#221: How to Let Go of Someone You Love (For Anxious Attachers)
Letting go of someone you love is one of the hardest things anyone can do. But if you have anxious attachment patterns, it can feel almost unbearable.
Anxious attachment wiring tells you to hold on. To grip tighter. To try harder. To keep fighting for connection — even when the relationship is painful, dysfunctional, or clearly not working. Letting go can feel like the worst possible outcome, often more terrifying than staying in a situation that hurts.
That’s why this question — How do I let go of someone I still love? — is one of the most common things I support people with. If you’re in that place right now, please know this: you’re not weak, broken, or failing. You’re responding exactly as your attachment system has learned to respond.
And still… letting go may be what your healing is calling you toward.
Why Letting Go Feels So Impossible with Anxious Attachment
If you have anxious attachment patterns, your system has learned that connection equals safety. The people you’re attached to — regardless of how healthy or unhealthy the dynamic is — come to represent security, stability, and emotional survival.
That belief quietly drives so many familiar patterns:
People-pleasing and over-giving
Suppressing your needs
Tiptoeing around someone else’s emotions
Trying to “fix” or rescue a relationship
Frantically repairing ruptures when things feel uncertain
So when a relationship is faltering, your nervous system isn’t just responding to loss — it’s responding to a perceived threat to safety. From that place, walking away feels unthinkable. Even if the relationship hurts. Even if it’s been draining you for years.
Most anxiously attached people don’t leave at the first red flag — or the fifth. We offer endless chances because the pain of letting go feels worse than the pain of staying.
The Trap of Letting Feelings Lead the Way
Another reason letting go is so hard is that people with anxious attachment often place enormous weight on their feelings.
You might tell yourself:
If I still love them, I shouldn’t leave.
If I miss them this much, it must mean something.
If I feel anxious, I need to do something about it — now.
Feelings can feel like facts. Like instructions. Like proof of what you should do next.
But one of the most important shifts in healing anxious attachment is learning to separate feelings from choices.
You can still love someone and choose to walk away.
You can miss someone deeply and know the breakup was necessary.
You can feel anxious, lost, and untethered without needing to undo your decision.
If we only ever follow our feelings — especially fear-driven ones — we’ll keep recreating familiar dynamics. And what’s familiar is often not what’s healthy.
The Core Truth: Letting Go Is a Choice, Not a Feeling
This is the heart of the work.
Letting go is not something you wait to feel. It’s not something that magically happens once the love fades or the anxiety settles.
Letting go is a choice.
And it’s a choice you will have to make again and again.
You make it when you:
Stop engaging with them
Stop reopening the door
Don’t respond to the late-night texts
Hold the boundary even when it hurts
Choose not to go back for temporary relief
You will likely feel the pull — intensely. Your body may scream for connection. Your mind may generate endless “what ifs.” That doesn’t mean you’re doing the wrong thing.
It means you’re grieving.
Loving Someone Isn’t Enough to Make a Relationship Work
This can be one of the hardest truths to accept.
Love is real. Attachment is real. And yet, love alone is not sufficient for a healthy relationship.
You can love someone who can’t meet your needs.
You can love someone who wants different things.
You can love someone and still recognise that staying is costing you too much.
Letting go isn’t about forcing yourself to stop loving them. It’s about acknowledging that the relationship — as it exists — is not aligned with your wellbeing, growth, or future.
And choosing yourself anyway.
The Grief Beneath Letting Go
Letting go of someone you love means grieving:
The loss of the person
The future you hoped for
The version of yourself who kept trying
The dreams and expectations you carried
This grief deserves space, tenderness, and care. Healing doesn’t come from obsessing over what they’re doing or analysing what went wrong — it comes from turning inward and tending to what’s hurting inside you.
There is so much within you that needs your presence right now.
If You’re Struggling to Let Go
If it’s been months or even years and someone still occupies space in your mind, that doesn’t mean you’re failing. And it doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice.
The feelings are not the problem.
Fighting, shaming, or trying to force them away only keeps you stuck.
No matter what you’re feeling, you can still make good choices.
That is self-responsibility.
That is healing.
That is strength.
If you need support, I offer a free breakup training that walks you through this process with clarity, compassion, and structure. You don’t have to do this alone.
And if nothing else, remember this:
Letting go is a choice, not a feeling.
And you are capable of choosing yourself — even when it hurts.
Sending you so much love.
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[00:00:00]:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about how to let go of someone that you love, which, frankly, is probably the hardest thing you'll ever do as someone with anxious attachment patterns, because it goes against everything in your system, in your wiring, in your blueprint which says hold on really tightly to the people that you love. Even if it's dysfunctional, even if you're in pain, even if you know that the relationship is not working, the instinct is really to hold on and keep holding on and keep trying and keep pushing and keep fighting to try and make things okay. Because letting go can feel totally intolerable. It can feel like the worst possible outcome, even worse than continuing to be in pain in a connection. And so it's little wonder that this question of how to let go of someone when you still love them is probably in the top three things that I help people with, questions that I answer, pieces that I support students in my programmes on. To say that it's a recurring topic is probably an understatement.
