The Art of Pretending Someone Doesn’t Exist (Without Being a Jerk)
Emotional Rewilding
•
August 12, 2025
Some people leave your life quietly. Others… leave, then pop back up like a bad app you thought you deleted. And suddenly, there they are again — not in front of you, but in your head. Renting a mental room you swear you already evicted them from. It’s not that you want to fight. Or rekindle. Or even engage. You just want them… gone. Out of your emotional frame. Out of your brain space. This isn’t about being petty. It’s about protecting your peace — and sometimes, that means pretending they don’t exist at all.
I have this urge to forever mute someone from my mind.
Someone who once owned prime real estate in my already over-occupied, multi-tasking brain — the mental equivalent of a Tribeca townhome with an unobstructed skyline view.
He was once important. No official status. No labels. Just… important.
Important enough for my hand to shake when he was around. Important enough for my brain to short-circuit for three full seconds when he disappeared without warning.
I thought I was fine. I thought I’d moved on.
Until he reappeared — and my brain went,
Shit. Here we go again.
You know that moment when you thought the project deliverables you spent months on were signed off for launch — and then suddenly they’re back on your task list? Like, WTF, I already poured so much time and energy into this and I thought it was done. I thought we were launching. Now I have to redo it? Again? I think I’m gonna puke. Can I just move on to better things? Anything else?
Cue the irritation.
The sigh.
Ugh, I already got over this.
I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t even want to waste a single brain cell imagining what he’s doing. If I spend 30 minutes thinking about him, that’s 30 minutes I could’ve spent working on a project that actually moves one of my missions forward. That’s called opportunity cost — and it’s extremely expensive.
This isn’t about being cruel.
This isn’t about revenge.
This is about keeping our energy clean so we can spend it on things that truly move the needle.
Why We Sometimes Need to Pretend Someone Doesn't Exist
Here’s the thing — our brains are annoyingly good at keeping people alive in our heads long after they’ve left the room. Especially when things are left unresolved.
Psychologically, this comes down to a mix of object permanence and emotional attachment wiring.
Object permanence is a concept from developmental psychology — it’s what babies develop when they realize something still exists even when they can’t see it. In relationships, that same mechanism works a little differently (and way more annoyingly). Once someone has made a strong emotional imprint on you, your brain doesn’t just delete them when they’re gone. It keeps a mental version of them in storage, ready to pull up at any moment.
Then there’s emotional attachment wiring — basically, the blueprint your brain and nervous system use to bond with people. It starts forming in early childhood based on how safe, consistent, or unpredictable your caregivers were. Once you’ve attached to someone, your brain tags them as “important to my survival.” Every interaction with them gets laced with hits of dopamine (reward), oxytocin (bonding), and other feel-good chemicals. Even if they’re gone, your system remembers those hits and will keep scanning for them.
And here’s the kicker: your brain doesn’t care if your attention is positive or negative.
Love, longing, annoyance, disgust — it all keeps the connection alive. The neural pathway is the same.
Which means that rant you just had in your head about how they can’t stop playing video games? Yeah. That counts as engagement. You’re still giving them a cameo in your movie.
And because the brain is wired to seek completion, unresolved endings make those cameos even stickier. It’s like your browser-mind keeps a tab running in the background, quietly hitting refresh on its own, hoping for an update you never asked for — draining your emotional battery and eating up your mental processing power every time.
Ugh. I did not sign up for this.
The Problem With Negative Engagement
Here’s what I had to admit to myself: even feeling irritated about someone is still feeding them my attention.
It doesn’t matter if the thoughts are sweet, bitter, or laced with pure rage — my brain is still investing energy into keeping their mental file open.
It's like they’ve got a livestream running in your head, and every time you tune in to roll your eyes or mutter “ugh,” you’re giving them more watch time. You might not be sending them likes, but you’re still boosting their algorithm — telepathically.
And the more you mentally check in — replaying their irritating habits, picking apart their latest post, or rehashing old conversations or arguments — the more entrenched they become. Your brain keeps building neural “roads” back to them, making it even easier to return to the same mental loop.
