How To Stop Caring About Someone (17 Ways That Work)

Relationships with people are fraught with the possibility of being hurt. Perhaps one of the biggest sources of hurt is rejection or the ending of a relationship where you find you still have feelings for a person. Learning how to stop caring about someone is key therefore to getting on with your life and moving on. 

Here in this article, we question whether you can ever really stop caring about someone and the ways you can learn how to stop caring about someone too. In doing so, we list 17 ways to help you move forward so that your heart can heal and you can start afresh with other people.

Do You Ever Stop Caring About Someone?

When you start caring for someone it can be difficult to think of a time that those feelings may stop. However, sometimes it is imperative to learn how to stop caring about someone. It could be that you were in a relationship with a person, but like many relationships, it came to an end. It could be that you were the one to end it, or that person may have ended it with you – either way, it is difficult to stop caring for someone immediately. 

Bearing this in mind, you need to learn how not to care for them so that you can move on with your life. The same can be said of a person who is in love with someone else who doesn’t return the same feelings. This can be very difficult as it can be hard to get any form of closure, however, it is possible to do so and stop caring about someone to let go. 

Take comfort in the fact that in life we don’t always get to be with the people we want all of the time, but we will eventually feel better even when those feelings are not returned how we would like them to be. Above all, remember that time is a great healer and, while it may not feel like it now, you will eventually move on with your life and find a person who does reciprocate your feelings. 

How To Not Care About Someone You Love? 17 Ways To Stop Caring

Here are our 17 ways that can help you learn how to stop caring about someone. While it can help only trying out one or two of them if possible try to implement as many as you can in your life so that you can move forward as quickly as you can. While feelings of the heart should never be forced or rushed, there are definitely things that will help support that healing that we mention below. 

1. Stop contacting them

Without a doubt, one of the best ways to move on from a person is to stop contacting them altogether. Without doing so, you make it so much harder to stop caring about them as the sheer fact of seeing them or hearing from them will make it much more difficult to break the habit you have got into. That habit is caring about them and to break it, you make life a lot easier by not contacting them. Obviously, sometimes, this is difficult to do. You may have children together or you may be part of each other’s lives in some other material way. However, if you can, minimize all interactions you have with them until you feel a lot stronger in yourself. 

2. Delete them from your social media accounts

One of the best ways to stop interactions with someone that you care about and a good way to learn how to stop caring about someone is to delete them from your social media accounts. This can mean that that you unfollow them so that you no longer get notified about what they are up to and nor do you see any pictures of them. By doing so, you don’t get regular reminders about their lives without you which can be hurtful and really stop you from moving on without them. Additionally, you can delete any picture the two of you have together as a way to get over them. It can be much easier to stop caring for a person if you have no visual evidence of happier times you had together. 

3. Delete any memory of them 

In relation to deleting images of them on social media, a really good idea to minimize your heartbreak and anxiety about moving on with your life is to try to delete any other memory you have of the people you want to move on from. This can mean getting rid of any hard copy pictures or photographs you have taken in your home, or it can mean returning things that they once bought for you as a present. While the memory itself is harder to erase from your mind, it can help you stop caring about someone if you don’t have the visual reminders of them scattered around your home. 

4. Start a new hobby

Another thing that can be very beneficial to do when you are trying to stop caring about someone is to distract yourself and occupy your mind. It is a good idea therefore to start a new hobby that can divert your attention at times that you would either have been busy with your ex or thinking about the person for whom you still have feelings. Hobbies can be a very powerful way of refocusing your energies elsewhere whilst also having the positive side effect that you can master a skill that you have always wanted to get better at. The hobby you start is up to you, but as long as it is very different to anything the person you have feelings for would be interested in, it’s a very proactive step to take towards learning how to stop caring about someone. 

5. Spend time with friends

When you love someone you can sometimes forget that there are lots of other people around you that think you are great and enjoy your company too. Bearing this in mind, when you are trying to forget about someone or a past relationship, it can be a great idea to spend time with your friends. It can be so good for your confidence being with people who are in your life because they care about you and also because they enjoy your company. When you have feelings for someone else that aren’t returned, it is easy to suffer from a lack of self-confidence at times. Being with friends who love all the things about you can really help break that self-loathing cycle. 

6. Focus on your career

Another good way to direct your energies into something other than thinking about that special someone is to focus on your career. It can be very easy when we are in love or have a crush on someone or even are suffering from depression due to the end of a relationship, to get into bad habits at work, and stop trying. This is often due to that very self-loathing that spending time with friends can stop. Focusing on your career can stop this too as when you fully focus your energies into your job, you will start to reap the rewards through promotions or financial benefits that highlight that you are doing well. Things don’t have to break down for the rest of your life just because your relationship with a person isn’t panning out how you’d like. 

