Once we don’t avoid and instead acknowledge our feelings, we are free to live a life outside the small box of fear that may come with the felt rejection of caring for someone who doesn’t care about us.
This commitment to action leads to fuller participation in life that allows us to encounter rewarding experiences that leave past loves and fears where they belong and make room for present and future loves that care equally about us.
This piece reminded me of when I was on the dating market, and I got age gap dating website ghosted by someone I thought I developed a deep connection with. Initially, I was rather upset and taken aback by it.
- Was it something I said?
- Was it something I did?
- Was it how I looked?
- Did he meet someone else?
- Was it the fact I didn’t immediately respond to his message because I was in an all day-workshop (even though I told him I would be in one)?
I noticed how my mind continued to spiral as I wondered if I did something wrong, but then it occurred to me-to consciously flip these self-defeating questions “from what I was doing” to “who is the kind of person I want to be with?”
Do I want to be with someone who randomly stops communicating with me out of the blue without any explanation? No way. Do I want to be with someone who disrespects me? Heck no!
First and foremost, you have to love yourself to be able to invite a healthy love and relationship into your life
Reframing this in my mind helped me let go of the upset feelings I had and just continue on with my life. Happily, I found the love of my life who does love and respect me. Someone who I can count on to always communicates with me when we are dealing with challenges in our relationship and who I know will work together with me to get through it.
I think the most important thing in a potentially painful experience like this is to practice self-love. When you rely on someone else to validate your existence and worth, then it will be infinitely harder to walk away from any relationship where that person doesn’t care about you in the same way you care about them.
Release them and wish them well
I know it has been proven that we can’t break a bad habit, but rather we have to replace it. This applies to how to stop caring about someone who doesn’t care about you anymore.
You see, our default is to love, help and care for others. Deep down, this is our innate desire to contribute to others in any way we can. We sometimes get hurt, bruised and that desire to love is replaced with indifference or, worst, hate.
The goal is not to stop caring about them because that would mean you replace that care with hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness. And we all know what those negative feelings do to our own well-being. We get what we give. We receive what we send out-just like a boomerang.
So we must send out love, to those who don’t care about us, to those who hate us, to those who hurt us.
I personally had to learn this the hard way, I was molested as a child by my mother’s boyfriend, and my mother picked him over me after I told her what has been happening for almost three years.
I not only had to learn to forgive the man who hurt me, but I had to learn to forgive my mother, who abandoned me at the age of 14. It was one of the hardest things I had to do, but I begin with this loving-kindness technique.
