How to Stop Loving Your Best Friend

Have you ever had a beautiful friendship with someone for a long time? That is natural. Suddenly one day you realize you are secretly in love with this longtime best friend. This happens often, and you don’t have to feel alone in your love life. This love can be more painful than “one-sided love”, because you and this person have known each other for a long time and share the pain together.You will risk losing both friendship and faith in love. , and that can be painful for both parties.

Table of Contents

Give yourself space

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Avoid the person for a while. Be polite and thoughtful when doing this. You don’t want to completely deny the good relationship you’ve built together, but you do need to be mindful of your own feelings. Try not to actively see them often.

There are countless ways to establish safe and respectful boundaries between the two of you. ^{[1] X Research Source} If you meet this friend, open up but don’t focus all of your attention on them. Protect yourself but don’t isolate them.
Prepare a few good reasons why you can’t meet this friend. You will feel as if you are cheating on him/her, especially when you are known as the honest person. Remember, you’re only doing this because you need time to get over them. ^{[2] X Research Source}
Money matters are always understandable, especially if overtime is involved. When you work overtime, you will feel more tired, and fatigue will always be a possible excuse.

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Always be sure of your feelings. Before you create a real distance, it’s a good idea to determine for sure if you’re really falling in love with your best friend. There’s loads of pressure on this case, because you’re damaging your friendship forever.

When you fall in love, the amount of dopamine in your brain will increase, causing you to focus and pay attention to the person you secretly love. ^{[3] X Research Source} The subject you are looking at will occupy most of your day-to-day mind, thus giving the impression that you are being haunted by their shadow.
If you really love this friend, that feeling is not the same as when you think of anyone else. All your thoughts are in an overly positive state because you ignore all the bad habits of that person when in love.
If you have any of these feelings, you’ve really fallen for your best friend.
You need to make it clear that you are not feeling this way just because you are lonely and in a pure relationship with this close friend. When you consider love with your best friend, you run the risk of misinterpreting the caregiving between the two of you as romantic feelings. ^{[4] X Research Source} Make sure you don’t come to this friend just because you’re looking for a romantic relationship, and they’re the perfect choice.

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Accept the pain. After experiencing unpleasant emotions like rejection, there is nothing worse than avoiding and running away from your feelings. It’s even more horrifying to fool yourself into believing that you’re not allowed to have such feelings. ^{[5] X Research Sources}

If you judge your feelings, or tell yourself that you are not allowed to have them, you are running away from the pain that exists.
Even if it’s hard to cope with this grief, you will become stronger during this period. You will waste less time wallowing in grief if you acknowledge your feelings and try to focus on the present moment.

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Tell yourself it’s not your fault. If you let this rejection affect your health, you will have no way to recover from this pain. Even though this requires some effort, you must strive to actively improve your self-worth. ^{[6] X Research Sources}

Remember that being rejected is not entirely due to your personality. Your best friend may be facing major personality problems of their own. This friend may be afraid to be honest with you, because they are afraid and feel insecure.
Being alone will help you grow, and even if it feels like an insurmountable pain, you will be stronger as a result.
Try to see this as an opportunity to better yourself, or take the time to work on your own goals. For humans, rejection has the power to energize you, because these bad emotions can be used to remind yourself to move on. ^{[7] X Research Source} If you fall into a spiral of low self-esteem, you will not be able to overcome this pain. Rejection is inevitable, so keeping this in mind will help you feel like it doesn’t matter in this case.

Through the pain

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Avoid thinking about forgetting the person completely. While it may sound counterproductive, you really don’t want to completely forget this friend. While you are trying to avoid thinking about that person, you will automatically remember them even if you don’t want to. This actually makes it harder to forget them.

Known as the “White Bear Effect” theory, it means that when you try not to think about the image of a white bear, the more it will pop into your mind. ^{[8] X Research Source} This is a case involving obsessions.
When the person you secretly love pops into your head all of a sudden, you have to acknowledge their existence, no matter how painful it may be. There’s no need to panic, and you don’t have to take it as a sign that you’ll never get over them.

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Learn to love yourself. When you are rejected by someone you love, you will immediately feel extremely self-loathing and insecure. You are reckless and feel like a failure to some extent. ^{[9] X Research Source} Having confidence in yourself again is especially important to get through this difficult time.

