How to Detach With Love

Learning to Leave an Unhealthy Relationship

Few things in life can make you feel crazier than expecting something from someone who has no love to give. Few things can frustrate you more than trying to make a person someone he or she isn't; you feel crazy when you try to pretend that person is someone he or she is not.

You might have spent years negotiating with reality concerning particular people from your past or present. You may have spent years trying to get someone to love you in a certain way, when that person cannot or will not.

It is time to let it go. It is time to let him or her go. That doesn't mean you can't love that person anymore. It means that you will feel the immense relief that comes when you stop denying reality and begin accepting. Release that person to be who he or she actually is. Stop trying to make that person be someone he or she is not. Deal with your feelings and walk away from the destructive system.

How To Develop Detachment By Setting Boundaries

Establish emotional boundaries between you and the person, place or thing with whom you have become overly enmeshed or dependent on. Setting boundaries is not only healthy, but also necessary in order to begin to gain control back over your own life.

Taking Responsibility

Take back power over your feelings from persons, places or things that in the past you have given power to affect your emotional well-being. You only have control over your feelings, emotions and actions. Take responsibility over yourself, your life and everything within you.

Look To Your Higher Power

Hand over to your Higher Power the persons, places and things that you would like to see changed but which you cannot change on your own. Whoever or whatever your Higher Power is, letting go and handing over those things, people, situations and places in which you have no control over is trusting that everything will work itself out in the way in which it is supposed to.

Make a Commitment

Make a commitment to your self-health and care by admitting to yourself and your there is only one person you can change and that is yourself and for your peace of mind, balance and serenity you need to let go of the "need" to fix, change, rescue or heal other persons, places and things.

Recognize Your Own Co-Dependent Behaviors

Recognize that it is "sick" and "unhealthy" to believe that you have the power or control enough to fix, correct, change, heal or rescue another person, place or thing if they do not want to get better nor see a need to change. Remember, another person can only change and get help on his or her own. You can not make a person do anything they do not want to or are ready to do on their own.

Accept personal responsibility for your own unhealthy actions, feelings and thinking and cease looking for the persons, places or things you can blame for your unhealthiness and unhappiness

Be The Example

You need to be healthy yourself to become a "role model" in order for another to recognize that there is something "wrong" with them that needs changing. Loving and caring for yourself is the most healthy selfish thing you can do for another.

Detachment with love is a very difficult but very necessary step in regaining emotional health. You can still love the person, but need to recognize when it has become too enmeshed, dependent and unhealthy.