How to Get Over Someone You Can't Be With
Entry No. 094 ·
By The IF Team
To get over someone you cannot be with — because they are taken, far away or simply not free right now — treat it as a loss rather than a failure of willpower. Let yourself grieve it, then stop feeding the ache: less contact, less checking, fewer late-night replays. Replace the idealised version of them with the whole, ordinary person, and give the time and attention they took up back to your own life. You cannot switch a feeling off, but a love that is not fed every day slowly loosens its grip.
Letting go does not have to mean leaving it unsaid, or giving up on them for good. You can tell them, though opening up face to face has its risks, or, if either of you is in a relationship, you can say it in an IF, a private, sealed message that opens only if you are both single one day, and get on with your life while it waits. IF is the dating app we built for feelings like this, and no conversation opens on it while either of you is with someone.
If you are here, you are not being dramatic. Trying to let go of someone you love takes more courage than it is given credit for, and you are not alone: loving the right person at the wrong moment is one of the oldest stories people tell.
This guide is for love blocked by circumstance. If the heart of it is that they do not feel the same way, coping with unrequited love is the better fit; if it never quite began, start with getting over someone you never dated.
Why it hurts when nobody did anything wrong
It can feel absurd to grieve something you never officially had. But this kind of loss has a sting of its own: often nobody did anything wrong. They did not turn you down. A partner, an ocean, a family or the calendar stood in the way. There is no one to be angry with, and there is often a quiet suspicion that it might have worked, which is exactly what makes it so hard to set down.
It is also a loss almost nobody sees. You may still sit across from them at work and smile as if nothing is happening. Grief researchers call a loss that the people around you do not recognise disenfranchised grief, and part of what helps is simply giving yourself permission to mourn this one.
Then there is hope, which is the real engine. Researchers who collected people’s stories of unrequited love found that would-be lovers often believed they had never been given a definite no. When circumstance stands in the way, there may never be a no at all, just a situation, and situations can change. Hope is not the problem; it is often a sign the feeling was real. What wears you down is hope with nowhere to go, a what-if with no ending. Part of letting go is giving it somewhere to live other than your head: a letter, a friend who knows, or a sealed IF that keeps it for you.
How to get over someone you can’t be with, step by step
None of this runs in a straight line, but these six moves help whatever the wall is made of.
Decide first. The feeling follows
Most people wait to feel ready before they let go. It tends to work the other way round. The decision comes first — “this is not happening now, and I am going to live my life rather than organise it around the chance that it might” — and the feeling catches up, slowly and unevenly. Say it to yourself, then to someone you trust. Spoken aloud, a private ache becomes a fact you can work with. Deciding does not have to mean closing the door: if either of you is with someone, an IF can hold it open, and then the decision is about your days, not about them.
Starve the longing, not the memory
You do not need to erase them or pretend they never mattered. You need to stop topping up the longing. That usually means less contact and much less checking: muting their stories, archiving the chat, no longer engineering reasons to be wherever they will be. One study of people after a break-up found that those who kept checking an ex’s Facebook page reported more distress, more longing and less personal growth. Every look is a small dose of the thing you are trying to come off.
Whether you can stay friends depends on the friendship and on you; staying friends with someone you have feelings for weighs it properly. If contact reliably leaves you raw again, it is costing more than it gives.
Swap the highlight reel for the whole person
The person you cannot stop thinking about is partly real and partly your own invention. When all you have are fragments — a few long conversations, a message reread a hundred times — your mind fills in the rest, flatteringly. The version in your head never snaps when tired, never wants a different life from yours.
So put the rest back. Write down the ordinary and the inconvenient: the things you did not like, the ways you might not fit, the reasons it would be hard even if it were possible tomorrow. This is not about turning them into a villain. It is about seeing a person rather than a promise, because a person is far easier to set down — and if the day ever comes, the real person is the one you would want to meet anyway.
Grieve in doses, then close the window
Pushing the feeling away tends to make it louder, and drowning in it all day is not much better. Bereavement researchers describe healthy grieving as a back-and-forth between facing the loss and getting on with life, and that is the shape to aim for: feel it on purpose, for a set time — a long walk, a playlist, twenty minutes with a notebook — then close the window and do something that needs your full attention.
