Is the person you love or truly care for not answering your phone calls or text messages? Have they been ignoring you on social media too? Have they also been avoiding face-to-face encounters?
Now, I can see the huge question mark in your head. You’re asking yourself what to do when someone ignores you on purpose.
Don’t worry, that same thought bothered me once, but I managed to find the right answer to it, and now, I’ll help you do the same. I’ll guide you through this process, help you endure these hard times, and fight this awful emotional abuse.
And just like I did, you’ll get out of this way stronger and (emotionally) smarter.
What To Do When Someone Ignores You On Purpose: 11 Helpful Tips
So, here are a few very powerful tips that will help you deal with someone who keeps ignoring you on purpose.
1. Keep your cool
No matter how much they ignore you, and no matter how much it hurts, you should try to remain calm. Don’t react in the heat of a moment because, believe me, that won’t bring you anything good.
Your anger will only make you do things you’ll regret later. And always keep in mind that once you say something, you can’t take it back.
Learn to tame your temper. Every time their behavior makes you angry, take a deep breath and walk away. Don’t let them make you swallow your own words later.
2. Make sure you’re really being ignored on purpose
Of course, before you say or do anything, you need to be sure that they’re really ignoring you on purpose. Have you tried talking to them? Did you do anything that may have made them ignore you?
Maybe they’re just too busy with some of their own stuff. On the other hand, I truly believe that no one can be so busy they neglect the person they care for.
If you’re sure that you’re being ignored on purpose, depending on your relationship with them, you have two options… Either you can try to figure out why they’re ignoring you, or you can forget about them and move on with your life as if nothing has happened.
3. Think about all the possible reasons for their behavior
Maybe some of your actions hurt them without you being aware of it. Go through all the possible reasons for their silent treatment because they may really have a good reason for ignoring you.
It may be their way of telling you that you need to reconsider your actions. The fact is that some people don’t know how to solve their issues with their partner in a healthy way.
Instead, they choose to distance themselves or give their partner the silent treatment. It’s like they want their partner to read their mind. Unfortunately, these people aren’t even aware of all the consequences it may have for their relationship.
If you did something that hurt their feelings, you should admit it and ask for forgiveness. Once they feel ready to accept your apology, they’ll stop ignoring you.
4. Give them time and space
If you still can’t find the root cause for their behavior, you should consider giving them some space. Maybe they’ve met new people, found new friends, and only want to spend time with them.
On the other hand, they may be struggling with some personal problems and want to be alone. Maybe they aren’t ignoring you – perhaps all they truly want is to spend some time alone.
If they still don’t reach out after some time, then it’s confirmed: they’re ignoring you because they don’t care for you. You’ll need to accept it sooner or later and remove them from your life completely.
5. Control your emotions, don’t let them control you
I know that being ignored by someone who truly means something to you makes you feel a great range of emotions. It’s an emotional trauma that not many people know how to fight and overcome.
You should accept all those emotions, but you should never allow them to control you. Don’t let this emotional rollercoaster make you do something you would never normally do.
When you learn to control your emotions, you’ll also learn to control your body language. And that’s of huge importance because you should never allow anyone else to know you’re hurting or that you’re frustrated because of someone else’s actions.
You don’t need anyone’s pity because you are worth more than that!
6. Focus on yourself
What to do when someone ignores you on purpose: Simply focus on yourself, not on that person.
Give yourself the love they keep denying to you. Push your self-care up to the maximum. Improve your self-esteem. Regain lost self-respect.
The silent treatment may have a destructive effect on a person’s mental health. If you’re feeling hurt, stressed, or depressed, don’t run from it.
Accept everything you’re feeling right now and learn to project all those feelings and states in a healthy way. Let them be your encouragement to let go of those who don’t appreciate your presence in their lives and move on.
7. To be more exact, spoil yourself
You D E S E R V E it! You deserve to feel loved, and if that person doesn’t want to make you feel that way, then you should do it for yourself. You should make yourself feel loved!
Fall madly in love with yourself. Promise yourself that you would never ever neglect yourself and your own needs chasing someone that doesn’t want to be caught.