The only way to cut those roads off?
Stop driving down them. Stop giving the views. Cut off the supply.
The NPC Them Method
This is my go-to mental hack when I catch myself thinking about someone who’s no longer relevant to my actual life.
I call it The NPC Them — because some people are just background characters. Literally. They have no meaningful role in your story anymore, and keeping them in focus is like staring at a random tree in the background of a movie scene and thinking it’s part of the plot.
There’s no actual benefit to spending even one more second thinking about them. And yes — every second matters. Every second is mental currency. Spend it wisely.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1 – Notice the trigger
For me, it usually starts with a thought like:
“Ugh, he’s probably just sitting there glued to the TV again.”
For you, maybe it’s:
“She’s posting another cryptic quote.”
“They just liked my story… why?”
That’s your cue. You’ve just caught the mental tab opening.
Step 2 – NPC Them
Now, downgrade their whole existence in your mind’s world-building. Picture them as a low-resolution, glitchy background video game character stuck in an endless loop.
They’re not the main quest.
They’re not even a side quest.
They’re just… coded to repeat the same handful of actions forever.
They’re not there to guide you to your next mission. They’re not a prerequisite to unlocking the next chapter.
They're not bad people.
They’re just… not important.
Utterly and completely irrelevant to the outcome of your story.
Step 3 – Downgrade importance
NPCs don’t change. They have no arc. They’re filler — placed there so the background doesn’t look too empty.
That’s not tragic. That’s just their programming. And no amount of thinking, talking, or obsessing will rewrite their code.
Step 4 – Redirect the camera
Swing your mental camera back to the main character: you.
Your work.
Your joy.
Your life.
Because every time you point the camera at them, you’re filming a pointless scene. And those scenes add up.
Your Exit Cue
This is where you give your brain a snappy “skip” button.
Mine rotates between:
“Not my problem.”
“Ugh.”
“Irrelevant.”
And the latest one: “TF is wrong with him?!”
It usually plays out like this:
Brain: Remember when—
Me: Not my problem.
Brain: But—
Me: Irrelevant.
Brain: Wait—
Me: Gross.
Brain: Fine.
I used to think it was weird as hell to say these out loud, but verbal cues actually work — and they’re hilarious.
It’s like closing a tab on your mental browser: you notice it, name it, close it. Boom. Gone. Bye, bitch.
How This Protects Our Energy
Emotional bandwidth is finite. You only get so much of it in a day — like storage space on your phone or battery life on your laptop. And the more of it we give to irrelevant characters, the less room we have for our own plotline.
It’s not just about “wasting time.” It’s about running out of mental fuel for the things that actually matter. When you’re busy replaying their annoying habits or rehashing old conversations in your head, that’s time and energy you’re not spending on your own goals, missions, and growth. And that’s depressing to think about.
When we reclaim that mental bandwidth, we get it back in forms that actually feed us:
Creativity that finally gets a chance to breathe.
Joy in the small things, without the static of their presence.
Love for the people who deserve our full attention.
Rest that isn’t interrupted by a midnight thought about someone who’s not even in the room.
This isn’t about being cold or heartless.
It’s about emotional minimalism — cutting the clutter so your mind, heart, and energy can be spent where they have the biggest ROI.
When the Cute Memories Still Sneak In
And here’s the most annoying part: even knowing all this, my brain still sometimes wanders back to him.
Not to the irritating stuff — I wish. But to the cute moments. The good parts. The little flashbacks that slip in like they own the place.
It’s ridiculous. I can be fully convinced he’s irrelevant and incompatible, have my boundaries locked in, and then suddenly I’m replaying the way he laughed at some dumb thing I said two months ago.
It’s like emotional spam that keeps slipping past the filter. You can delete it as soon as you see it, but it still costs you that tiny moment of mental focus. It’s both cute and annoying (yes, they can co-exist — don’t ask me how). And the more those “nice” memories sneak in, the more they try to bargain their way back onto the main stage — which is exactly why the NPC method exists in the first place.