You should learn to reconnect with your emotions in the present, rather than thinking about past mistakes. Meditation helps focus the brain towards the present.
Cross-legged meditation is the best way to start. Keep your back straight and bring your hands to the center of your chest. Hold your hands together, so that the thumb and little finger are equal. Focus on the tip of your nose and your breath.
When you let go of your fears and worries about the past, you can use the energy you just gained to move forward with your strength.

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Return to friendship. The key in overcoming pain is to rely on the people around you. Remember how essential these friendships are to your health and how well you have been treated by those friends in the past. ^{[10] X Research Source} If you have great friends, you’ll be who you are when you’re with them.

Depending on how strong your feelings for your best friend are, you can feel detached from other friendships for quite some time. Because you shouldn’t expect to miss this person anymore, focus your energy on the better relationships in your life.

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Remind yourself that your feelings are not real. As a result of grief, you will be overwhelmed with a variety of emotions, such as anxiety, anger, and grief. However, it should be remembered that although these feelings are real, they are not entirely real. ^{[11] X Research Source}

The Tibetan Buddhist master – Tsoknyi Rinpoche – summed it up with the proverb that “Real but not true”. Remember this idiom every time you face these emotions. You can admit that you have feelings in some way, but you don’t have to devote all your energy to those feelings.

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Dating is not intentional. While it will take some effort on your part, it’s not a bad idea to try dating someone else, even if you’re still recovering. ^{[12] X Research Source} You don’t have to try to change your grief. Still, it’s a good idea to try spending time with someone in a casual romantic setting.

Don’t let your date be filled with sadness. They don’t deserve to suffer for what you’ve been through.
Even if your date is nothing special, you can find solace in connecting with other people.
If possible, setting up a profile on OKCupid or another dating site will help you gain positive support from strangers. ^{[13] X Research Source} Although it won’t solve your emotional problems, any positive words from those around you will help you recover faster.

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Send your heart to your best friend. While this is a necessary step for any grieving, it’s especially important when your crush holds a special place in your heart like a longtime best friend. ^{[14] X Research Source} Any malicious words addressed to this person will only aggravate your problem.

It may not work, especially when this best friend has broken your heart recently, but opening your heart to that person will really help you stop missing them. It will also help calm your mind and make you feel better, and you will also dispel any potential doubts.
This doesn’t mean you should open up to this person in an existential way. Don’t mind them online or texting. However, you can wish them well with positive emotions while alone.

Rebuilding friendship

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Surely you both want to maintain the friendship. While this is the worst of the situation, there’s still a chance that the embarrassment will keep the two of you apart forever. ^{[15] X Research Source} Most likely, you will be the one who can’t get over the pressure of things, because your feelings are not reciprocated.

If you take time to be alone and help yourself get back to your original state of love, you will decide if you are ready to be friends again.
Don’t be hard on yourself if you have trouble moving on. This takes more time than you initially wanted.
When there is not much time together, new feelings for the other person will arise in your brain. This may or may not help you get over your ex.

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Make time for the group. Managing friendships is easier if you don’t spend all your time with your best friend. Maintaining boundaries with this friend is still important, even if it’s not easy. Inertia will cause you to continue doing the same things you did when the two of you were still best friends. For now, you should avoid anything too intimate or private.

Find out what kind of relationship you want to maintain with this friend. You can’t spend time just watching a movie alone, but you can still have a beer or coffee together.

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Satisfied with current relationship. Remember, if your best friend is happy, so should you. This is maturity. If you love your best friend, you want him/her to be happy, whatever their decision.

Make sure you actively accept the dilemma. Learn new boundaries for both of you as friends.
The two of you will change expectations and decide what you’re allowed to be, so this should start with accepting the current situation.

Advice

It’s better to be with a great friend for a lifetime than a short-lived relationship. Therefore, understand that a more intimate relationship will make things awkward between the two of you. There is a very good saying that, “I can kill people, for a beautiful girl like you, but I will die without good friends”.
Please be patient. You’ll never know if your best friend will change her mind, especially if you still maintain the intimacy of your friendship. The worst case scenario is that you get over the pain and want to be best friends again.
It’s hard to accept rejection. If your friend doesn’t want to be your best friend anymore, accept it no matter what
Rejection is one of the worst things that can happen to you, and sometimes people will pretend everything is okay even though it’s not. Talk to someone. If you don’t want your friend to know who it is or if it’s a last name, just don’t say the name directly. That’s perfectly normal.

Steps

Give yourself space

Through the pain

Rebuilding friendship

Advice

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