Do nice things for yourself. Start living your life to the fullest, and don’t even bother thinking about those who obviously stopped thinking about you a long time ago.
8. Don’t play games just to get them to notice you
They may indeed be playing games with you by ignoring you, but that doesn’t mean you should accept being an accomplice in those toxic games.
I know you’re hurting, but humiliating yourself and losing your self-respect definitely isn’t worth it. In fact, nothing is worth keeping someone who obviously doesn’t love you how you love them in your life.
Sooner or later, they’ll leave, and you’ll be left with nothing but pain and despair.
You’ll lose yourself over someone who never even wanted to be a part of your life, and that’ll affect all of your future relationships. You may never be able to build and maintain a healthy relationship with another person ever again.
9. Turning it into a competition won’t work
You shouldn’t compete to see who’ll ignore the other one the longest. In a healthy relationship, there is no competing.
There are just two people who encourage each other to become the best possible versions of themselves and support one another in everything they do. That’s the whole point of a healthy and successful relationship.
Always try to be the bigger person in life. Ignoring them won’t chase away your pain, it’ll only poison your relationship to the point where you won’t ever be able to fix things between you, and that will be a surefire end to your love, friendship, or whatever.
10. Let them know their actions are hurting you
You can reach out to them and ask them to talk. However, don’t text them 24/7 because that will only make you look desperate, and, trust me, no one finds that attractive.
You can, and you should, warn them that their behavior is hurting you and that you aren’t sure how much longer you’ll be able to cope with it.
They probably already know that their behavior is hurting your feelings, but the truth is, they don’t care about your feelings at all. On the other hand, your words may be a wake-up call for them, and they might understand that they’re not being fair towards you and end the silent treatment.
11. If none of these work, end your relationship
Whether it’s a close friend or someone you have deep romantic feelings for, if that person keeps disrespecting you in this way, you need to let them go.
I’m not saying you need to delete them from your heart because I know that is impossible. Unfortunately, the heart never takes orders from us. However, you need to walk away from them, move on with your life, and, with time, your heart will learn to let go of them too.
If you keep letting them disrespect you in this way, you won’t only end up hurt, but you’ll also lose yourself, which is way worse than being hurt.
This person is either a narcissist or doesn’t care for you at all. Whatever, the important thing is that you don’t need someone like that in your life and that you owe it to yourself to choose your own sanity over someone who doesn’t deserve you.
See also: What Is The Best Reply When Someone Ignores You: 88 Examples
When Someone Ignores You, What Does That Mean?
Honestly, it only means that person doesn’t genuinely care for you. They don’t care if your feelings are being hurt, and, in the end, that’s definitely not something someone who loves you could do to you.
Have you ever heard the saying, ‘no response is still a response‘? In my opinion, it’s truly one of the most powerful responses. It’s a response not many of us are able to decode and one that could save many of us from getting our hearts broken.
So many couples are afraid of fighting when, in fact, this is something they should fear more.
Fighting (in a healthy way and in normal doses) can actually be productive for your relationship and help you strengthen your bond. Silent treatment, on the other hand, will only make you grow apart and start hating each other.
What Is The Psychology Behind Ignoring Someone?
This isn’t about how being ignored makes you feel – it’s about the consequences it leaves on you and your general well-being. And, trust me, all of those consequences are awful and, unfortunately, most of them are long-term.
You should really go through this list carefully because if this doesn’t make you understand that you need to let go of that person and move on with your life, nothing will.
• It harms your mental health deeply
Well, truth to be told, being ignored doesn’t only have bad consequences for your mental health – it also impacts (negatively, of course) your physical and emotional well-being.
You can’t figure out the cause of their silent treatment, and it starts eating you alive. Soon, your stress levels increase to the point where you can’t function like a normal human being anymore.
You miss them but can’t get through to them, no matter how much you try. Such situations can be really painful and seriously harm your overall well-being.
• It may cost you losing your self-respect
You start questioning yourself and your own emotions. You continuously go through all the possible reasons that might make the other person ignore you, but you can’t find any good enough.
