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Are you struggling to find love or feeling trapped in a relationship that's not serving you?
This may surprise you but what’s keeping you stuck in love isn’t what you think.
In fact, there’s only one thing preventing you from moving forward and finding true happiness.
But before we get on to that, let’s just double-check… Think back to your previous relationships. Have you followed all the generic advice and done everything ‘right’? This is what’s normally suggested:
- Delete their number
- Stop checking their social media
- Keep yourself busy – maybe even threw yourself into work or get a new hobby
- Get back on the horse (no pun intended) and go on dates
- A friend of mine has some ‘great advice’ she likes to dish out – and that had me falling off my chair because I was laughing so much – but as I don’t agree with it, I won’t actually share it here (if you want a good laugh though, feel free to contact me and I will share her wisdom)
So on the face of it, you’ve moved on.
But if you don’t want to be single, there’s obviously something keeping you stuck in love… So the real question is whether you really have moved on or if you’re unconsciously trying to convince yourself that you have.
What Exactly Is Moving On?
For most people, it’s most of the things on the list above, as well as feeling like the relationship is truly behind them. Personally, I don’t agree.
The true reason is probably that you haven’t faced up to the real deep stuff – the sh*t that really hurts.
So as a result, you’re carrying this weight into the next chapter, which is what’s keeping you stuck in love.
I’m not going to lie, it’s not easy. But you do need to know all of the uncomfortable truths about your previous relationships – from what drew you in to what kept you there, with a good dose of what you might have ignored… With a splash of what you could have done differently.
To me, someone has moved on when they can look back without resentment and feeling happy the relationship happened – even if it was bad. But not everybody will be brave enough to do that…
Moving on isn’t about forgetting. It’s about integrating the lessons so the past stops running the present.
It’s the difference between dragging your history with you and walking forward a bit lighter, a bit clearer and more importantly, free.
Why Breakups Hurt So Much
A breakup isn’t just the end of a relationship – it’s the loss of what you know, of the future you thought you were building. So when it ends, you grieve both the person and the potential of what could have been.
That’s why the pain can feel so disproportionate, because you’re grieving far more than just the relationship: you’re grieving the identity you had in it and the version of the life you thought was yours.
Strong reactions (good or bad) are normally very vivid because our brain cannot differentiate physical from emotional pain.
When we experience something painful, it quite literally goes into shock – and because it hurts so much, it will do its best to protect us and help us survive.
If we were to actually feel the true intensity of the pain, it could actually kill us. Heartache has very genuine physical effects: the brain feels the same way whether you are physically or emotionally hurt. It will match the pain with the experience that it remembers and our hormones skyrocket.
It’s been known for people to suffer sudden heart attacks when they’ve had to face intense emotions. This is also why anxiety attacks will often manifest around the solar plexus area as chest pains. In some cases, the pain will even radiate to the jaw or the arms. With the heart pounding so hard, it feels like you are being punched from the front and the back at the same time.
So the body keeps the score – memories and emotions get stored in your system.
That’s why you can feel triggered by a song, a place or even someone who looks nothing like your ex but carries a familiar energy.
That’s also why strategies like deleting their number, distracting yourself with rebounds or bury yourself in new hobbies actually don’t help – your nervous system doesn’t reset on command. Suppressing emotions only pushes them down, where they sit like an old wound waiting to be touched.
Real healing doesn’t happen with time alone – it happens with understanding.
The Real Reason keeping You Stuck in love
Your brain is doing what it thinks is best – protecting you from experiencing pain again.
Protection often looks like repetition, because not dealing with the raw stuff is what creates unconscious patterns. Without even realising it, you can be drawn to the same dynamics or tolerate behaviours you shouldn’t, because your nervous system is wired for what feels known – which is seen as safe… Even if it’s not good for you.
It’s just that your system hasn’t been rewired yet.
Most mainstream dating advice skips over this and focuses on checklists, non-negotiables and affirmations. Or even worse, that you should ‘manifest’.
That’s all well and good but if the foundation (i.e. your past wounds and unconscious beliefs) remains unhealed, you’ll just keep rebuilding the same house of cards on shaky ground – and it’ll collapse.
That’s why it doesn’t work – because until you deal with it, nothing will change.
Creating The Reset Moment
A breakup is rarely something we look back on fondly, which is completely normal because we are human and we have emotions.
Where most go wrong is by trying to protect themselves even more – that’s why the checklists and non-negotiables resonate so much.
What we should do instead though is to learn the lessons of the past. A breakup can become a positive and the turning point where you finally decide to stop doing what you’ve always done and try a new way.
Healing isn’t linear. Change isn’t something our brain particularly likes. So when you decide to take the leap and do things differently, it won’t always be easy: there will be days when you feel strong and days when you don’t.
The reset comes from pushing through when it’d be easier to go back to how you’ve always done things – but with self-awareness and the willingness to look at yourself and your patterns, what you’ll find is the end of the rainbow.
The purpose isn’t just to understand what’s been keeping you stuck, it’s also to give you the clarity to make the right decisions moving forward.
So the only one thing holding you back and stopping you from getting the relationship that you want is quite simple: not dealing with the past and going back to your old ways.
Once you’ve learnt the underlying patterns and beliefs running the show in the background, you’ll stop beeing stuck in love and break free – I can promise you that.