How to lose feelings for your boyfriend

In the beginning, it's exciting. You can't wait to see your BF or GF — and it feels amazing to know that he or she feels the same way. The happiness and excitement of a new relationship can overpower everything else

Nothing stays new forever, though. Things change as couples get to know each other better. Some people settle into a comfortable, close relationship. Other couples drift apart.

There are lots of different reasons why people break up. Growing apart is one. You might find that your interests, ideas, values, and feelings aren't as well matched as you thought they were. Changing your mind or your feelings about the other person is another. Perhaps you just don't enjoy being together. Maybe you argue or don't want the same thing. You might have developed feelings for someone else. Or maybe you've discovered you're just not interested in having a serious relationship right now.

Most people go through a break-up (or several break-ups) in their lives. If you've ever been through it, you know it can be painful — even if it seems like it's for the best.

Why Is Breaking Up So Hard to Do?

If you're thinking of breaking up with someone, you may have mixed feelings about it. After all, you got together for a reason. So it's normal to wonder: "Will things get better?" "Should I give it another chance?" "Will I regret this decision?" Breaking up isn't an easy decision. You may need to take time to think about it.

Even if you feel sure of your decision, breaking up means having an awkward or difficult conversation. The person you're breaking up with might feel hurt, disappointed, sad, rejected, or heartbroken. When you're the one ending the relationship, you probably want to do it in a way that is respectful and sensitive. You don't want the other person to be hurt — and you don't want to be upset either.

Avoid It? Or Get it Over With?

Some people avoid the unpleasant task of starting a difficult conversation. Others have a "just-get-it-over-with" attitude. But neither of these approaches is the best one. Avoiding just prolongs the situation (and may end up hurting the other person more). And if you rush into a difficult conversation without thinking it through, you may say things you regret.

Something in the middle works best: Think things through so you're clear with yourself on why you want to break up. Then act.

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Break-up Do's and Don'ts

Every situation is different. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to breaking up. But there are some general "do's and don'ts" you can keep in mind as you start thinking about having that break-up conversation.

DO:

• Think over what you want and why you want it. Take time to consider your feelings and the reasons for your decision. Be true to yourself. Even if the other person might be hurt by your decision, it's OK to do what's right for you. You just need to do it in a sensitive way.
• Think about what you'll say and how the other person might react. Will your BF or GF be surprised? Sad? Mad? Hurt? Or even relieved? Thinking about the other person's point of view and feelings can help you be sensitive. It also helps you prepare. Do you think the person you're breaking up with might cry? Lose his or her temper? How will you deal with that kind of reaction?
• Have good intentions. Let the other person know he or she matters to you. Think about the qualities you want to show toward the other person — like honesty, kindness, sensitivity, respect, and caring.
• Be honest — but not brutal. Tell the other person the things that attracted you in the first place, and what you like about him or her. Then say why you want to move on. "Honesty" doesn't mean "harsh." Don't pick apart the other person's qualities as a way to explain what's not working. Think of ways to be kind and gentle while still being honest.
• Say it in person. You've shared a lot with each other. Respect that (and show your good qualities) by breaking up in person. If you live far away, try to video chat or at least make a phone call. Breaking up through texting or Facebook may seem easy. But think about how you'd feel if your BF or GF did that to you — and what your friends would say about that person's character!
• If it helps, confide in someone you trust. It can help to talk through your feelings with a trusted friend. But be sure the person you confide in can keep it private until you have your actual break-up conversation with your BF or GF. Make sure your BF/GF hears it from you first — not from someone else. That's one reason why parents, older sisters or brothers, and other adults can be great to talk to. They're not going to blab or let it slip out accidentally.

DON'T:

• Don't avoid the other person or the conversation you need to have. Dragging things out makes it harder in the long run — for you and your BF or GF. Plus, when people put things off, information can leak out anyway. You never want the person you're breaking up with to hear it from someone else before hearing it from you.
• Don't rush into a difficult conversation without thinking it through. You may say things you regret.
• Don't disrespect. Speak about your ex (or soon-to-be ex) with respect. Be careful not to gossip or badmouth him or her. Think about how you'd feel. You'd want your ex to say only positive things about you after you're no longer together. Plus, you never know — your ex could turn into a friend or you might even rekindle a romance someday.