Does Needing to Pretend Mean I Still Have Feelings?
Not always — but sometimes, yes.
Maybe…
It's complicated.
If you genuinely have zero desire to be with them but they still drift into your thoughts, that’s usually just mental habit. Your brain hasn’t fully closed the tab yet. They left an imprint — through chemistry, conflict, consistency or inconsistency — and your mind is still used to checking in. That’s autopilot stuff.
But if you notice that pretending is the only way to stop yourself from reaching out… or if those “cute memory” flashbacks make you feel like your heart is about to explode instead of just mildly nostalgic… then yeah, that can be a sign there are still feelings hanging around.
The key is in the quality of the thought.
Habit thoughts are flat — they pass quickly when you redirect.
Feeling-fueled thoughts have weight — they pull you in, tempt you to engage, and can shift your mood.
In both cases, pretending they don’t exist is still useful. It either helps you break a mental habit or gives you the space to let the emotional charge fade without reigniting it.
No More Screen Time for Side Characters
You’re the main character here. You decide who gets screen time — and who gets cut from the script.
Pretending someone doesn’t exist isn’t about erasing their humanity. It’s about erasing their influence over your energy. You don’t have to hate them. You don’t have to wish them harm. You’re simply choosing not to engage — letting them wander off into their own side quest while you stay locked in on yours.
It’s not cruel.
It’s clean.
It’s self-respect.
So the next time their image pops up, NPC them. Hit skip. Redirect. Get back to your main quest. Get back to work. Get busy. Let’s go.
I have this urge to forever mute someone from my mind.
Someone who once owned prime real estate in my already over-occupied, multi-tasking brain — the mental equivalent of a Tribeca townhome with an unobstructed skyline view.
He was once important. No official status. No labels. Just… important.
Important enough for my hand to shake when he was around. Important enough for my brain to short-circuit for three full seconds when he disappeared without warning.
I thought I was fine. I thought I’d moved on.
Until he reappeared — and my brain went,
Shit. Here we go again.
You know that moment when you thought the project deliverables you spent months on were signed off for launch — and then suddenly they’re back on your task list? Like, WTF, I already poured so much time and energy into this and I thought it was done. I thought we were launching. Now I have to redo it? Again? I think I’m gonna puke. Can I just move on to better things? Anything else?
Cue the irritation.
The sigh.
Ugh, I already got over this.
I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t even want to waste a single brain cell imagining what he’s doing. If I spend 30 minutes thinking about him, that’s 30 minutes I could’ve spent working on a project that actually moves one of my missions forward. That’s called opportunity cost — and it’s extremely expensive.
This isn’t about being cruel.
This isn’t about revenge.
This is about keeping our energy clean so we can spend it on things that truly move the needle.
Why We Sometimes Need to Pretend Someone Doesn't Exist
Here’s the thing — our brains are annoyingly good at keeping people alive in our heads long after they’ve left the room. Especially when things are left unresolved.
Psychologically, this comes down to a mix of object permanence and emotional attachment wiring.
Object permanence is a concept from developmental psychology — it’s what babies develop when they realize something still exists even when they can’t see it. In relationships, that same mechanism works a little differently (and way more annoyingly). Once someone has made a strong emotional imprint on you, your brain doesn’t just delete them when they’re gone. It keeps a mental version of them in storage, ready to pull up at any moment.
Then there’s emotional attachment wiring — basically, the blueprint your brain and nervous system use to bond with people. It starts forming in early childhood based on how safe, consistent, or unpredictable your caregivers were. Once you’ve attached to someone, your brain tags them as “important to my survival.” Every interaction with them gets laced with hits of dopamine (reward), oxytocin (bonding), and other feel-good chemicals. Even if they’re gone, your system remembers those hits and will keep scanning for them.
And here’s the kicker: your brain doesn’t care if your attention is positive or negative.
Love, longing, annoyance, disgust — it all keeps the connection alive. The neural pathway is the same.