Expect waves: a song in the supermarket, their name on someone else’s phone. A wave is not a relapse, and most pass if you let them, without the message or the scroll.
Fill the room they took up
Loving someone you cannot have takes up an extraordinary amount of room, and a gap left empty tends to fill back up with them. Fill it on purpose. Say yes to the plans you have been half-declining. Pick up the thing you loved before you were busy loving them. Sleep, move, eat properly: dull advice that matters more than it sounds.
Date again when you want to, not to prove a point
Meeting new people can help, not as a distraction, but as a reminder of what it feels like when interest runs both ways. On IF, two single people show it with a Like, and an accepted Like opens a chat. You will know you are ready when you can sit across from someone new without measuring every sentence against the person you are getting over. If you are not there yet, there is no deadline.
Taken, far away or not free: what changes
If they are in a relationship
Feeling this for someone who is taken is honest, not shameful, and nothing here asks you to hide it. If you are trying to stop liking them — a colleague, a friend’s partner, someone in your group — everything above applies, with two traps to watch for. The first is reading every kindness as a signal. Their warmth may simply be warmth, or it may be more, and you cannot know which while they are with someone. If they start confiding in you about problems at home, notice what it does to you: being their confidant keeps a feeling well fed, and you can step back from that role for your own sake without judging them.
The second is waiting that swallows your life: checking for cracks, hovering for a gap. Their relationship is theirs to run, never yours to nudge along. Waiting itself is not foolish, though. If they feel like the right person, the healthy way to wait is to say it once, in an IF, which cannot open while they are with someone, and keep living your own life. Whether you should wait for someone who is in a relationship takes that question on directly, and your real options with a crush on someone who is taken covers the rest.
If they live far away, or are about to
Distance creates its own impossible: the holiday romance, the one leaving next month for another continent. It is also a powerful editor. In a study of long-distance couples, partners who lived apart idealised each other more, and extreme idealisation while apart predicted break-ups once couples finally lived near each other. Some of what you miss may be the distance itself: the scarcity, the way every conversation felt like an event. Ask yourself honestly whether a life could be built across that gap. If it could, it may be worth telling them, and if you are both single and on IF, a Like is a gentle way to say it. If not, at least not yet, you are grieving something that never got its chance, and that is allowed to hurt too.
If timing, faith or family is in the way
Sometimes nobody is taken and nobody is leaving, and it still cannot happen. One of you is not ready, or a family or a faith would not accept it, or your lives point in different directions. These walls are the hardest to accept, because they look as though they could move, and some do, though rarely on your schedule. If you want them to know, you can tell them, and if they are on IF, a Like says it plainly: a chat opens only if they accept. If you are torn between waiting and letting go, right person, wrong time looks at when timing really is the problem, and if either of you is ever with someone, an IF lets you do a little of both: say it now, and let it wait while you live.
If they are an ex who has moved on
An ex with a new partner is a particular ache, because you once had what you are now grieving. The same principles hold, with more history to untangle, and loving an ex who has moved on is written for exactly that. And if you still hope, you can say so in an IF: it stays sealed while they are with someone, and if you are ever both single again, you can show them the door was open all along.
If you are the one in a relationship
Sometimes the person who cannot be with someone is you. Feelings for someone else while you are with a partner are more common than anyone admits, and they are honest rather than shameful. The only lines are cheating and lying. Short of those, it is your call: give the feeling less to feed on, invest in the relationship you are in, or, if it has run its course, end it for its own sake. You can also say how you feel in an IF, whatever you feel about your relationship, because no conversation opens until you are both single. Having a crush while you are in a relationship walks through each option.
How to stop liking someone when it is only a crush
Not every feeling is a great love. Sometimes it is a crush — on a colleague, someone from your climbing wall, a friend of a friend you keep ending up next to at parties — and you simply want it to take up less of your head. Crushes run largely on imagination and proximity, so they usually respond well to less of both.
- See them less, or see them in groups. One-to-one time is fuel.
- Learn more about them, not less. Crushes thrive on mystery, and ordinary facts — their opinions, how they are on a bad day — bring a fantasy back down to earth.
- Notice what the crush is standing in for: often it is wanting to feel chosen, excited or seen, a need you can meet elsewhere.
