Why Is It So Hard to Let Go of Someone You Still Love?

Why can’t you forget someone you still love, even when the relationship has ended? Heartbreak can leave us dreaming about someone, worrying about them, wondering whether they still have feelings for us and searching for a spiritual explanation for the connection. A powerful emotional or spiritual experience can feel like proof that two people are meant to be together, but it does not necessarily mean the relationship has a future. Sometimes the deeper work is learning to accept what we cannot control, release the attachment and find our way back to ourselves.

Tarot Newsletter – July 2026

We may love a lot of people, but there are a few that change us, scar us and leave us forever feeling like something wasn’t finished. When one of these deeply felt connections collapses, we ask, “Why can’t I just forget about them?”

Age, sex, cultural heritage, religion, professions, all differences between us humans melt away to irrelevance when in the throes of bone deep heartbreak. It’s an equal opportunity malady.

“I dream about them, worry about their welfare, and continue to love them unconditionally no matter how horrible they are to me. What is the matter with me!? Am I nuts?”

“Is it because we have a special spiritual connection and I can feel his feelings towards me too?”

“Is it because I’m not supposed to get over them because we are meant to be together? Is there a future when we will be together?”

“Are we meeting in the dream world which is keeping me thinking about them all the time? I do dream about them most nights!”

In a desperate bid to negotiate a rational explanation, many try bargaining and plunging into the depths of the spiritual realms. Desperately seeking an explanation they can accept to beat this pain of loss into submission. A good direction, but likely the wrong place and goal.

Seeking enlightenment is not connected to heartbreak but heartbreak marks the entrance to the detachment task ahead. The inclination is correct but what typically unfolds is that your feelings of loss will increase exponentially as you grow spiritually.

You won’t notice it at first because you have no idea what you are suppressing. You took care of that by resuming your spiritual journey like the road runner. Effectively shoving out of consciousness and darn well burying the unbearable pain while you pursue the LIGHT. Goddess help you. The volcano you have shoved into your soul depths will erupt when your love-bomb spiritual experience falls from the clouds as everything we fall in love with will when love wanes.

And it will. That’s all part of the enlightenment journey. I speak from personal experience.

I have pursued the light of consciousness for 55 years. At 17, Kareen’s Yoga on Educational TV in Sudbury, Ontario saved me from the alienation, rejection and painful self-consciousness that swamped me when I changed high schools from Grade 11 to Grade 12. Toronto to Sudbury. Some of the kids would take a chance on me, most avoided me like the plague.

Many assumed lots of things about me that weren’t true. They assumed I would be snotty, rich and rude being from Toronto. That I would look down on them. Nothing was further from the truth. I was a nerdy girl with strange habits. No money and so therefore no style. Hardly rich and rude. It didn’t take long however, before they figured all that out and embraced me with a warmth and enthusiasm I never received as a teen growing up in Toronto.

At the same time, I was suffering the loss of my friends and family left behind in Toronto. One day I opened a big box of fiction books with a $25 cheque included. It was an award I was granted for achieving the highest grade in English at my old high school. I had wanted to share my excitement with girlfriends back home who would have been happy with me too. Joined me in being silly like jumping around the living room and fantasizing about how to spend $25. Keep in mind that I was making $1.35 at a part time job.

I learned the power of the anti-climactic when I received that award. I actually forgot about it for years. It came in handy when I applied to York to major in English. I was thrilled about that.

By some divine providence, I had discovered Kareena’s Yoga on Educational TV. That half hour of Yoga with Kareena and my body, helped me physically, emotionally and spiritually over one of the worst times in my life. Through this practice, I learned to let go of whatever anyone thought of me and be free to be me. More people opened up to me and by Grade 13, I had lots of chums who wanted me to stay after school to be cool but I remained faithful to Kareena throughout because of what her and Yoga had done for me.

What Yoga Did for Me as a Teen

It remained a core place for me to be when I needed solace and grounding. It was a reminder to do what I need to do in the face of incredible alienation and pain of loss.

As you reach spiritual heights unimaginable in your past, your feelings of loss will lessen exponentially. Because you are filling your emotional cup with “good feelings”, fed now with all things related to your spiritual journey. Tribe, connection, prayer and meditation (which is always good). Feeling love without pain, is the most spectacular panacea imaginable.

This is the why and how of successful, cults. We don’t need to go further. Don’t trust “spiritual growth” on the heels of loss-heartbreak unless you feel in control of the research and practice.

Reincarnation and the Love Connection

Why the divine would consider your need to resolve your past life love issues worthy of such complicated cosmic machinations is… well, inflated to be blunt. But then my notions of divine intervention are probably odd too.

My imagination is more inclined to conjure divinities in possession of a Teutonic and irreverent sense of humour. Deities, Who might observe our embodied love angst with detached and occasionally, affectionate curiosity. Watching our human dramas with childlike, hand-clapping delight, they wonder in amazement about those struggles we consider to be so critically important.

That’s if they give us much regard at all. After all, divinities enjoy a whole universe as their playground. Mind you, as a collective, hell-bent on destroying one of their playgrounds, we may ignite a very different and ALARMING response indeed. That wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

The Two Primary Emotions Dominating the Love Connection

Fear and love rage hot in love. The rest are branches and suckers that grow out of this dual, primary trunk. Fear and love are opposite emotions. We cannot, or perhaps it would be better to say should not, feel both simultaneously. Unless sado-masochism floats your boat. But that’s a topic for another chapter.