[00:01:09]:
It's like one of the biggest things. And my advice, which I'll be sharing with you today, is combination of deep validation and also some hard truths. So I'm hoping that if you're in the thick of it right now, if you're struggling to let go of someone, maybe you've recently been through a breakup or you're in a relationship, but it feels like it needs to end or it's on its last legs and you're absolutely terrified about what that's going to mean and how it's going to feel, all of those things. This episode is for you, and I just want you to know that you are not alone. As I said, this is such a big part of the work and it's probably one of the hardest things that you'll ever do in a relationship as someone with anxious attachment patterns, because it really does fly in the face of everything that you have learned to do to keep yourself safe, and that's to hold onto the people that you're attached to. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. It'll be a bit of an extended pep talk and hopefully one that emboldens you to trust yourself and trust your ability to do the hard thing, even when it's not the thing that you want. Before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder.
[00:02:16]:
For anyone who is going through a breakup or who's recently been through a breakup, or maybe not so recently, but you're still kind of struggling to process it all and to let go. I have a free training that I run which is all about breakups and navigating breakups and how you can move through a breakup in a way that allows you to not only preserve your sanity, which is easier said than done, particularly for anxious attachers, but that allows you to feel grounded and decisive and clear and actually make the most of a breakup. Because you may have heard me say before, I really see breakups as a beautiful opportunity when done well, because they can really bring things into focus and hold a mirror up to us, the ways that we have maybe abandoned ourselves in a relationship where we've not held clear standards. And all of that is really, really important work to do before we rush into another relationship so that we can actually shift those patterns. And a breakup's a beautiful time to do that alongside all of the grief and all of the other tricky parts. So if you are in that place and you'd like some support and encouragement and guidance and a bit of a roadmap, definitely cheque out my free break training, which you can find in the show notes or on my website. Okay, so how to let go of someone that you love. Now, as I said in the introduction, for anxiously attached people, this is really, really hard.
[00:03:41]:
And there's a few reasons for that. The first is that your attachment blueprint, if you're someone with more anxious attachment patterns, tells you that other people hold the key to your safety and the people that you are attached to, irrespective of how healthy or not the relationship dynamic is, your system tells you that I am safe when I'm connected to them. Right. And you know that basic blueprint drives pretty much all of our relational behaviours. It's what leads us into people pleasing, performing over giving, suppressing our needs, trying to make someone love us, tiptoeing around other people. And then when there is some rupture, frantically trying to solve it, fix it, bring it back into connection, because it's all coming back to that same principle of feels great when we're connected, it feels absolutely awful when we're not, and I need to get us back over there. So with that as the starting point, letting go and actually being the one to close the door, being the one to make the decision, being the one to walk away and hold the boundary just runs counter to everything that you know. And even if the relationship is painful and hard, it has to be so bad for most anxiously attached people to walk away.
[00:04:52]:
Most of us will be very forgiving it's not only giving second chances, it's giving 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th chances. Chances. Because we so want to believe that things are going to get better. And it's really hard for us to feel like things are bad enough that they justify the indescribable pain of walking away from a person that we love. I think another key piece that drives this challenge for so many anxiously attached people is that we tend to attribute a lot of weight to our feelings. Right? And what I mean by that is for most people with anxious attachment patterns, and I hear this all the time in various shapes and forms, it's like, how can I let go if I. I still love them or if I miss them or I'm feeling so anxious, so I have to do this thing. We.
[00:05:35]:
We tend to have this sense that all feelings have to be acted on and that our feelings provide the impetus for all of our actions and our choices. So if we love someone, then we have to be with them. Love conquers all. We can be really romantic about that. Or if we're feeling really anxious, we have to act on the anxiety because that feels so overpowering and we sort of take that as truth. And so such a big part of the work for people with anxious attachment patterns is actually learning to separate out our feelings from our choices and our behaviours. And this is really the crux of what I tell people when they're struggling with this piece around letting go of someone that they love. It's being able to hold both there, like, yes, I still love them, yes, I desperately want it to work.
[00:06:20]:
And what is the reality of the situation as I know it to be? What is it costing me to continue to swirl around in this dysfunction? What is it costing me to keep holding on to someone who I know I'm not going to be able to be with, who I know is not right for me? And actually choosing to let go as an action, rather than waiting for the letting go as a feeling or waiting until I don't love them anymore, waiting until I don't miss them, waiting until it feels easy, it's actually no, I'm just going to make a choice that is based on what I know is right for me and good for me, rather than being totally hijacked by my feelings and letting that be the thing that steers the ship. Because as I've said many times, if we just follow those familiar feelings and we continue to allow ourselves to be led by our feelings, we will always end up in very familiar places. And if you've had a long history of unhealthy relationships. What is familiar is probably not what is good for you and what you're trying to work towards. So there's this really big piece when it comes to letting go of someone, and that is. And if you take anything away from today's episode, it is this. Letting go is not a feeling, it's actually a choice. And it's a choice that you will not just make once.
