How To Not Fall In Love: 10 Tricks To Train Your Brain

If you wish your head could lead instead of your feelings, these tips are for you, my dear. There are many reasons why you should not fall in love with someone. Maybe you travel for a living and you know it would be a bad time to start a relationship. Maybe you know you’re moving out of town or you don’t think you would be able to put up with his cat fetish.

Whatever it is, I have the tips for you that will keep your mind at ease and not let things get complicated.

If you can make yourself think of people as profiles and organize them in a mental filing system, you’ll be able to categorize who to think of in what way. If you don’t want to fall in love with him, put him in the ‘don’t even go there file.’ So, here’s how to not fall in love:

1. Don’t hang out with them

This may seem obvious when you think about it, but putting that common sense into practice is actually harder for most people that it seems. People like the attention they get from others, and if someone is filling their ego with flattery, they might have a hard time not hanging out with them. You will have an easier time not falling in love with them if you’re not around them, bottom line.

This also reduces the number of shared experiences and shared emotions. You need to put on your big girl boots and face reality about this one, if you don’t want to fall for someone, don’t make them a part of your life.

If you have to be around them sometimes, plan ahead. Keep yourself occupied when you’re together and focused on the task at hand. Don’t allow yourself to be flirty because it won’t help your cause. If I were you, I would pay close attention to what you choose to wear also.

Don’t wear revealing clothing or anything you feel like would attract that person to you. Just try to be invisible and small when it comes to their attention, so they don’t feed on your energy and build that potential complication.

2. Limit conversation

Just because you’re not hanging out with someone, doesn’t mean it’s ok to text and email with them. If you don’t want to fall in love with someone, act like they don’t exist. Be extreme about it and cut off all communication until you no longer think about them.

If you must speak to them, see if you can let someone else do it or just limit the conversation and don’t go off on tangents. Be blunt and cold and it will sterilize the energy between you, so those feelings don’t grow. Don’t like all of their posts on Instagram or Facebook either, it won’t help.

3. Think about the consequences

In order to train your brain, you need to put it all out on the table. If you’re putting someone on a pedestal and not really facing who they truly are, it will be much harder to approach the situation logically. If you think of them as this pie in the sky idea of a human, it will be hard not to fall in love with them.

But let’s be honest, that person isn’t going to make your dreams come true, only you can do that. Humanize them, see them for who they really are with their flaws and get back to reality.

Now you’re ready to realistically think about why you don’t want to fall in love with this person. You will need to remind yourself of this often, so your brain doesn’t put them back on the pedestal. Remember, no one, not even Brad Pitt can make you happy. Only you can make you happy.

Think about if that person would sincerely treat you well or if they are just into themselves. Think about if anyone’s feelings would be hurt if you fell in love with this person or how it would complicate your life. Now we are getting somewhere!

4. Think about his drawbacks

Everyone has flaws, no matter how perfect they seem to be on the outside. You can’t just look at a person’s good traits and judge them. You must look at them holistically so you can think logically.

There are very good reasons why certain people shouldn’t fall in love. Perhaps it’s fundamentally different belief systems, perhaps it’s completely different lifestyles, or maybe it’s that you live in totally different countries and have kids of your own that don’t want to move.

If you foresee challenges in a potential relationship with someone, it allows your brain to reason that it might seriously be a bad idea to fall in love with them. We can’t just fall in love with every man that says something nice about our hair and has a nice smile, ladies. We have to be strong, practical and only choose relationships that make sense for both people.

5. Vocalize your intention

Ah, the challenging, finalizing, drop the gauntlet, say it like it is, kill the possibility, a line of ‘there’s nothing between us’ or ‘I think of you only as a friend.’ You have to make it clear, be direct, don’t leave them guessing. Even if it’s difficult to say, you need to draw a clear line by announcing the boundary.

If you can’t be firm with your words, you can’t be firm with your actions. If you have a hard time being direct and seem to have strings attached to multiple people who are in the gray area, all the more reason to cut ties by telling them, “I’m cutting ties.”

You don’t have to be mean about it, just declare your truth. If things don’t make sense to you, then that’s enough. If this man likes you or loves you, there is no reason you need to like or love him back.

6. Be a B word

Yes, you have the permission to act cold if you are having trouble not developing feelings for someone. You need to freeze those steaming feelings like an icicle and smash it to smithereens. Have fun with it. Don’t look at him, don’t give him attention, talk to other people and don’t care about what he thinks. He’ll get the hint that you’re not interested when he doesn’t get a hello or a goodbye.