That’s because there is no reason. Unfortunately, you don’t see it like that, and soon enough, you start blaming yourself for everything.
You take all the blame even though, deep down, you know you didn’t do anything wrong. You start humiliating yourself and begging them to talk to you. All of that costs you losing one of the most important things a person can have: self-worth.
• Negative emotions arise
When someone you genuinely care for keeps giving you the cold shoulder, it’s completely normal for you to become overwhelmed by negative emotions.
From sadness and despair all the way to anger and frustration…
As I said, it’s normal to feel a different range of emotions because you’re going through a very hard time. However, if you allow those negative emotions to control or, even worse, overpower you, you’ll do things that you will most definitely regret afterward.
• It’s a kind of emotional abuse that leaves marks forever
It’s definitely one of the worst things someone you love can do to you. It wounds both your soul and heart deeply.
Even after you manage to heal from it and move on, you’ll still feel the consequences of that emotional abuse. You’ll be left with low self-confidence and trust issues that will affect all of your future relationships.
• It’s one of the most common relationship killers
Whether it’s your best friend, a family member, or your romantic partner, even IF you manage to go through this and save your relationship, things between you will never be the same.
You’ll live in fear that it might happen again, that it’s just a matter of time before they decide to ignore you again. That fear won’t allow you to feel happy in that relationship ever again.
The fact is, the silent treatment has destroyed so many good relationships. And those that it doesn’t manage to kill, it harms and wounds them forever.
When Someone Ignores You Quotes
Besides these tips that will help you deal with the silent treatment, you should also go through these inspirational quotes and sayings about being ignored that I found online and compiled into this small list.
I hope these quotes will help you gather the strength to resist those manipulations and protect your self-esteem. Or, at least, I hope they will bring you the comfort you so desperately need.
1. “Once you feel avoided by someone, never disturb them again.”
2. “Being ignored hurts worse. Shunning is harsh. Brutal. Worse than a beating.” – Lori Nelson
3. “It sucks when you’re ignored by the person whose attention is the only thing you want in the world.”
4. “The best thing you can do when people ignore you is to keep your chin up, girl.”
5. “Being ignored is just like never getting the approval that you have just been waiting for.”
6. “Don’t care for those who ignore you. Care for those who are ignoring others for you.”
7. “I think I owe you the time you wasted in ignoring me.” – Nitya Prakash
8. “The worst thing a guy could do for a girl, personally, I think it’s to ignore her while she’s loving you with all her heart.”
9. “If someone wants to be a part of your life, they’ll make an effort to be in it.. Don’t bother reserving a space in your heart for someone who doesn’t make an effort to stay.”
10. “If you’re being ignored, that’s a good time to concentrate on finding yourself and creating your own mystery.” – Lykke Li
11. “The great thing about being ignored is that you can speak the truth with impunity.” – Steve Aylett
12. “What’s worse than being hated is being ignored because it’s like you don’t exist at all, and your presence is nothing.”
13. “Do not worry about being ignored. Worry about why you are thinking about it, for ignorance will always exist.”
14. “It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored.” – David Levithan
15. “When your friends are ignoring you, that means they weren’t your friends from the beginning – they were just acting like it.”
16. “Some people hurt you by words and some by action…but the biggest hurt I believe is when someone is ignoring you, and you value them more than anything else.”
17. “Feel proud when people ignore you and thank God you missed the worst.” – Sanjiv Dogra
18. “I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way.”
19. “We fight, we know more. We lie, we trust more. We hurt, we love more. We ignore, we miss more.”
20. “While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen
In The End
To conclude on the topic of what to do when someone ignores you on purpose: If you love them and think the love is reciprocated, give them time to think and a chance to justify their behavior.
I truly hope they will offer you a good explanation for their silent treatment, even though I strongly believe there is no good reason to ignore someone you honestly love. If they don’t, if they continue ignoring you, you’re left with one option: to let go of them and move forward.
On the flip side, if they’re someone you don’t particularly care for, just don’t pay attention to them. You know how they say, haters gonna hate, and all you should do about it is not give a damn.