[00:07:35]:
It's a choice that you'll have to make a thousand times as you end a relationship. Walk away from someone that you love, who can't meet your needs, or who for whatever reason, you're unable to have a healthy relationship with. Maybe someone who doesn't want the same things as you. Letting go of that person is a decision you will need to keep making. And you make that not by forcing a feeling, but by not continuing to engage with them, by not keeping the door open, by not opening the door if they come knocking, by holding the boundary, by continuing to put one foot in front of the other, notwithstanding how freaking hard that feels, even when everything in your body is telling you like this is so uncomfortable. Call them or answer their texts. What if they want to talk? What could that mean? I have to find out all of those little pieces that can feel so enticing when we're in pain and when everything within us just wants to make it okay. By going back, choosing to let go again and again and again and choosing to continue to step towards what we know is good for us.
[00:08:41]:
Even when like the seductive pull of going back to a person who we love and who we are still attached to, that is one of the most challenging but also the most courageous things that you can do as someone with anxious attachment pattern. So just realising that like, yes, you can still love someone and that doesn't mean that you're meant to be in a relationship with them, could miss someone. And that doesn't mean that breaking up was a bad thing. You can feel so anxious and worried and lost without them. And that doesn't mean that you need them in order to feel okay. Just really learning to separate out our feelings from our choices and our behaviours. Particularly when those feelings are driven from fear. And I think that's why doing this work and understanding how attachment works can be so powerful helpful because we can start to realise that, like, I don't have to make meaning out of all of those feelings.
[00:09:34]:
Those feelings are naturally arising from the fact that I'm attached to this person. And that's what our attachment system is designed to do is kind of to hook us into a person who we've come to associate with safety and stability, companionship, all of those things, even when the relationship is not healthy. But kind of unravelling some of these storeys around what it means to love a person and how that's not always the same thing as being in a healthier relationship with them, and that love is necessary but not sufficient to make a relationship work. So the fact that you still love someone is not a reason to not let go of them in your choices, in your actions, and to actually pivot, focus away from them and realise that all of the discomfort of that transition is absolutely part of the process. It is not a sign that something's wrong or that that you need to quickly backpedal and try and undo it all. And it's a sign that actually we're meant to be together, because I still love and miss them. So that's the pep talk, that's the hard truth. Letting go of someone that you love is not about forcing yourself to stop loving them.
[00:10:45]:
It's actually just recognising that you can love them and also realise that the relationship isn't right, that it's causing you suffering, that it's costing you too much, and that you're growth and your healing is actually asking you to step away from someone. Notwithstanding that you love them, notwithstanding that you're attached to them because you know that it's not right for you and that it's not what you truly desire for yourself and for your life, and that you want a relationship that is based on more than that intense attachment and that feels safe in a really true sense. And that's the lesson, right? That's the work and that's the really, really challenging. But it's so, so powerful if you can do that and hold the line and hold firm on that, even when you feel the pull back, being able to keep putting one foot in front of the other and reminding yourself almost as a mantra, letting go is a choice, not a feeling. And I'm going to need to keep choosing that again and again and again as I navigate the transition away from a relationship that I was invested in and with a person who I love and care about and where I had a lot riding on that, where the stakes felt high, where I was so full of hope that things would be different. To let go in those circumstances is to grieve. And that's why so much of the work of a breakup, and certainly in the early stages, is to Grieve all of the layers of that to grieve not only the loss of the person in your life, but all of the things that you were hoping for and maybe the parts of yourself that you left behind in the process of trying to make it work. All of that stuff needs your attention.
[00:12:24]:
And it's actually, again, so much of the work of processing a breakup is getting into the trenches of all of that stuff so that you can really tend to what's there and not distract yourself with rumination and analysis and obsessing over them and what they're doing and what they're thinking. There's so much within you that needs your presence and your care and your support as you navigate a breakup. Okay, I'm going to leave it there. I hope that this was clarifying for some of you. Maybe a bit of a light bulb moment if you're struggling with the letting go. Maybe it's been months or even years and you still find yourself obsessing over someone, or they still occupy space within you and you feel resistance to that, or you judge yourself for it and you think, I should be over it by now. The feelings are not the things to fight with. Right? And the more we try and fight the feeling or force the feeling, or shame ourselves for having the feeling, it's just a distraction.
[00:13:17]:
And it pulls us away from the fundamental truth that no matter what we're feeling, we can actually make good choices. And that's what self responsibility is all about, is making choices from our higher self, even when there are other parts of us that are pulling us towards the things that. That maybe we know aren't right. So sending you lots of love if you're in it, definitely cheque out my free breakup training. I touch on all of these themes and a lot more. So that's a really helpful one if you are navigating a breakup. But otherwise, I'm sending you so much love and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
how to let go of someone you love, anxious attachment patterns, breakups, breakup recovery, attachment blueprint, letting go, holding on in relationships, people pleasing, boundary setting, self trust, self responsibility, relationship endings, grief after breakup, emotional healing, unhealthy relationships, romantic attachment, walking away, self-worth, breakup support, moving on from love, decision making in relationships, fear of letting go, maintaining boundaries, emotional pain, overgiving, self abandonment, navigating loss, healing after breakup, personal growth, making good choices