Although love can be a wonderful thing, it can be a pretty painful thing, as well – especially if you find yourself falling in love with the wrong person. But it’s essential to know the difference between simply being infatuated with someone new and feeling deep, genuine love for someone you’ve been with for a while.
Ultimately, you have little control over who you’re attracted to, but you have more control than you think over who you love. So if you’re concerned you might be falling for someone toxic, controlling, or otherwise inappropriate for you, you don’t have to just relax and watch it happen. Here are some tips for swinging things the other way.
Keep yourself busy
The more space you let someone take up in your head, the more likely you are to eventually start catching feelings for them. That said, the last thing you want to do is spend tons of your time and energy on a relationship you don’t care to get serious about.
Distract yourself instead. Keep yourself busy with your job, your hobbies, and anything else you have going on in your life that is important to you. When you feel lonely, get together with friends or family instead – people you know deserve your time.
Avoid getting too close
When you don’t want to fall in love with someone, the last thing you want to be doing is engaging in long, heart-to-hearts. So steer clear of long, rambling conversations with this person – especially any that cover very personal topics or take place late at night. Those talks should be reserved for supportive sugardaddies you do want to bond with.
And be careful of getting too friendly with the person in other ways, as well. This means no huge favors done on their behalf, no breaking set plans to spend time with them instead, and so forth.
Stay focused on their flaws
Unless you’re honestly just not interested in falling for any sugardaddy right now, the chances are pretty good that you have very specific reasons for not wanting to develop further feelings for this person. Maybe they’ve said awful things that have hurt you in the past. Or perhaps they’re terrible at keeping their word.
Whatever the case may be, keep those flaws in mind when you do see them or spend time with them. If you have to, write them down and refer back to the list you’ve made whenever you’re tempted to give them a pass they don’t really deserve.
Start seeing someone else
Sometimes the best way to keep someone specific from taking up too much room in your life when you know it’s not a good idea is to make it a point to see other people. Assuming the two of you aren’t in a relationship and haven’t agreed to see one another exclusively, you can and should be seeing other sugardaddies.
Giving other men a chance to win your heart helps keep things in perspective. It also keeps you from being lonely or from starting to see this other person as something they just aren’t. So keep making those sugar matches on Sugar Daddy For Me, chatting with men who seem worthy, and meeting up with the ones who seem promising.
Keep your distance (if you can)
Sometimes keeping your feelings out of the equation isn’t as easy as deciding not to go on any more dates with someone or ghosting their future texts and calls. What do you do when it’s someone you can’t simply avoid? What if you work with the person, live next door to them, or are close friends with a mutual acquaintance?
In instances like that, you can keep your distance when you can. And when you can’t stop at simple politeness, at least don’t accept their bids for further attention. Keep things superficial and perfunctory to make sure nothing escalates.
Hold onto your self-respect
Although you likely have lots of reasons for not wanting to fall in love with this specific person, you never want to lose sight of the most important one – your self-respect. Maybe you don’t like the way you behave around this person or the side of yourself they bring out. Maybe you’ve caught yourself stooping lower than you’d like just to please or impress the person.
The thing is, loving a person and wanting them to like you should be something that makes you feel good – good about them and good about yourself. If you know that’s not how this would play out, then you’re right to be cautious and to want to play things smart.
Ultimately, no sugardaddy or dating situation is worth your self-respect. So always trust your instincts and make decisions that allow you to stay true to yourself. You’ll be glad you did.