Which means that rant you just had in your head about how they can’t stop playing video games? Yeah. That counts as engagement. You’re still giving them a cameo in your movie.
And because the brain is wired to seek completion, unresolved endings make those cameos even stickier. It’s like your browser-mind keeps a tab running in the background, quietly hitting refresh on its own, hoping for an update you never asked for — draining your emotional battery and eating up your mental processing power every time.
Ugh. I did not sign up for this.
The Problem With Negative Engagement
Here’s what I had to admit to myself: even feeling irritated about someone is still feeding them my attention.
It doesn’t matter if the thoughts are sweet, bitter, or laced with pure rage — my brain is still investing energy into keeping their mental file open.
It's like they’ve got a livestream running in your head, and every time you tune in to roll your eyes or mutter “ugh,” you’re giving them more watch time. You might not be sending them likes, but you’re still boosting their algorithm — telepathically.
And the more you mentally check in — replaying their irritating habits, picking apart their latest post, or rehashing old conversations or arguments — the more entrenched they become. Your brain keeps building neural “roads” back to them, making it even easier to return to the same mental loop.
The only way to cut those roads off?
Stop driving down them. Stop giving the views. Cut off the supply.
The NPC Them Method
This is my go-to mental hack when I catch myself thinking about someone who’s no longer relevant to my actual life.
I call it The NPC Them — because some people are just background characters. Literally. They have no meaningful role in your story anymore, and keeping them in focus is like staring at a random tree in the background of a movie scene and thinking it’s part of the plot.
There’s no actual benefit to spending even one more second thinking about them. And yes — every second matters. Every second is mental currency. Spend it wisely.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1 – Notice the trigger
For me, it usually starts with a thought like:
“Ugh, he’s probably just sitting there glued to the TV again.”
For you, maybe it’s:
“She’s posting another cryptic quote.”
“They just liked my story… why?”
That’s your cue. You’ve just caught the mental tab opening.
Step 2 – NPC Them
Now, downgrade their whole existence in your mind’s world-building. Picture them as a low-resolution, glitchy background video game character stuck in an endless loop.
They’re not the main quest.
They’re not even a side quest.
They’re just… coded to repeat the same handful of actions forever.
They’re not there to guide you to your next mission. They’re not a prerequisite to unlocking the next chapter.
They're not bad people.
They’re just… not important.
Utterly and completely irrelevant to the outcome of your story.
Step 3 – Downgrade importance
NPCs don’t change. They have no arc. They’re filler — placed there so the background doesn’t look too empty.
That’s not tragic. That’s just their programming. And no amount of thinking, talking, or obsessing will rewrite their code.
Step 4 – Redirect the camera
Swing your mental camera back to the main character: you.
Your work.
Your joy.
Your life.
Because every time you point the camera at them, you’re filming a pointless scene. And those scenes add up.
Your Exit Cue
This is where you give your brain a snappy “skip” button.
Mine rotates between:
“Not my problem.”
“Ugh.”
“Irrelevant.”
And the latest one: “TF is wrong with him?!”
It usually plays out like this:
Brain: Remember when—
Me: Not my problem.
Brain: But—
Me: Irrelevant.
Brain: Wait—
Me: Gross.
Brain: Fine.
I used to think it was weird as hell to say these out loud, but verbal cues actually work — and they’re hilarious.
It’s like closing a tab on your mental browser: you notice it, name it, close it. Boom. Gone. Bye, bitch.
How This Protects Our Energy
Emotional bandwidth is finite. You only get so much of it in a day — like storage space on your phone or battery life on your laptop. And the more of it we give to irrelevant characters, the less room we have for our own plotline.
It’s not just about “wasting time.” It’s about running out of mental fuel for the things that actually matter. When you’re busy replaying their annoying habits or rehashing old conversations in your head, that’s time and energy you’re not spending on your own goals, missions, and growth. And that’s depressing to think about.
When we reclaim that mental bandwidth, we get it back in forms that actually feed us:
Creativity that finally gets a chance to breathe.
