Image by Africa images on Canva
Image by Africa images on Canva
How to Stop Being Attracted (or Not—Let’s Unpack It)
Wondering what to do with your attraction to someone else (or how to stop being attracted?!) can leave you feeling stuck, spiralling, or torn. If you’re caught in that loop, you’re in the right place—this guide takes you from 'fixing it' to figuring it out.
🧭 How to Use This Blog
This blog is designed a bit differently. Instead of giving you big ideas and saving the "how" for a product pitch at the end, I like to walk you through the process step-by-step—with practical tools you can actually use. Think of it like a workbook in blog form: hands-on, reflective, and designed to support real insight.
You’ll find:
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💡 Reflection prompts woven throughout, which you can sit with quietly or journal through—whatever suits your style
- 📝 Exercises to guide you through specific steps, practices, or processes
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🛠️ Tools and worksheets to help you go deeper——some are free, some are paid
- 📄 Reference sheets for quick, printable overviews of key ideas that go beyond what’s covered in the blog
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👣 Optional next steps at the end, if you'd like to work with me directly
You can dip in or dive deep. No need to “do it right”—the way you engage is the right way for right now. My goal is to make the ideas doable—not just understandable. (And if you’re overthinking that, hi. You’re among friends.)
Now, let’s start unpacking what's actually happening... and why your brain, body, and heart might not agree on what it means.
📚 This is Part 2 of a 4-part series:
Help! I’m Attracted to Someone Else: How to Handle Sexual Chemistry When You’re In a Relationship
Feel free to jump into any part that speaks to you—or just scroll down and keep going.
🔗 Part 1: Understanding Your Attraction
➤ Part 2: This post! Keep scrolling to get rolling 👇
🔗 Part 3: Why Am I Attracted to Them? (And What Does It Say About Me?)
📖 From ‘Fixing It’ to Figuring It Out: How to Start The Work
As I explained in Part 1, I totally resonate with your desire to skim ahead and get to the “real work.”
You’ve already spent hours thinking about this. You know it inside out. No need to slow down and look at it again, right?
That urgency makes sense.
You’ve looked at this so many times, it’s hard to bring fresh eyes.
And without realising it, you might end up processing it at a more surface level than you’d like.
That’s not 'bad'.
It’s just that your blind spots have always been there.
(That’s why you’re in this particular version of your problem.)
If you’re confident you’ve done this part of the work already, amazing!
You’ll probably feel most at home in Part 3.
But if you’re not sure—or if you’ve mostly done this in your head—I invite you to try it now.
This kind of slower reflection doesn’t have to replace your search for answers.
It can happen in parallel.
By all means, go read all the things—here’s my favourite relationship books and resources if you some quality info.
Just don’t underestimate the power of this kind of work.
It’s the kind that quietly untangles things beneath the noise—
so when you do reach for insight later, it’s deeply grounded in something real.
How to Unpack Your Attraction
So how do you start to unpack what this attraction actually means—if it means anything at all?
That’s what these next steps are here to help with. They’re part of a larger process I call Reflective Experience Mapping—a way to slow things down and begin separating what actually happened from the meaning you’ve assigned to it.
Attraction can feel intense—so intense that it seems like it has to mean something:
• That your relationship(s) are broken.
• That this new person is a better fit.
• That your feelings are a sign you should either pursue your attraction, or figure out how to stop being attracted.
But most of us collapse our sensations, emotions, and thoughts into one big story.
And that story can feel Big T True just because it’s loud.
So let’s slow the fuck down—and start to parse the threads of experience:
what happened, what you felt, and what you've made it all mean.
📝 1. Begin with Facts, Not Feelings
Before we try to understand what this attraction means, let’s slow down and just look at what actually happened.
Start by choosing one specific moment that stands out—a glance, a spark, a conversation. Don’t overthink it. The goal here isn’t to find the most important moment, just a small, real example you can look at with fresh eyes.
Now, walk through that moment like a neutral observer.
💡 Reflection Prompts
Ask yourself;
What literally happened? Not what you felt or thought—just what happened externally.
Keep it simple and grounded—like you’re directing a scene.
“They were standing up and I walked in. They smiled and said hi. I blushed, said hi, then we both sat at the table.”
Now write it down. Or sketch it. Get it out of your head and onto paper—this is a process shift, not just a mental one.
Then slow it down even further. Break the moment into a short sequence—just one beat at a time:
“I’m at the door → they’re sitting down → they smile and say hi → I blush → I walk to the table → we both sit down.”
This kind of step-by-step noticing is the first part of a process to separate the facts of an experience from the story you’ve built around it.
📝 2. Change the Form to Shift the Insight
How you reflect matters. The form you use—visual, verbal, written—can open different doors.
Sometimes it’s not the moment itself, but how you revisit it that unlocks something new.