7. Start seeing other people

Starting to see other people is a great way to help you get to grips with how to stop caring about someone. This is because by seeing other people you may actually find another person that you do care about just as much as that someone you are trying to move on from. We often forget when we have strong feelings for someone that there may be another person out there that we love just as much, if not more. However, while it can be so easy to feel like this, it is possible to have many meaningful relationships in our lives. Seeing other people will help you remember that it is possible to care for another person and have a lot of fun. 

8. Focus on their bad points

It may sound a little bit negative, but it can really help you move on if you remember every single reason that that significant someone in your life drove you and when you were together. If you are not with that person, but simply want to stop having feelings for them that are never going to be reciprocated, it is still a good idea to focus on all the negative things they do and their bad points. This is because when we remember bad things about a person it helps take the shine off them so that we no longer idealize them. When we idealize a person, it makes it impossible to move on as you will never find someone else as no one will ever be able to meet your high standards. 

9. Look at all that was wrong with your relationship

If you were with a person in a partnership that you want to move on from, it can be helpful to look at all that was wrong with your relationship as a way to learn how to stop caring about someone as soon as possible. The reason being is that there can be some fundamental things that happen in a partnership that will prevent it from ever being successful or happy. In doing so, that can help you remember why you were not well suited.

10. Go on vacation

It may sound a bit like you want to escape, but going on a vacation can really help you forget that someone for which you care a lot about still. The reason being is that getting away from your normal life can also get you away from all the things that remind you of that someone. This is important as without having the daily reminders for the person you like, you give yourself a much better chance of letting time heal your wounds so that you can get back out there and start afresh. Vacations don’t have to be far or fancy, just somewhere that is new that won’t give you any reason to remember the person you are trying to forget. 

11. See a counselor

Sometimes our feelings are just too much for us to cope with and it can be hard to move on from something like that without the help of a well trained professional. If you are finding that things are getting on top of you and you really cannot cope with all the feelings that are racing through your mind and body, it can be a great idea to go and see a counselor who will be able to help you work through your issues. They can give you some really practical advice and help you address your problems that are causing you pain. 

12. Get into exercise

When we care about a person and we either break up with them, or we are rejected by them in some format, it can be very tempting to give in to self-pity. This is a difficult cycle to break and will make it far more difficult to get on with things when we start feeling sorry for ourselves. A really good thing to break that cycle therefore is to start doing exercise as regularly as possible. This doesn’t have to be a complicated exercise or something daredevil like some of the latest exercise crazes can be. Instead, just a good long walk near your home or a run is all you need to get those much-needed endorphins running through your body. Endorphins are our good mood hormones that can really help improve our moods. 

13. Remember your strengths

Another way that exercise can help is that it can give you a lot more confidence about how you feel. However, if exercise isn’t for you, it is still important to try to remember to keep your confidence up – especially if things ended with an ex due to them breaking up with you or the person you are into rejected your advances. Just because the person you care for doesn’t want to be with you, doesn’t mean you are worthless and not a good person. Instead, it just means that you weren’t suited for each other and things between you were not meant to be. 

14. Keep busy

Keeping busy is a crucial part of stopping caring about someone. The reason being is that if we always have something to occupy ourselves with, we give ourselves less time to think about the person we are trying to forget. Also, it can be very beneficial to keep busy as it means you may start to have experiences that you may otherwise not have had. Plus, the hope is that by keeping busy, when you finally look up and take a break from all that you have done, enough time will have passed for you to have moved on from the person you want to forget. 

15. Say yes to every offer

One of the best ways to keep busy is to say yes to every offer that comes your way. It can be very easy to say no to many things that are outside of our comfort zone or even just to say no when we are feeling down and depressed about ourselves – as so often happens at the end of a relationship. Bearing that in mind, if you say yes to everything that comes your way, you ensure that you do not start to descend into one of those vicious self-loathing cycles. 

16. Set yourself small goals

Setting yourself small goals to achieve after a breakup or after you have been rejected by someone can be a really proactive thing to do. This is because when we set out trying to get over a person, that in itself is too big a goal. We then get depressed when we don’t manage it as quickly as we want to. Therefore, by setting ourselves small goals to achieve instead – like going on a date with someone else, we actually start to feel a lot better about ourselves, and thus our confidence increases again. 

17. Remember that time is a great healer

Above everything, remember that time is the best healer when it comes to getting over a person. It can feel like you will never move on with your life and find someone new at times, but over a period of time – which can be days, weeks, or even months – things will start to get easier for you, and you will feel better about yourself. It’s annoying but true. Have faith that mending a broken heart will always take time. 

FAQs

The Bottom Line

When we want to stop caring about someone we often want it to happen immediately. Sadly, when it comes to feelings of the heart, getting over someone can never be rushed or forced. However, you can help yourself move on by owning up to how you are feeling and trying as many proactive things as possible to break the habit and routine you got into when it came to caring for another person. Remember, time really is a healer when it comes to getting over someone, just have faith in yourself that you have the ability to get through this difficult period.