haven’t heard back from her. (I realized that once you propose to someone and tell them you love them, you can’t go back to being “just friends”, just like you can’t untoss a salad or unscramble scrambled eggs). I moved on with my life, and met a fabulous woman who makes me happy and we’ll be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary this summer.

I was only a couple of weeks after I first met my wife that I realized something about my former relationship, though. After only a short time with my wife, I realized that this is love. I knew what love was. I told my best friend that I loved her because I had very strong feelings for her and were the strongest I’ve ever felt for anyone. I couldn’t even imagine anyone having stronger feeligns for anyone else ever, that’s what made me think I was more than friends with her, that I was truly “in love” with her. However, it was more the case of that I hadn’t lived my life yet, what I thought was love was just a really deep friendship (which, admittedly, I haven’t felt with a friend outside of her save for my wife and possibly my sister).

If she ever runs into me again, I’m sure the first thing that she’ll ask me was “were you lying to me all those times when you told me you loved me?” I now know that that question doesn’t have a simple yes/no answer. “No”, I wasn’t lying, as I honestly thought I was in love with her, but “yes”, I didn’t know what love was. Although, I wonder sometimes, can anyone be 100%, fully confident, as to what “love” is?

I had such a complicated life back then, yet another reason why I’m glad to be married to someone who I genuinely love and who genuinely loves me.

18

I think there’s button on Facebook that will allow you to do that.

19

This has been my experience as well. Although I think it could be argued that I loved the man he represented himself to be, not him. The “he” that I loved never really existed.

20

I still love people I used to be in love with. I also don’t love some people I was in love with. Certain loves just stick with you forever.