- Stop rehearsing. Imagined conversations are where most crushes live. If there is something you truly want them to know, you can say it in person, though that has its risks; if either of you is with someone, a sealed IF says it once and asks nothing of them today, and the rehearsals have nowhere left to go.
- Give it time. A crush that is not fed usually fades on its own.
If the feeling is running your life
Usually the grip eases once the longing stops being fed. Sometimes it does not, and that is not a failure of effort. If you are thinking about them for hours a day, checking their accounts compulsively, or struggling to work, sleep or enjoy anything else, the feeling may have become something heavier. Some people recognise themselves in descriptions of limerence, an intense, involuntary longing for another person. Others simply cannot stop thinking about someone and do not know why. Neither is a character flaw.
If it has reached the point of turning up where they will be, or messaging after they have asked for space, stop there and talk to someone; you do not have to manage it alone.
Write it down, then give it somewhere to go
Writing it all out — what you felt, when it began, what you are setting down — takes some of the weight off, because a feeling on paper is easier to look at than one looping in your head. How to write a letter to someone you love but cannot be with shows how. The letter is for you first, and sending it is never required. But if its truest lines are something they should one day read, they can become an IF, sealed until you are both single, so the words are there for them on the day it opens.
Where IF fits
IF is a dating app for everyone, single or in a relationship, built around one idea: you should be able to say how you feel, whatever the timing. For someone trying to let go, it can be a release valve. The words you keep rehearsing get said, once and honestly, and then an IF holds them, sealed, while you get on with your life.
Between two single people, an accepted Like opens a chat. When either of you is with someone, the only thing you can send is an IF: a private, sealed message of up to 250 characters, and no conversation can open until you are both single. If you are single and they become single, you get 24 hours to reveal it, or you can let it lapse and stay hidden for good. If you are the one in a relationship and they are single, it reveals when you change your own status to single. Once revealed, they see who you are and what you wrote, and choose: accepting opens a chat with your IF as its first message, and if they decline, you are not told. How an IF works has the detail.
It is worth knowing how it lands. If they are on IF, they may be told an IF is waiting for them, never who sent it or what it says. If they are not on IF yet, one sent to an email address they gave you triggers one short invitation email, while a phone number or Instagram handle they shared with you sends nothing and simply waits in case they join. However, they can still guess from context. Knowing that, the choice is yours. And you stay in control: on the IF and IFinity plans you can withdraw an IF while it is still unrevealed.
Your first IF is free. Writing one takes a little courage, and that is rather the point: you say it once, mean every word, and it does the waiting while you live. If the timing ever lines up, it may lead you to where you were meant to be all along.
Questions people ask
How long does it take to get over someone you can’t be with?
Often longer than people expect, because nothing closes the door: while their relationship, the distance or the timing might change, part of you stays on watch. There is no fixed timeline, but the easing tends to begin once the hope has somewhere to rest: a friend who knows, a letter, or an IF that holds it for you. Measure progress by intensity rather than by whether you think of them at all: the thought arrives, and then it leaves again. If months pass and nothing has eased, talking to someone can help.
Can you ever completely stop loving someone you can’t have?
Sometimes the feeling disappears entirely. More often it changes shape, from an ache into a fond, slightly wistful memory you can visit without it costing you a day. A flicker years later, when you hear their name, does not mean you have failed to move on. You do not have to hate them or forget them. And if part of you still hopes, that is allowed: an IF can hold that hope for you, so you do not have to.
Should I tell them how I feel before I move on?
You can, and some people find peace in having said it. But opening up face to face has risks, especially if they are in a relationship: it puts them on the spot, and it can unsettle a friendship overnight. If either of you is in a relationship, you are potentially better off sending an IF. It says everything and asks nothing of them today, and if the timing ever lines up, you are there to show them how much you have always liked them. If you are both single and on IF, a Like says it with a little less at stake.
Why do I keep falling for people I can’t have?
If it is a pattern, look at it with curiosity rather than blame. Someone unavailable cannot properly reject you, and a love that is never tested can never fail, which can feel safer. Sometimes it is simply proximity: the people you see most are often already spoken for. If it keeps happening, it is worth talking to someone to help you understand why, and why we fall for people who are taken looks at the pattern in depth.
The feeling was real, and letting it go does not make it any less so. Right person, wrong time? Wait for them on IF: say how you feel, then go and live your life, so that if things ever change, you are already there.