How to let go of someone :(

[LassieLove]

It's so difficult to let go of this person... I feel like I need him, like I can't go on for one day without him. But I also know he's bad for me. He's been trying to poison my mind with negative thoughts ever since I met him. Whenever I'm with him, I feel like I can't just be myself, like I have to change myself to be good enough for him. And he says very negative things to me. And he always needs me when I should be working on my personal projects but I can't refuse him when he says that he needs me.

I have made a decision to let go of him... to not have ANY contact with him from now on. But I'm afraid that I cannot let go. Just today I wrote down all my negative feelings and thoughts about him and my neediness and burnt the words in fire symbolically. But I feel so weak... I feel like I could change my mind any minute now and run back to him. It would be so easy.

Any tips on how to succeed in this? I'm desperate.

[The Cloud]

Originally Posted by LassieLove

But I feel so weak... I feel like I could change my mind any minute now and run back to him. It would be so easy.

You're mistaken if you think that staying away from him is what's important. It is the decision to be done with him that is critical. That sounds like a nit-picky thing to say, but the difference is critical. If you focus on the act of keeping physical distance between yourself and him, you'll fail. Willpower can only hold out so long.

If you instead identify the urge as the fear-driven behavior it is, then you can deny it from a position of wisdom rather than stubbornness. If you need to rely on willpower to succeed, you've already failed, even if you never see him again. The success and failure take place in your mind, not the space between you and him. A simple metric is that if you feel like your mind will punish you for not giving into an urge, then it must be denied, because the urge itself is the shape of failure. It's not a hard and fast rule, but I think it applies to this situation.

[LassieLove]

Originally Posted by The Cloud

You're mistaken if you think that staying away from him is what's important. It is the decision to be done with him that is critical. That sounds like a nit-picky thing to say, but the difference is critical. If you focus on the act of keeping physical distance between yourself and him, you'll fail. Willpower can only hold out so long.

If you instead identify the urge as the fear-driven behavior it is, then you can deny it from a position of wisdom rather than stubbornness. If you need to rely on willpower to succeed, you've already failed, even if you never see him again. The success and failure take place in your mind, not the space between you and him. A simple metric is that if you feel like your mind will punish you for not giving into an urge, then it must be denied, because the urge itself is the shape of failure. It's not a hard and fast rule, but I think it applies to this situation.

Thank you for the reply.

I have been fighting the urge to call him all day. I'm thinking: it's either him or my happiness. I know I can achieve happiness if I make this hard decision now -- but if I don't, then I'll be trapped for all my life.

Btw, I now realise I should have posted this in the relationships section.