Joy in the small things, without the static of their presence.
Love for the people who deserve our full attention.
Rest that isn’t interrupted by a midnight thought about someone who’s not even in the room.
This isn’t about being cold or heartless.
It’s about emotional minimalism — cutting the clutter so your mind, heart, and energy can be spent where they have the biggest ROI.
When the Cute Memories Still Sneak In
And here’s the most annoying part: even knowing all this, my brain still sometimes wanders back to him.
Not to the irritating stuff — I wish. But to the cute moments. The good parts. The little flashbacks that slip in like they own the place.
It’s ridiculous. I can be fully convinced he’s irrelevant and incompatible, have my boundaries locked in, and then suddenly I’m replaying the way he laughed at some dumb thing I said two months ago.
It’s like emotional spam that keeps slipping past the filter. You can delete it as soon as you see it, but it still costs you that tiny moment of mental focus. It’s both cute and annoying (yes, they can co-exist — don’t ask me how). And the more those “nice” memories sneak in, the more they try to bargain their way back onto the main stage — which is exactly why the NPC method exists in the first place.
Does Needing to Pretend Mean I Still Have Feelings?
Not always — but sometimes, yes.
Maybe…
It's complicated.
If you genuinely have zero desire to be with them but they still drift into your thoughts, that’s usually just mental habit. Your brain hasn’t fully closed the tab yet. They left an imprint — through chemistry, conflict, consistency or inconsistency — and your mind is still used to checking in. That’s autopilot stuff.
But if you notice that pretending is the only way to stop yourself from reaching out… or if those “cute memory” flashbacks make you feel like your heart is about to explode instead of just mildly nostalgic… then yeah, that can be a sign there are still feelings hanging around.
The key is in the quality of the thought.
Habit thoughts are flat — they pass quickly when you redirect.
Feeling-fueled thoughts have weight — they pull you in, tempt you to engage, and can shift your mood.
In both cases, pretending they don’t exist is still useful. It either helps you break a mental habit or gives you the space to let the emotional charge fade without reigniting it.
No More Screen Time for Side Characters
You’re the main character here. You decide who gets screen time — and who gets cut from the script.
Pretending someone doesn’t exist isn’t about erasing their humanity. It’s about erasing their influence over your energy. You don’t have to hate them. You don’t have to wish them harm. You’re simply choosing not to engage — letting them wander off into their own side quest while you stay locked in on yours.
It’s not cruel.
It’s clean.
It’s self-respect.
So the next time their image pops up, NPC them. Hit skip. Redirect. Get back to your main quest. Get back to work. Get busy. Let’s go.
I have this urge to forever mute someone from my mind.
Someone who once owned prime real estate in my already over-occupied, multi-tasking brain — the mental equivalent of a Tribeca townhome with an unobstructed skyline view.
He was once important. No official status. No labels. Just… important.
Important enough for my hand to shake when he was around. Important enough for my brain to short-circuit for three full seconds when he disappeared without warning.
I thought I was fine. I thought I’d moved on.
Until he reappeared — and my brain went,
Shit. Here we go again.
You know that moment when you thought the project deliverables you spent months on were signed off for launch — and then suddenly they’re back on your task list? Like, WTF, I already poured so much time and energy into this and I thought it was done. I thought we were launching. Now I have to redo it? Again? I think I’m gonna puke. Can I just move on to better things? Anything else?
Cue the irritation.
The sigh.
Ugh, I already got over this.
I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to see him. I don’t even want to waste a single brain cell imagining what he’s doing. If I spend 30 minutes thinking about him, that’s 30 minutes I could’ve spent working on a project that actually moves one of my missions forward. That’s called opportunity cost — and it’s extremely expensive.
This isn’t about being cruel.
This isn’t about revenge.
This is about keeping our energy clean so we can spend it on things that truly move the needle.
Why We Sometimes Need to Pretend Someone Doesn't Exist
Here’s the thing — our brains are annoyingly good at keeping people alive in our heads long after they’ve left the room. Especially when things are left unresolved.
