First Posted: 2/3/2015
We’ve all been there: There’s that one person from your past you still have feelings for and memories unexpectedly come back to haunt your mind.
Even though they did you so dirty that you fell apart, causing you to live in your sweatpants for a month eating nothing but fried chicken, you still can’t help but think about them from time to time.
If you aren’t in a relationship when Valentine’s Day comes around, it can be easy to find yourself feeling sentimental over someone from your past.
You’re stalking them on Facebook from a fake account you made because one of you blocked each other.
Then you find yourself creeping on the person that person tagged them in a photo the other day, asking yourself, “Are they banging?” They’re totally banging,” while trying to convince yourself that you don’t care. But you do.
You’re basically going off the deep end.
But is it out of the ordinary to be hung up on someone with whom you once had a strong connection?
According to Matthew Hill, a licensed professional counselor, of Matthew Hill Counseling in Dunmore, it’s not unnatural to be hung up on someone from your past. In fact, here’s a free therapy session explaining six reasons it’s totally normal to be going crazy over someone from your past.
1. You’re human.
You can’t help who you’re attracted to, even if it’s someone you know is a bad person.
As Hill explained, “We are what we are and we can’t choose who we are attracted to. It’s not unnatural to be hung up on someone or to think about them after they leave our lives because we are human beings and we have emotional states.”
These emotional states are a good thing because they fuel our wants and desires.
2. The person met your needs at a significant time in your life.
Life is all about timing. According to Hill, one reason people gravitate toward thoughts of past relationships is because they represent a significant time in our life.
“If you are going through something emotional internally at the same time when someone comes in to your life, those emotions could be transferred. Let’s say, for example, maybe you’re graduating from college and about to enter an exciting new career and emotionally it is just a great time in your life. You’re feeling great and you just met someone who just fit your life at that given time. At that point, they represented a significant part of your life and you associate that person with a time in your life that was important to you. You’re not likely to forget that,” Hill said.
3. You were rejected.
Everyone has been rejected. It’s a part of life. It’s also a reason you may get hung up on someone, but not for the reasons you may think.
We tend to accept rejection as we get older, but when it comes to being rejected by someone we met in high school or our early 20s, we tend to be more damaged.
“When we’re younger, we are still developing a sense of identity, which causes us to internalize more. When we’re still developing a sense of identity and someone rejects us, instead of focusing on the other person and why they might not have been a fit for us, we tend of think, ‘Oh, I did this wrong’ and blame ourselves. We may say that we hate them, or other bad things about the person who rejected us, but we are really just protecting ourselves to cover up how hurt we are. When we say bad things about people, it’s not about them, it’s about how we feel about ourselves,” Hill said.
So, if you were rejected, you’re probably blaming yourself instead of looking at the big picture.
4. You’re probably becoming more mature.
Believe it or not, being hung up on someone from your past can actually be a sign of growing up.
According to Hill, we are typically hung up on someone from our high school or college years because early love sets the standards for future relationships. Even as you’re getting older and farther and farther away from that relationship, you become sentimental to memories of “firsts” in your life. As we grow older we also learn more about life through experiences which helps us develop a sense of maturity.
“We learn a lot of things through life experiences. We can look back at mistakes and look at them in a different way. They oftentimes realize the emotions were so strong during a past relationship that it clouded their judgment at the time,” Hill said.
Realizing what you could have done differently can easily trigger old emotions from an old flame.
5. We settle when we get older.
When we are in our 20s, we tend to gravitate toward someone because of a physical attraction. Fast-forward to your 30s, it’s a different story according to Hill.
“You’re going to want someone you’re attracted to obviously, but there are going to be other things that are more important, whether it be someone who has a career that is comparable to you, whether or not they want a family and children, there are just going to be other variables to consider other than that butterflies-in-the-stomach attraction,” Hill said.
As we tend to settle for people who meet other needs, we often think back to that person who fulfilled a different role for us.
6. You’re not looking for the right closure.
You could still be hung up on that one person – even if you don’t want to be – because getting closure can be too broad to understand.
You might be looking for closure but not understand where you need the closure, Hill said.
“You have to look at how it is affecting your daily activities. If that person is a fleeting thought in your mind and you’re still a productive person, that’s fine. There’s nothing unnatural about that and it doesn’t mean you’re crazy,” Hill said.