Look, it's easy to skip this step. I’m the first to admit I’ve read an exercise, nodded like I “got it,” and moved right on—without giving it any actual time to land.
So I’m inviting you to be really honest with yourself:
Have you actually done the “facts vs feelings” exercise in a tangible way?
Not just thought about it. Not just skimmed the idea. Actually done it.
If not—great. This is your moment.
You’ve been looping, googling, thinking it to death... and still don't have answers.
So maybe it’s time to try something different.
Change the form. Slow it down. See what shifts.
If you usually write, try sketching.
If you usually talk it out, try writing.
If you usually draw, try try talking it out.
Here’s what each form can offer:
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Visual mapping can reveal patterns you didn’t notice.
(👇 If you’re curious, I’ve created some worksheets with sketching and story-boarding options you can explore below. 👇) -
Writing can slow the mental rush and help you turn feelings into language.
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Speaking aloud can help you hear where things tighten or heat up—like noticing where your voice changes or when you rush a sentence.
Each version might highlight something different.
Let it be messy. Let it be experimental.
The point isn’t to “get it right”—it’s to stretch how you reflect, not just what you reflect on. That’s what transforms looping into deep thinking.
🛠️ Creative Worksheets for Visual Reflection
I designed these Creative Worksheets to help you take your out of your head—and into something you can actually work with.
Whether you’re mapping moments, sketching them like a landscape, or turning them into a comic strip, the goal isn’t to “get it right”—it’s to shift your perspective by changing the form.
Sometimes, that’s the difference between looping and actually seeing what’s going on.
Unpacking Your Attraction • Creative Worksheets for Visual Reflection
Looking for a more intuitive way to unpack your experience? These downloadable worksheets offer three creative formats—Comic Strip, Mind Map, and Mud Map—to help you slow down and lay out your experience through a different lens.
Whether you’re sketching key moments, mapping emotional patterns, or laying it out like a journey, these tools help you see your story more clearly—and work with it more tangibly.
📝 3. Separate the Signals From the Story
Emotions and sensations are your body’s shortcut messaging system.
They draw on past experience to motivate you towards what feels good and safe—and away from what feels risky.
But these signals aren’t always grounded in Truth.
Sometimes your body responds with information that is outdated or not a right-sized response
This happens especially when things feel intense. It’s easy to collapse multiple moments into one. We do the same thing with sensation, emotion, and meaning:
“I felt this, so it must mean that.”
But when you slow it down and trace the threads separately, you start to see what’s actually happening underneath. You might notice that a gesture, glance, or comment is what activated something—and from there, you can trace that activation back to its source.
That’s the shift point.
You begin to notice the difference between a meaningful moment… and an old belief or memory getting triggered.
Slowing down like this gives you a chance to examine what you’re feeling—and to decide what’s helpful, relevant, and right-sized for this context. It untangles the biological from the historical, the personal from the cultural, the story from the signal.
And from there?
You can choose what’s worth listening to—and what might need reprocessing or reintegration.
That’s especially helpful if you’re trying to figure out how to stop being attracted to someone else—or whether you even want to.
It helps you separate what you’re feeling from what activated that feeling.
💡 Reflection Prompts
Once you’ve broken the moment into a sequence (like we did in Step 1), it’s time to add another layer:
What signals was your body sending?
What sensations were you experiencing?
What emotional undercurrents were already moving through you—before you made sense of them?
Attraction rarely activates single emotions or sensations. It's common (and normal!) to feel a mix of both positive and negative, even at the same time.
When you slow it down and trace the threads separately—physical sensation and emotional tone—you begin to see what was actually happening underneath the story.
1. Start with sensation.
Ask yourself: What was happening in my body?
Keep it grounded and literal—like you’re directing a scene from the inside.
“My hands were warm. My chest felt fluttery. My stomach dropped when I saw them. My face flushed.”
Then layer those sensations over your Step 1 sequence, moment by moment:
“I’m at the door (my hands are sweaty and warm) → they’re standing up (my heart skips) → they smile and say hi (my chest tightens) → I blush (heat in my face and chest) → I walk to the table (buzzing energy in my limbs) → we sit down (electric, pulsing feeling in my whole body).”
2. Now track the emotional layer.
Ask: What feelings were moving through me, even if I didn’t name them at the time?
“I’m at the door (nervous, hopeful) → they’re standing up (surprised, time feels slow) → they smile and say hi (excited, drawn in) → I blush (shy, warm, connected) → I walk to the table (anticipation) → we sit down (a swirl of excitement, tension, curiosity).”
Layer in the sensations and emotions, beat by beat, beside the sequence you mapped.
This is where the experience starts to come into focus—without collapsing it into one big feeling or story.
📝 4. Examine Your Meaning Making
Have you ever been completely certain about something—angry, hurt, confused—only to later realise you’d misunderstood?
