How to Let Go of Someone

From Tantra Is Not What You Think, by Daniel Sutton

You let go of someone by loosening the grip of needing them in your life a certain way, not by forcing yourself to stop caring. Feel the loss fully, set down the story of how it should have been, and let love become an open hand rather than a clenched fist.

Letting go is not not-caring

The phrase “let them go” sounds, at first, like an instruction to rip the person out of your heart and feel nothing. No wonder it seems impossible. But that is not what letting go means, and trying to force yourself not to care only adds a second pain on top of the first.

Letting go is not about the love. It is about the grip. You can go on loving someone, wishing them well, holding what you shared with tenderness, and still release your hold on needing them to stay, to come back, or to be who you wanted them to be. The love can remain. It is the clenching around them that you set down.

The grip is the demand that it be otherwise

Look closely at the pain of holding on and you will usually find a demand underneath it: this should not be happening, they should still be here, it should have gone differently. That argument with reality is the second arrow, the one you keep firing into the wound long after the first has landed. The replaying of the last conversation. The endless what-ifs. The rehearsing of what you would say if they walked back in.

None of it changes what is. It only keeps the wound open. You usually cannot choose whether someone stays or goes. You can, slowly, stop demanding that the truth of it be different than it is, and that is where the grip begins to loosen.

Love as an open hand

• Let the grief be there, fully. Letting go is not skipping the pain; it is feeling it without piling the should-not-haves on top. A feeling met honestly moves through. The bracing against it is what makes it stay.
• Catch the loop. When the mind reaches again for the replaying and the what-ifs, notice it gently and come back to the breath, to the room, to now. The story is the grip; setting it down is the release.
• Let love change shape rather than end. You can wish them well from a distance, keep the good of what was, and still open your hand. Held loosely, love does not have to become resentment to let someone go.

This is slow, and it is not linear. Some days the hand opens; some days it closes again, and that is human. If the loss is heavy grief, or a love you are still tangled in painfully, please be gentle with yourself, and reach out to someone you trust or a qualified professional. That is not weakness; it is one of the bravest forms of letting go. The free 7-day guide offers a soft place to start, and the fuller method is in the book Tantra Is Not What You Think.