There is strength in one-sided love but there are limitations to it too. To get over someone you never dated is tough and frustrating. Primarily because you can’t even be angry with the person for there isn’t a real breakup. The pain of breaking up with someone, who was never yours, can thus be a lonesome struggle. It’s a difficult thing to get over someone you never had.
Not many people understand how you could be heartbroken over someone you never had, and therefore, your circle of support can become immensely limited. Most would tell you to shake it off when you share with them your predicament of getting over someone you never dated.
You had a crush, you enjoyed it while it lasted, but then, the feelings became a lot more intense than just a crush and now it is your self-imposed goal to move on and you find yourself alone in this too. Coping with unrequited love is hard already, add a breakup to the already complicated equation, and the struggle becomes that much harder.
But fret not, you’re not alone in this journey. If you’re heartbroken over someone you never had, we are here to help you take the first step toward healing.
How Long Does It Take To Get Over Someone You Never Dated?
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How long does it take to get over someone you never dated? That’s a million-dollar question actually. Imagine a scenario where you had a crush on someone but you could not muster the courage to tell them. Or while you were thinking of telling them, you realized they were already into someone else or were even planning to get hitched.
Now you have to move on from one-sided love but you don’t know how to get closure over a crush you never dated or went out with. It’s really a tricky situation. Getting over someone you never dated could sound like the worst dichotomy, but truth be told, it can be really hard.
I have a friend who was in love with her classmate in high school. She had fessed up her feelings and asked him out, but he turned her down. They lost touch but she loved him so madly that she didn’t date or get married to anyone. Even after 18 years of leaving school, she couldn’t get over him and forge new relationships. She couldn’t get over someone she never had.
But not everyone takes so long to get over someone they never dated. It can take from a few months to a few years but we will admit it’s hard to get over someone you love deeply, so what if it was a love that was never reciprocated.
Related Reading: How To Get Over Someone You See Everyday And Find Peace
11 Tips To Get Over Someone You Never Dated
Well, getting over someone you never had is as painful as getting over any other relationship. The amount of pain that one feels because their love was not acknowledged or reciprocated is even worse. But getting over someone you never met can turn out to be another story altogether. But in the current online dating scenario, this situation is becoming increasingly common.
Perhaps, the hardest part about getting over someone you never dated is that you may have to do it on your own, much like dealing with a breakup alone. Maybe it was just not meant to be, and that’d how these tips on moving on from someone you never dated will help you. As I say to my girls #notanotherminute, that should be your motto too.
1. Stop flirting
If you have decided to move on then it is about time you stop flirting with your crush every time you see each other. When it is not getting you anywhere, then it is just an exercise in futility. Quit it. How to get over a guy you never dated? Just move away one fine day. Ghosting is not a bad idea actually.
Maybe your crush is just playing with you, understands everything but is not interested in moving forward with you. Yes, you may be heartbroken over someone you never had but you should leave with your dignity intact. If for whatever reason, the other person is not interested in a relationship with you, sticking around isn’t going to change that.
However, in your futile attempts to win them over, you may end up making a fool of yourself. It may be good for you to make a clean break and stay away from the company of your crush until you get a handle on your feelings. You can try and avoid meeting them even in the company of friends.
It is like quitting any other bad habit; need to create a safe distance from your object of intoxication. And to get over someone you never dated, you need to resolve yourself that you won’t flirt, and wouldn’t entertain the same from your crush as well. There is something about one-sided love that keeps us hooked but you have to let go.
2. Stop fantasizing
“I can’t get over him and we didn’t even date,” Suzie said, with a draining sigh, to her best friend while scrolling through the Instagram feed of a coworker she has developed intense feelings for. “How will you until you stop going over his pictures and imagining yourself by his side,” her friend replied.
If you’re struggling to decipher how to get over someone you never dated but are in love with, the same advice will stand you in good stead too. The daydreaming has to stop. Maybe you can’t stop yourself from drifting off to fantasy that you spin around your current crush but it is not healthy.
It will only make your life more stressful and all the more lonely. Agreed, it’s hard to let go of someone who doesn’t love you, but who means the world to you. We know that these fantasies are all you have left and these are yours alone.
But these fantasies are like poison that kills you slowly. Don’t indulge in them. Be punitive. Be strict with yourself whenever find your thoughts wandering toward the object of your affection. This will be good for you in the long term.
Related Reading: 8 Ways To Make One-sided Love Successful
3. Stop re-reading the texts
There was a time when you used to stay connected with your crush every minute of the day. There was nothing that you won’t share with each other. Either you spent hours talking or texting them every waking hour. But now that time is gone.
Your crush now rarely replies to your ping. But you can stop this. You need to stop sending them texts and missed calls and get away from that texting anxiety. Most of the time, while waiting for a reply, you start scrolling up and re-reading old texts. Nostalgia gets the better of you and you end up sending more texts, each one pathetic than the last.
Don’t let your feelings take away your self-respect and dignity. It’s one thing to be heartbroken over someone you never had, quite another to sacrifice your sense of self at the altar of a relationship that may never come to pass. You need to use up every ounce of self-control in your being to prevent going down this rabbit hole.