When we are having difficulties letting go of that forever-after-dream of the love, we are operating under two illusions. The most salient one, is that you have control over how someone else feels about you. “What can I do to change or fix this? What will bring them back to me?” Nothing makes us desire control more than when we’re broken hearted over a love’s light that’s gone out. It can be just too painful to accept that that special someone simply fell out of love with us. Or worse, that they never loved us in the first place. They may have been just faking it. Saying all the words. So, we try to make a deal. “If I do this, will they come back to me? If I do that, will they want me like they used to?”

We never seem to have a problem understanding this rather mean-spirited one-sidedness when it comes to us falling out of love. Hasn’t someone held a hot torch for you and left you feeling rather cold, indifferent and maybe even, dare I say? Turned off? Unless you’re ten years old, I find it hard to believe you haven’t. Is there ANYTHING they could have done to light your fire? Is there anything they could have said or changed about themselves that would have spurred you to rush at them naked? No?

The Other Stubborn Illusion

Is that they are in denial over their love for you. Once they grasp how stale life is without you, they will come begging back. They aren’t like you that way.

You might have been on the same page with just about everything else. But the intimacy part? You were not on the same page with that. There are scammers who will promise to change all that for a modest or horrendous fee but don’t be fooled. No one has the power to infuse love in a person’s soul, or water into wine. Remember that parable? Only we have that power over ourselves.

Don’t feel abnormal or crazy because you love someone so much you can’t get past it. That is the risk you were willing to take. Be excited about your own bravery and honesty. That is the gift of love. Know that by keeping up the faith and giving of yourself so generously and lovingly, another will spot your light and rush towards its glow with the same abandonment in which you are prepared to meet it.

How should someone process the pain of unrequited love and the urge to force a connection with an ex?

Accept that no one can force another person to fall in love, and avoid scammers who promise to change someone’s feelings, true agency only exists over yourself. Honor your deep capacity to love as a brave, honest virtue rather than a weakness, knowing that holding onto your light will eventually attract someone who reciprocates it fully.

The Dream of Sharing that Depth of Intimacy

The process that is keeping you stuck in the ruminations, recriminations, pondering, wishing, yearning and yes, at those irresistible moments, texting! The desire to connect is powerful in us. It’s one of those hard-wired aspects of ourselves that is linked to survival, reproduction and safety.

The best advice I have to lessen the pain, is to pray for them. Pray for their happiness, good health and spiritual enlightenment. Send them your love through the spiritual ether. Not by texting. Absolutely NO texting! One day you’ll wake up and realize you have moved on. That really sexy, sweet smiling person you met the other day…is wondrously taking up more and more of your psychic space.

Accepting that sometimes the universe simply gives us a hard, “NO!”, is painful and seemingly impossible to accept. But all those, “Nos!” are lessons along the path to our spiritual enlightenment. They build character, humility, and wisdom. A preparedness for the next lap in our soul evolution.

Blessings Kathleen

Videos About Love Questions on My Youtube Channel

Does My Husband’s Question Mean He Wants to Come Back to Me?

How Do I Get to a Peaceful Place of Self-Acceptance?

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Frequently Asked Questions About Heartbreak, Love and Spiritual Connections

A person may interpret a powerful emotional connection as spiritual, especially when dreams, intuition or unusual coincidences seem to reinforce the bond. However, feeling a spiritual connection does not necessarily mean two people are destined to be together. The experience can also become part of a personal journey toward understanding attachment and letting go.

Recurring dreams about someone you love can reflect how strongly that person remains in your thoughts and emotions. Dreams may bring unresolved feelings, memories and wishes into awareness. They can feel spiritually significant, but a dream alone cannot establish what another person is feeling or whether they will return.

Missing someone shows that the relationship or emotional bond still matters to you. It does not, by itself, prove that the relationship is destined to continue. One of the difficult lessons of heartbreak is recognizing that we can deeply love someone without having control over how they feel about us.

Prayer can provide a way to redirect love and concern toward another person’s happiness, health and spiritual well-being without trying to control the outcome. For some people, this creates a healthier form of emotional release and helps shift attention away from longing and toward their own healing.

Moving on begins with accepting what you cannot control. Instead of trying to change another person’s feelings or searching endlessly for signs that they will return, you can focus on your own emotional and spiritual growth. With time, the space once occupied by longing can gradually make room for new experiences, relationships and possibilities.

What Can Heartbreak Teach Us About Love and Letting Go?

Heartbreak can make us search everywhere for answers. We look for signs, dreams, spiritual connections and reasons why someone we love has left our lives. We may even try to negotiate with the universe, hoping for one more chance to make things different.

But sometimes the lesson is not about finding a way to bring someone back. It is about learning to release what we cannot control.

We can love someone deeply and still accept that their path may be different from ours. We can wish them happiness without reaching for them. We can honour what the relationship meant without allowing the loss to consume us.

That is not giving up on love. It is learning another dimension of love.

And somewhere along that difficult path, something changes. The person we could not stop thinking about gradually takes up less space in our minds. Our own life begins to feel interesting again. We notice people, possibilities and little moments we had been too heartbroken to see.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts hidden inside the hardest “no” we ever receive.

Sometimes the door closes because our journey is asking us to turn around and discover where we are meant to go next.

Kathleen Meadows Psychic Reader

Kathleen Meadows is a Canadian psychic, tarot reader, and spiritual teacher with over 40 years of experience guiding clients across Canada and internationally.

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