These "dos and don'ts" aren't just for break-ups. If someone asks you out but you're not really interested, you can follow the same guidelines for letting that person down gently.

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What to Say and How to Say It

You've made the decision to break up. Now you need to find a good time to talk — and a way to have the conversation that's respectful, fair, clear, and kind. Break-ups are more than just planning what to say. You also want to consider how you will say it.

Here are some examples of what you might say. Use these ideas and modify them to fit your situation and style:

1. Tell your BF or GF that you want to talk about something important.
2. Start by mentioning something you like or value about the other person.
   For example: "We've been close for a long time, and you're important to me."
   Or: "I really like you and I'm glad we've gotten to know each other."
3. Say what's not working (your reason for the break-up).
   For example: "But I'm not ready to have a serious boyfriend right now."
   Or: "But you cheated on me, and I can't accept that."
   Or: "But we're arguing more than we're having fun."
   Or: "But it just doesn't feel right anymore."
   Or: "But there's someone else."
4. Say you want to break up.
   For example: "So, I want to break up."
   Or: "So I want us to be friends, but not go out."
   Or: "So I want to stay friendly, but I don't want to be your BF/GF anymore."
5. Say you're sorry if this hurts.
   For example: "I don't want to hurt you."
   Or: "I'm sorry if this isn't the way you wanted things to be."
   Or: "I'm sorry if this hurts you."
   Or: "I know this is hard to hear."
6. Say something kind or positive.
   For example: "I know you'll be OK."
   Or: "I know we'll always care about each other."
   Or: "I'll always remember the good times we had."
   Or: "I'll always be glad I got to know you."
   Or: "I know there's another girl/guy who will be happy to have a chance to go out with you."
7. Listen to what the other person wants to say. Be patient, and don't be surprised if the other person acts upset or unhappy with what you've said.
8. Give the person space. Consider following up with a friendly message or conversation that lets your ex know you care about how s/he is doing.

Relationships Help Us Learn

Whether they last a long time or a short time, relationships can have special meaning and value. Each relationship can teach us something about ourselves, another person, and what we want and need in a future partner. It's a chance for us to learn to care about another person and to experience being cared about.

A break-up is an opportunity to learn, too. It's not easy. But it's a chance to do your best to respect another person's feelings. Ending a relationship — as hard as it is — builds our skills when it comes to being honest and kind during difficult conversations.

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to stop loving somebody, but the two main ones are that they don't return your feelings or they treat you badly. Love may feel like it's something beyond your control, but psychological research shows that there are actually ways to tame this wild feeling. Rutgers anthropologist Helen Fisher has worked with neuroscientists to produce images of people's brains while they are in the throes of deep love for someone else. What they found was that feelings of intense love activated the brain's nucleus accumbens, a region associated with rewards — and with out-of-control addictions. As Fisher put it to me by phone, love activates the parts of our brains that are also activated in the brains of cocaine and cigarette addicts when they anticipate getting high.

So, Fisher recommends treating your love the way you would treat an addiction. "Throw out their cards and letters, or hide them in a closet," she said. "Don't call or look for them online. If you're trying to give up alcohol, you don't leave scotch on your desk." Ideally, you want to stop thinking about the person entirely, so getting rid of objects that remind you of them will help.

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How To Stop Obsessing

But how do you prevent yourself from having thoughts of the person? You can't just throw your memories in a box. Oklahoma State University psychologist Robert Sternberg, author of "The Triangular Theory of Love,", shared a few tips via email:

1. If you must think about the person, emphasize his or her negative characteristics. (We all have them!) Realize how, in the long run, you will feel lucky you got out of the relationship.

2. Reflect on the fact that relationships can never work unless both people are willing to make them work. In the long run, it never would have worked.

3. Find someone else. Nothing to get over someone like finding someone else to occupy your attention. But realize the risk: Transitional partners usually do not end up being permanent partners.