I mean, have a heart and don’t crush the man, but don’t cater to him either. If he deserves to be treated with respect, but every time you speak to him, you end up staring into each other’s eyes having a deep conversation, you need space and you need to be stuck up, even if it’s hard.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is create a firm boundary and stick to it. It will help you develop a tough skin and people will know not to mess with you.

7. Focus on someone else

Another excellent brain training trick is to switch your focus to someone else. Do things where you have an opportunity to meet nice guys. When your heart strings are pulled in another direction, he will slowly get less and less of your thoughts, until you start to forget what you even saw in him in the first place.

Make plans with your single friends. Do activities you like in groups and get out there in public. If you stay home by yourself, you won’t be able to distract yourself as easily, unless you get really immersed in a new hobby. Learning something new can help you to, at the same time, learn how to not fall in love with someone.

Your brain can only give so much attention to so many things, so focus on something else, my dear. Create a plan of action and stick to it!

8. Think about their feelings

If you develop some compassion for the other guy’s feelings, it can help you not fall for someone. Perhaps he doesn’t like you back and you’re wasting your time trying to get him to like you. How do you think that feels for him? Probably not fun, right? If you truly care about someone, you will take their feelings into consideration.

If you’re having trouble not falling for someone that can’t love you back because they’re taken, you should definitely spend some time thinking about their feelings. Imagine how tragic it would be to break up someone’s marriage! Yikes, that is an area you do not what to trespass. Don’t play with fire or you will get burned.

Let’s be clear about this. It’s not cute or clever to deceive someone’s husband or boyfriend for your personal gain. It’s wrong and traumatizes people. If you think you’re going to get away with something, you need to ask yourself why you have no sympathy for other people’s feelings.

If you have never seen what a home wrecker does to families, you might not take your personal actions serious enough. Flirting with a taken man is not acceptable for a woman at all, and it can ruin your reputation as well as your self-esteem.

9. Focus on yourself

Here’s a great way to stop thinking about some dude! Just focus on your own personal goals and what you need to do to achieve them. This is a positive way to train your brain to shift gears. You will build confidence and personal strength as you forget all about that silly dude. Arrange for things you will need to do in order to accomplish your goals in a timely fashion.

If you have trouble figuring out your goals, hire a life coach or call a mentor (someone you trust and admire). Figure out if you will need more training to accomplish your goals and sign up for classes. Get the materials you will need and plot your calendar events.

If you want to participate in more activities and be more social, get on your city’s website and see what’s going on. Start consuming media and expand your thinking.

10. How to not fall in love? Get busy

Join a game night, arrange to host parties, go cosmic bowling, attend birthday parties, volunteer as team mom, go to yoga and learn French. Whatever it takes to preoccupy your mind and not focus on that guy, you need to do it. Learn a new style of cooking, learn wood making or catch up on current events.

If you’re wasting time thinking about someone, clearly you have enough time to do something useful. Maybe it’s time to get a masters or a Ph.D.? If you don’t give yourself enough things to do, often your boredom can lead to obsessing over people who are all wrong for you. Having too much time on your hands is like asking for trouble.

We should really use our time focused on helping others. If you don’t have kids, there are plenty of people in the community who need your help. You can help on trash pickups, volunteer for blood drives or volunteer at the local library.

You should always be thinking about using your energy to build a stronger and happier community, not just a stronger and happier you. Often these men we shouldn’t fall for come into our lives for a reason, to remind us to take a look in the mirror and stop being selfish.

The struggle to overcome our feelings for them demands that we take our focus off of ourselves and into the hearts and minds of those who could use our affection.

Ultimately, in your heart, you will know if you shouldn’t fall for someone. Taking some quiet time to get in touch with that can be all you need. Stop and really feel the truth, your heart will tell you because it’s not lead by lust or greed. Your heart will guide you to make the right decisions if you come from a place of humility and look at things holistically.

Don’t be hard on yourself when you find it difficult, but don’t be soft either. Sometimes disciplining yourself and your thinking is the only way to get over a hump in your life. Just like it requires discipline and strong decisions to not eat junk food and to keep active and healthy, we must be disciplined in our approach to relationships and not just follow every fleeting fantasy.

Please feel free to share your thoughts below and continue to motivate people who visit this site. We hope you find your inner resolve here on YouQueen.