After experiencing emotional betrayal, many people choose to win back the other person. This pursuit becomes an obsession, as they see whether they can win the other person back as the sole determinant of their fate.
If your pursuit becomes an obsession, then you are destined for pain—obsession itself is a source of pain, regardless of what the obsession is about. The Buddhist philosophy has long understood this.
Being obsessed with winning back the other person means handing over your fate to them, letting them completely control your emotions. You will ultimately lose yourself and become subservient to them.
Those who are betrayed but then double their efforts to please the other person, even grovel to them, are often consumed by a deep obsession to win them back.
Why do you need a relationship? Is it for your happiness or to inflict pain on yourself? These questions have been completely overlooked.
People choose a person and invest in a relationship primarily for their own happiness. No one seeks a relationship to experience suffering or to feel that “life isn’t worth it.”
So, relationships begin sweetly. If they are not sweet, they don’t continue, and they don’t lead to marriage. However, relationships change. Some eventually sour, and what was once beautiful turns into betrayal and hurt. At this point, the relationship becomes a source of pain.
Faced with a painful relationship, many people want to break free. However, most people strive to win back the person who betrayed them, believing that once the person turns back, the pain will end, and everything will be okay.
So, they go to great lengths to win back the other person. However, no matter how hard they try, the other person may not want to return. Over time, their pursuit may turn into a deep obsession. They forget the purpose of winning back the other person and whether it’s for their own happiness. They are just determined to complete the task at all costs, including depleting themselves and wasting their lives.
Your pain stems from this relationship and this person. Pain and happiness are relative. Ending pain itself means achieving happiness. Clinging to pain is equivalent to obstructing your own happiness.
Therefore, being obsessed with winning back someone who cannot be won back perpetually inflicts pain on yourself, and it’s essentially a continuous self-abandonment of happiness. This simple truth is still not understood by many people!
People often ask me, “I’m in so much pain. How can I break free from it?”
In some cases, I tell them that leaving the person who is causing them pain will end their suffering. However, they don’t listen. They believe that doing so will only make them more miserable. In their minds, there is only one way to break free from pain, and that is for the person who betrayed them to turn back.
— If you don’t truly try, how do you know the result? Will leaving this person truly cause more pain? Maybe not. But if you don’t leave this person, aren’t you living in pain every day?
Another easily overlooked fact is that you believe winning back the other person will bring happiness, but that’s just your current belief. Even if you do win them back, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be happy. You may still face pain, perhaps even greater pain, such as the shame and helplessness after being betrayed, the aversion to facing someone you dislike but have to pretend to get along with… These are also very painful.
But you don’t have the opportunity to feel this pain because all your attention and feelings are focused on “winning the other person back,” completely overshadowing this pain.
So, many people who go to great lengths to finally win back the other person will realize that even if they do win them back, they are still not happy, nor are they free from suffering.