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The Psychological Reason You Struggle To Let Go — The Zeigarnik Effect
The cognitive bias that prevents you from accepting romantic rejection
Your friends tell you to walk away. You know this situation is going nowhere. You confessed your feelings, and in return, you were rewarded with the dreaded friend-zone speech or a stern declaration that they have moved on. It’s not you — it’s them. They don’t see you in that way, and they probably never will.
But no matter how much you or anyone else says to move on, you struggle. While letting go of lost opportunities is the logical move, our emotions often get the better of us. We become stuck obsessing over the mistakes we made, moments we wish we could change, and clinging to hope that the other person might suddenly come back to us.
There are many reasons why we struggle to let go of unrequited love. We may have an unconscious secondary gain that needs to be fulfilled. The other person could be emitting mixed signals that give us hope. In other cases, we might lack passions and hobbies to keep us focused on life matters other than our relationships.
While all the above is relevant, I want to introduce a lesser-known psychological concept that could be making it difficult for you to move on — The Zeigarnik Effect. This quirky cognitive bias has been shown to impact our perception of closure and make it tough to walk away from painful situations. It’s been used in the business world across sales, marketing, and decision making, and now it’s time to look at its application in our personal lives. Let’s explore how this bias might be affecting you.
What Is The Zeigarnik Effect?
The Zeigarnik Effect can be defined as follows — the psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task more readily than a completed one.
The phenomenon is named after Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, a student of the famed Gestalt school of Psychology. Back in 1927, Kurt Lewin (who was Zeigarnik’s professor) noticed that waiters appeared more able to recall the details of unpaid orders compared with completed orders. This encouraged Zeigarnik to investigate further, culminating in her research report “On Finished and Unfinished Tasks”…