Psychologically, this comes down to a mix of object permanence and emotional attachment wiring.
Object permanence is a concept from developmental psychology — it’s what babies develop when they realize something still exists even when they can’t see it. In relationships, that same mechanism works a little differently (and way more annoyingly). Once someone has made a strong emotional imprint on you, your brain doesn’t just delete them when they’re gone. It keeps a mental version of them in storage, ready to pull up at any moment.
Then there’s emotional attachment wiring — basically, the blueprint your brain and nervous system use to bond with people. It starts forming in early childhood based on how safe, consistent, or unpredictable your caregivers were. Once you’ve attached to someone, your brain tags them as “important to my survival.” Every interaction with them gets laced with hits of dopamine (reward), oxytocin (bonding), and other feel-good chemicals. Even if they’re gone, your system remembers those hits and will keep scanning for them.
And here’s the kicker: your brain doesn’t care if your attention is positive or negative.
Love, longing, annoyance, disgust — it all keeps the connection alive. The neural pathway is the same.
Which means that rant you just had in your head about how they can’t stop playing video games? Yeah. That counts as engagement. You’re still giving them a cameo in your movie.
And because the brain is wired to seek completion, unresolved endings make those cameos even stickier. It’s like your browser-mind keeps a tab running in the background, quietly hitting refresh on its own, hoping for an update you never asked for — draining your emotional battery and eating up your mental processing power every time.
Ugh. I did not sign up for this.
The Problem With Negative Engagement
Here’s what I had to admit to myself: even feeling irritated about someone is still feeding them my attention.
It doesn’t matter if the thoughts are sweet, bitter, or laced with pure rage — my brain is still investing energy into keeping their mental file open.
It's like they’ve got a livestream running in your head, and every time you tune in to roll your eyes or mutter “ugh,” you’re giving them more watch time. You might not be sending them likes, but you’re still boosting their algorithm — telepathically.
And the more you mentally check in — replaying their irritating habits, picking apart their latest post, or rehashing old conversations or arguments — the more entrenched they become. Your brain keeps building neural “roads” back to them, making it even easier to return to the same mental loop.
The only way to cut those roads off?
Stop driving down them. Stop giving the views. Cut off the supply.
The NPC Them Method
This is my go-to mental hack when I catch myself thinking about someone who’s no longer relevant to my actual life.
I call it The NPC Them — because some people are just background characters. Literally. They have no meaningful role in your story anymore, and keeping them in focus is like staring at a random tree in the background of a movie scene and thinking it’s part of the plot.
There’s no actual benefit to spending even one more second thinking about them. And yes — every second matters. Every second is mental currency. Spend it wisely.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1 – Notice the trigger
For me, it usually starts with a thought like:
“Ugh, he’s probably just sitting there glued to the TV again.”
For you, maybe it’s:
“She’s posting another cryptic quote.”
“They just liked my story… why?”
That’s your cue. You’ve just caught the mental tab opening.
Step 2 – NPC Them
Now, downgrade their whole existence in your mind’s world-building. Picture them as a low-resolution, glitchy background video game character stuck in an endless loop.
They’re not the main quest.
They’re not even a side quest.
They’re just… coded to repeat the same handful of actions forever.
They’re not there to guide you to your next mission. They’re not a prerequisite to unlocking the next chapter.
They're not bad people.
They’re just… not important.
Utterly and completely irrelevant to the outcome of your story.
Step 3 – Downgrade importance
NPCs don’t change. They have no arc. They’re filler — placed there so the background doesn’t look too empty.
That’s not tragic. That’s just their programming. And no amount of thinking, talking, or obsessing will rewrite their code.
Step 4 – Redirect the camera
Swing your mental camera back to the main character: you.
Your work.
Your joy.
Your life.
Because every time you point the camera at them, you’re filming a pointless scene. And those scenes add up.
Your Exit Cue
This is where you give your brain a snappy “skip” button.
