#221: How to Let Go of Someone You Love (For Anxious Attachers)
On Attachment
Stephanie Rigg
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Letting go of someone you love can feel like the hardest thing you’ll ever do — especially if you have anxious attachment patterns. When your nervous system equates connection with safety, walking away can feel more intolerable than staying in pain.
In this episode, I explore why letting go is so difficult, and what actually helps when love, attachment, and fear are all tangled together.
I talk about:
- Why anxious attachment makes holding on feel safer than letting go
- How we often confuse feelings with instructions for action
- Why waiting to “feel ready” or to stop loving someone keeps us stuck
- The crucial distinction between love and compatibility
- Why letting go isn’t a feeling — it’s a choice you make again and again
- How grief, discomfort, and longing are part of the process, not signs you’ve made a mistake
This episode is both a pep talk and a reality check — an invitation to trust yourself enough to choose what’s right for you, even when it hurts, and even when you still love them.
If you’re navigating a breakup or struggling to let go, be sure to check out my free breakup training: https://www.stephanierigg.com/break-up-webinar
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. |
| 0:03.5 | In today's episode, we are talking about how to let go of someone that you love, which |
| 0:08.7 | frankly is probably the hardest thing you'll ever do as someone with anxious attachment patterns |
| 0:13.3 | because it goes against everything in your system, in your wiring, in your blueprint, |
| 0:18.8 | which says, hold on really tightly to the people |
| 0:21.9 | that you love, even if it's dysfunctional, even if you're in pain, even if you know that the |
| 0:28.4 | relationship is not working. The instinct is really to hold on and keep holding on and keep |
| 0:35.1 | trying and keep pushing and keep fighting to try and make things |
| 0:38.9 | okay because letting go can feel totally intolerable. It can feel like the worst possible outcome, |
| 0:46.2 | even worse than continuing to be in pain inner connection. And so it's little wonder that |
| 0:53.4 | this question of how to let go of someone when you |
| 0:56.3 | still love them is probably in the top three things that I help people with, questions that I |
| 1:01.8 | answer, pieces that I support students in my programs on. To say that it's a recurring topic is |
| 1:07.7 | probably an understatement. It's like one of the biggest things. And my advice, |
| 1:13.2 | which I'll be sharing with you today, is a combination of deep validation and also some hard |
| 1:19.0 | truths. So I'm hoping that if you're in the thick of it right now, if you're struggling to let |
| 1:24.4 | go of someone, maybe you've recently been through a breakup or you're in a |
| 1:28.2 | relationship, but it feels like it needs to end or it's on its last legs and you're absolutely |
| 1:33.1 | terrified about what that's going to mean and how it's going to feel, all of those things. |
| 1:38.0 | This episode is for you and I just want you to know that you are not alone. |
| 1:42.0 | As I said, this is such a big part of the work, |
| 1:45.1 | and it's probably one of the highest things that you'll ever do in a relationship as someone |
... |
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