Coaching practices for How to Deal with Unrequited Love

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Deal with Unrequited Love, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I keep telling myself to just move past what they did and not make a big deal of it, so I never actually look the hurt in the face
• Things have gone cool and stiff with someone and we’re both just frozen, neither willing to make the first move or have the awkward talk
• We’re both trying so hard and somehow both ending up feeling unloved, and I’m starting to think we’re each pouring love in the exact form we’d want to get it back
• There are relationships that still sit unfinished in me
• I keep waiting for them to apologize, to suffer, to somehow earn my forgiveness before I’ll give it

Practices that may help

1. R — Recall the hurt
   Face what happened deliberately and calmly, without minimizing it or replaying it as a victim.
   Forgiveness: The REACH Model
2. Use a small ask to repair a strained relationship
   In a cool or conflicted relationship, asking for a small favor can reset the dynamic more effectively than doing one.
   The Ben Franklin Effect, Made Practical
3. Discovering and acting on each other’s languages
   Find out — by asking and observing — how each partner most readily feels loved, then act on it.
   The Five Love Languages, Honestly
4. Write the forgiveness passages your legacy needs
   Name who you need to forgive and who you need to ask forgiveness from — and write it out.
   The Legacy Letter: Writing What You Want to Leave Behind
5. A — Give the Altruistic gift of forgiveness
   Recall a time you were forgiven, and offer forgiveness as a gift rather than a transaction.
   Forgiveness: The REACH Model
6. Write an unsent letter to process relational difficulty
   Write a letter — never to be sent — to someone with whom you have unresolved feelings, saying everything you actually feel.
   Expressive Writing (Pennebaker)
7. Work the difficult-person stage without forcing
   Extend metta to a difficult person not as approval of their actions but as unconditional goodwill for their wellbeing.
   Metta Bhavana: The Practice of Loving-Kindness
8. Build a culture of genuine appreciation as a horsemen antidote
   Daily authentic appreciation is the structural counter to contempt -- and it has to precede the conflict.
   The Four Horsemen: Gottman's Warning Signs of Relationship Breakdown
9. Catch and release the "if only" thought
   Notice when you’re mentally replaying a fixed past event as if it could be changed — and let it go.
   Amor Fati: Loving What Happens
10. Apply the reserve clause in relationships
    Offer your best honest communication, care, or help — with the reserve clause: you cannot control how it is received.
    The Stoic Reserve Clause

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