Same.
Maybe you misread the tone of a text or misjudged someone’s intention. It’s a deeply human impulse to make meaning out of every moment. But it becomes a problem when we let that process happen without any oversight.
We often believe we’re making logical decisions—that our thoughts are leading the charge.
But it’s usually the other way around.
What feels like a conscious thought is often just your brain catching up—rushing in to explain what your body already reacted to.
As Dr. Mona DeKoven Fishbane writes in Loving with the Brain in Mind: Neurobiology and Couple Therapy:
“The subcortical, physiological experience of emotion is much faster than our cortical awareness, which catches up and names the feeling.”
Translation?
Your body reacts first. Then your brain races to name it.
Before you’ve even “decided” what to think, your nervous system has already kicked off the meaning-making process.
Whether you’re trying to understand what to do about being attracted to someone else, or how to stop being attracted entirely, this step helps you make sense of what’s really happening. When you understand the story you told yourself about what that attraction meant, you can start to shift your response—without shame, urgency, or self-rejection.
So this step is about interrupting that instant collapse—and creating just enough space to separate what you felt from what you made it mean.
💡 Reflection Prompts
If you're anything like me, you're probably frustrated right now.
You were hoping I’d just explain something that would make this all click…
But that’s back to front, bitches.
The insight you’re chasing doesn’t come from something new—it comes from applying the right kind of critical reflection.
These questions will help you reverse engineer your actual thoughts—not the conclusion you landed on later.
You’re not looking for a tidy summary or a big insight here.
You’re just replaying the raw, messy stream of what was actually happening in your head.
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What was happening in your head?
Not the conclusion—just the raw stream of thoughts as they happened.
Example:
“This feels so right”
“Do they feel this way too?”
“Don't fuck this up”These aren’t polished insights—they’re just flickers of thought that show up before the story forms.
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What literal words were you saying to yourself?
Try to replay them like a transcript, moment by moment.
Example:
“They're so fucking hot.”
"My heart is on fire!"
“This feels electric.”
“Don’t read into it.”
“I wish I could feel this with my partner.”These thoughts don’t need to be coherent or morally tidy—just honest.
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Which old stories or beliefs were being stirred in that moment?
Now zoom out: what familiar meaning or belief did those thoughts point to?
Example:
“I shouldn’t want more than I already have.”
“If I feel this, it must mean something’s missing in my relationship.”
“Wanting more than one connection means I’m selfish—or can’t be trusted.”
“I’ll mess everything up if I lean into this.”These stories aren’t always true—but they often shape how attraction lands, especially when we’re navigating conflicting desires, cultural scripts, or relational agreements.
💡 Step 5- Still Have Questions?
By tracing the details of your experience this way—moment by moment, sensation by sensation—you’ve already done the hardest part: slowing the collapse.
You’ve taken something overwhelming and turned it into something observable.
And that changes everything.
In the next blog, we’ll take this even deeper.
You’ll move from understanding the event to exploring the roots of what shaped your response. We’ll unpack the roles you’ve learned to play in relationships, the rules you’ve absorbed (your values, beliefs, and internal “shoulds”), and the realms of experience that shape how you see the world.
But for now?
Let the insight settle before you try to turn it into action.
👣 Optional Next Steps
I’m so glad you’ve found your way here, especially if you’re navigating a situation that feels... complicated.
This guide, Help! I’m Attracted to Someone Else, reaches over 2500 readers every month. Many return more than once, which tells me how common (and quietly overwhelming) this experience can be.
But if you’ve landed here, read through, and still feel like something’s missing, you’re probably right.
Depending on what best aligns with your goals right now, there are a few different ways to take next steps:
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📝 Work through the reflections and exercises in this blog at your own pace. You don’t have to download anything or make a plan—just take your time moving through the questions already here.
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🛠️ Use the tools I've created to dive deeper. Throughout this blog, you’ll find links to supplemental worksheets, guides, and resources (look for the 🛠️ tool icon). These are designed to help you explore your experience more tangibly and thoroughly.
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👣 Book a free Meet & Greet. Online advice can only go so far—it can’t always account for the unique nuances of YOUR circumstances. If you'd like personalised support, I work with individuals, couples+ and polycules to help unpack what's happening, how you're feeling, and what you're going to do. If you’re curious, the Meet & Greet (below) is an easy, no-pressure way for us to get vibes of whether we're a good fit!
👣 Book a Meet & Greet
If you'd like to explore whether I'm a good fit as your sounding board & support, you can book a Meet & Greet directly into my calendar.
This saves the endless cycle of "sorry I took so long to reply to your email" and allows you to ask all the questions.
There's zero pressure to work with me, it's literally;
- getting a sense of what's happening (you tell me as much or as little as you like)
- explaining the logistics of the way I work
- asking questions (if you have any)
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