One of the most difficult things to do in life is to figure out how to let go of someone you love. Read on to discover the 6 ways to reason through it.

There are times when a relationship ends and you feel relief, and then there are times when it ends before you’re ready to call it quits. Unfortunately, this is just one of those things in life that you can’t control, which is why losing someone you love is one of the hardest emotional situations to get through. If you have lost love for whatever reason, it may feel like you won’t ever be able to move forward. But knowing how to let go of someone you love is the first step towards healing.

Letting go is always easier said than done. It’s about being able to look at the relationship and feel something other than loss. Like turning any negative into a positive, if you can look at the good things and hold them dear, while still recognizing that holding on is no longer good for you, you can emotionally move on.

To find out how to let go of someone you love, you have to see the undeniable truth of the following 6 clichés

Unfortunately, even if we can’t recognize it, just because we have someone in our life doesn’t mean that they are good for us or that they’re destined to be with us. No matter what type of universe you believe in, what religion you subscribe to, or what you think the meaning of life is, to let someone go, you have to believe in your heart that everything truly does happen for a reason. I know that that’s the worst thing anyone can say to you, but there is some solid reasoning behind it.

#1 Everything happens for a reason. Have you ever had something in your life that looked disastrous but then ended up being one of the best things that’s ever happened? Like when you run out of milk in the middle of the night, so you go to the grocery store in your pajamas. What always happens? You run into someone from your past whom you haven’t seen in a while. You are instantly embarrassed and think that it was one of the worst moments in your life.

That is, until the next day, when the guy you ran into from high school calls to say that he hasn’t stopped thinking about you and was so glad to run into you out of the blue. Bad-good. Everything happens because it is supposed to. [Read: 14 things to keep in mind when you bump into your ex]

#2 If one person is unhappy, both are going to be unhappy. Relationships rarely end because both parties are really happy. In fact, there are not many times when they end with even one person being happy. If you’re in a healthy relationship, both of you need to be happy and fully committed to making it work. If you lose someone because the relationship wasn’t working, then the key to what you have to hear is that it wasn’t working!

Even if he was the hottest guy you’d ever met, treated you better than anyone ever has, or made you feel like they were the best person in the world for you, obviously they were not. You wouldn’t want to be with someone who wasn’t as in love with you as you were with them, anyway. [Read: 7 easy steps to be blissfully happy in a relationship]

#3 You can’t make someone else happy—you can only make yourself happy. This is another phrase that does nothing to help you when you’re missing someone, but if you stop and think about it rationally, it may be the very thing to get you past your loss.

The person you were with wasn’t happy with you, and they had a responsibility to make themselves happy and be honest with you about it. Being with someone who is unsettled or unhappy only drags the other person down, and that’s not how you want to spend the rest of your life. Part of knowing when and how to let go of someone you love is understanding that sometimes, your happiness does need to come first. [Read: 11 tips to fall in love with yourself and be a better you]

#4 It just wasn’t meant to be. This is one of the most aggravating clichés for sure. But the truth is that life is not fair. That is one of the hardest lessons that we learn in life, but it’s an important one.

Things happen to us that don’t seem right, but you have to believe that, at some point, all of the pieces of your puzzle will fall into place. Holding onto something that just isn’t going to work out won’t fix anything; it will only hold you back.

#5 The right person is out there for you. The truth is that there is someone out there for you who is better suited to help you make your dreams come true. But if you don’t learn how to let go of someone you love, but who isn’t right for you, you won’t be able to open your heart enough to let someone else in.

A heart can only have one love to hold in high esteem. If you’re holding onto memories, loss, or grief, you won’t ever be able to be in the here and now. This might cause you to miss out on your true love when they enter your life. You have to be open to the things around you to discover what your path is. [Read: Real soul mates: 20 signs you’ve met the love of your life]

#6 No ever speaks ill of the dead. Just like no one speaks ill of the dead, when we lose someone in our lives, no matter how we lose them, we have a tendency to paint the experience in an idealized light. Rather than remember all of the bad signs, fights, and feelings, when you lose someone whom you weren’t ready to lose, you have a tendency to only remember all the things about them that you’ll miss.

There is no perfect relationship. There will always be peaks and valleys in every relationship. If you want to move on and let someone go, then you have to see the relationship as it really was, faults and all. Otherwise, you will continually compare future relationships with an unrealistic view that will keep affirming that you can’t let them go. It is a self-perpetuating cycle. [Read: How to get your self-esteem back after a breakup]

Discovering how to let go of someone you love isn’t always easy, but it is necessary. If you try to take the emotions out of the loss and see things in rational terms, it will help you to make sense of what has really happened. It will also help you to see a path to freedom from being held in the past.