Mine rotates between:
“Not my problem.”
“Ugh.”
“Irrelevant.”
And the latest one: “TF is wrong with him?!”
It usually plays out like this:
Brain: Remember when—
Me: Not my problem.
Brain: But—
Me: Irrelevant.
Brain: Wait—
Me: Gross.
Brain: Fine.
I used to think it was weird as hell to say these out loud, but verbal cues actually work — and they’re hilarious.
It’s like closing a tab on your mental browser: you notice it, name it, close it. Boom. Gone. Bye, bitch.
How This Protects Our Energy
Emotional bandwidth is finite. You only get so much of it in a day — like storage space on your phone or battery life on your laptop. And the more of it we give to irrelevant characters, the less room we have for our own plotline.
It’s not just about “wasting time.” It’s about running out of mental fuel for the things that actually matter. When you’re busy replaying their annoying habits or rehashing old conversations in your head, that’s time and energy you’re not spending on your own goals, missions, and growth. And that’s depressing to think about.
When we reclaim that mental bandwidth, we get it back in forms that actually feed us:
Creativity that finally gets a chance to breathe.
Joy in the small things, without the static of their presence.
Love for the people who deserve our full attention.
Rest that isn’t interrupted by a midnight thought about someone who’s not even in the room.
This isn’t about being cold or heartless.
It’s about emotional minimalism — cutting the clutter so your mind, heart, and energy can be spent where they have the biggest ROI.
When the Cute Memories Still Sneak In
And here’s the most annoying part: even knowing all this, my brain still sometimes wanders back to him.
Not to the irritating stuff — I wish. But to the cute moments. The good parts. The little flashbacks that slip in like they own the place.
It’s ridiculous. I can be fully convinced he’s irrelevant and incompatible, have my boundaries locked in, and then suddenly I’m replaying the way he laughed at some dumb thing I said two months ago.
It’s like emotional spam that keeps slipping past the filter. You can delete it as soon as you see it, but it still costs you that tiny moment of mental focus. It’s both cute and annoying (yes, they can co-exist — don’t ask me how). And the more those “nice” memories sneak in, the more they try to bargain their way back onto the main stage — which is exactly why the NPC method exists in the first place.
Does Needing to Pretend Mean I Still Have Feelings?
Not always — but sometimes, yes.
Maybe…
It's complicated.
If you genuinely have zero desire to be with them but they still drift into your thoughts, that’s usually just mental habit. Your brain hasn’t fully closed the tab yet. They left an imprint — through chemistry, conflict, consistency or inconsistency — and your mind is still used to checking in. That’s autopilot stuff.
But if you notice that pretending is the only way to stop yourself from reaching out… or if those “cute memory” flashbacks make you feel like your heart is about to explode instead of just mildly nostalgic… then yeah, that can be a sign there are still feelings hanging around.
The key is in the quality of the thought.
Habit thoughts are flat — they pass quickly when you redirect.
Feeling-fueled thoughts have weight — they pull you in, tempt you to engage, and can shift your mood.
In both cases, pretending they don’t exist is still useful. It either helps you break a mental habit or gives you the space to let the emotional charge fade without reigniting it.
No More Screen Time for Side Characters
You’re the main character here. You decide who gets screen time — and who gets cut from the script.
Pretending someone doesn’t exist isn’t about erasing their humanity. It’s about erasing their influence over your energy. You don’t have to hate them. You don’t have to wish them harm. You’re simply choosing not to engage — letting them wander off into their own side quest while you stay locked in on yours.
It’s not cruel.
It’s clean.
It’s self-respect.
So the next time their image pops up, NPC them. Hit skip. Redirect. Get back to your main quest. Get back to work. Get busy. Let’s go.
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It's time to come home to yourself
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It's time to come home to yourself
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Subscribe for emotional truth, romance & soul-searching stuff.
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Emotional Survival Kit
It's time to come home to yourself
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Subscribe for emotional truth, romance & soul-searching stuff.
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Emotional Survival Kit