4. Keep yourself busy. Don't even allow yourself the time to ruminate.

Sexologist Carol Queen agreed that thinking about the negative aspects of your anti-Valentine can help, but noted that sex often confuses the picture. "One of the biggest problems people have about falling in love with the wrong partner has to do with mistaking good sex, or even just strong erotic attraction, for love and compatibility," she warned. "They are separate things! It's great when you can have them both in one package, but don't make the mistake of defining sexual desire as love and vice versa."

Though you can't always find a new partner right away, whether for love or just sexy fun, one thing you can absolutely do is keep busy. That doesn't have to mean doing paperwork or writing angry blog posts. Try something new, random, or creative.

In a recent interview with Outside, two founders of Burning Man discussed how the festival's main icon was inspired by one man's need to get over a relationship. Joe Fenton, a member of the Black Rock Rangers, said, "[Burning Man founder Larry Harvey] told me very specifically that the figure was an effigy of his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his son. He told me he wanted to burn her out of his memory." Added Harvey, "That was not a conscious thought in my mind at the time. That was the result of introspection." Even if Harvey was only unconsciously purging his feelings, the result was that he kept busy and found ways to create community. Plus, never underestimate how distracting and cathartic it can be to burn things (safely!).

A Drug That Could Prevent You From Feeling Love

University of San Francisco psychiatry professor Thomas Lewis, co-author of the fascinating book A General Theory of Love, speculated via email about the difference between how we deal with falling out of love today, versus how we might do it in the future:

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I suspect that there is nothing that a person can do that will make them fall out of love with someone, in the same way that there is nothing that a drunk person can do that will make him sober. Falling in love is a similar state of intoxication, and it's quite possible to demonstrate on neuroimaging studies that there is suppression, during the falling in love state, of areas in the brain that support critical judgment, and areas of the brain that process negative emotions. So in general, no amount of reasoning, and no amount of contradictory evidence about how noxious the other person actually is, wind up penetrating into the final output pathways of somebody who is in love. Of course, we have lots of cultural phrases and aphorisms that express the folk wisdom about this aspect of neurophysiology – "love conquers all," "love is blind," etc.

I said that there's nothing that the person can do, in and of themselves, that will make them fall out of love. I think it's possible that some modern neurotransmitter-altering medications, including some that probably haven't been invented yet, could potentially interrupt the falling- in-love state. I say this in part because of the recent discovery of a molecule (dihydromyricetin) that, when administered, prevents rats from becoming intoxicated when they drink alcohol. They can drink all they want, but pretty much nothing happens to their brain function (although something may happen to their livers.) If it is possible to prevent alcohol from being intoxicating, then I suspect it is at least theoretically possible to prevent love from being intoxicating, although I also suspect that love might be more complex than ordinary drunkenness. Love might well require more than one neurotransmitter system to be adjusted before it is neutralized. Certainly the dopamine system would have to be adjusted downward, and one can imagine that perhaps the endogenous opiate system would have to be tweaked and perhaps the oxytocin system might have to be tweaked.

However, all of that lies in the future, for people who possess more direct access to neurotransmitter manipulations than we have.

Let Some Time Pass

When I approached each of these experts with my question about falling out of love, many of them noted that they are rarely asked this question. Instead, they're usually asked how two people can remain in love over time. And this is good news for those of you who want to carve that painful feeling right out of your brain. Generally, the passionate intensity of love doesn't last. Sure, it can deepen into a lasting relationship or marriage, but it will never remain as intense or hurty as it is during that new relationship phase.

Fisher explained that there's truth to the old adage that time does heal, even on a neurological level. She and her research team found that people who had been rejected in love showed reduced activity over time in the vental palladium, an area of the brain associated with feelings of attachment. To help your brain with the loss, she added, try getting lots of exercise to drive up your feel-good hormones like dopamine. And get lots of hugs from friends — touching is a way to drive up oxytocin in your system, which could help you to feel calmer.

Said Lewis:

For better or for worse, the falling in love state doesn't last forever, whether we wish it to or not, and so if a person finds himself constrained by the ties of being in love with the wrong person, he might find some consolation in the fact that, some day in the relatively near future, probably no more than a few months down the road, he will be free.