4. Burn your feelings
How to get over someone you never dated but are still friends with? If you share a platonic relationship with the person you’re trying to get over, then the situation becomes even trickier. Under these circumstances, your best bet is to keep reminding yourself that there is no point in being heartbroken over someone you never had.
It’s better to douse the fire of your feelings and salvage the bond you already share with this person. This is very effective, speaking from personal experience. First, take a piece of paper and write down your feelings for your crush on that. Take a few pages, spend a few days, if that’s what it takes, but write it all down. Once it is written, now comes the hardest part. You need to set those pages to fire.
Create a bonfire or just throw them in a metal dustpan and see them burn. This will give you a sense of closure. Don’t stay stuck in a story that has no consequence. Why, it does feel that he broke your heart, even though it wasn’t a real relationship. In fact, the signs that he will break your heart are all there, you just have to look closely.
5. Pamper yourself
The process of getting over someone you never dated begins with putting yourself first. You have invested a long time in someone who doesn’t even understand your feelings. For all work and purposes, it has been a bad investment.
Now invest in yourself. Fill your loneliness with the best company that you can ever get: yourself. Take yourself out for a date. Get yourself a makeover. Change your style. Take the risk. Live a little. Enjoy yourself, for the first time in a long time.
But these are temporary things. These will only make you happy for a while. What you really need to do is take care of yourself, health-wise, both mentally and physically. A broken heart cannot dwell for long in a healthy body and refreshed mind.
Related Reading: Here is why you can’t fix bad relationships with fake smiles
6. Take care of your profession
How long does it take to get over someone you never dated? How to get over someone you never dated? Is it stupid to be heartbroken over someone you never had? These questions may weigh on your mind a lot when you’re struggling to make sense of your emotions, but these will only get you so far.
What you really need to do is take proactive actions in reclaiming control of your life. In all the fantasizing and daydreaming you have procrastinated about your work too much. Now it is time to take stock of the profession that sustains you. Your work, your profession is your identity, don’t let it suffer just because your mind was elsewhere.
Bring fresh energy to your work. Pull up your pants and dive in. Show them what you are really made of by doing twice as better than you have been doing a while back. Giving your job importance is another way of giving importance to your life choices and wellbeing.
7. Give it time
“I can’t get over him and we didn’t even date.” This constant niggling thought can make you feel worse about your emotional state. But don’t invalidate your feelings. Even if you didn’t have a romantic relationship with this person, your feelings were still real, and so is the loss you’re experiencing.
So, allow yourself time to grieve this loss. Time is the greatest healer or so they say. With time you can slowly recover from this unsustainable pain. It is human nature not to be miserable for a long time unless we particularly want to be. If you allow yourself to remain in the darkness of remembrance, then there might never be a way out.
You just need to come across the light. Forcefully do away with the thoughts of your crush, make it a regular practice. Now it is time to reverse the rigor that you put into remembering them, into forgetting them.
8. Take help from your friends
Confide in your friends. You may think that they won’t understand or make fun of you but true friends have a way of surprising you. No matter how deep you fall, you will always find at least one friend who is there to pull you back up. The path to how to get over someone you never dated can become simpler with the right support.
And friends are the biggest support system that you can ever get. So, tell your friends and share the load. Trust them to be honest but supportive. However, be selective about who you share your innermost feelings with. Pick the ones you are closest to and who would understand what you are going through.
9. Start dating
How long does it take to get over someone you never dated? While there is no definitive timeline for this, we can tell you this for sure: it will happen a lot sooner if you put yourself out there and give new people a chance. For the whole time that you have been crushing on this person you have abstained from dating, haven’t you?
This entire time you were being faithful to a relationship that didn’t exist. You were being faithful to someone you never dated but now it’s time to move on and find a life. You were being physically and romantically faithful to someone who is not your partner. You now need to break the pattern and try out new things.
Start dating, even if you don’t want it at first. Bring new people into your life and that could be the perfect cure for your loneliness. Someone new in your life could help you move on ahead.
Related Reading: 6 Signs You Are in a One-Sided Relationship
10. Rebuild your self-esteem
When someone looks at you and doesn’t recognize that you are in love with them, it really hurts and takes a toll on your self-esteem. You develop low self-esteem because you start feeling you are not attractive or you are not interesting enough or intelligent enough to get their attention.
Now it is time to shift your attention to others who pay heed to you. If not, then at least turn your own attention to yourself. It was just one person and their opinion alone can’t be the ultimate statement on who you are. Build yourself again and feel alive.
11. Rebuild your confidence
It can wipe away all your confidence to get over someone you never had. You can ask for professional help to get over someone you were infatuated with. There is no shame in going to a professional counselor to get over your self-loathing. One-sided love hollows you out from the inside slowly and before you know it you are the shell of the person that you used to be.
But you are not lost. The essence that makes you, YOU, is still inside. All you need to do is dig a little deeper. Professional help may guide you to the light at the end of the tunnel by dragging you out of the long and dark labyrinth of your personal tragedy.
The answer to how to get over someone you never dated lies in acknowledging, accepting and processing your feelings the right way. We know it’s hard right now. Just remember this: this too shall pass. You are a beautiful person and you deserve happiness and not just fruitless longing for someone.
