如何隐藏Eloquent模型上的关系

Question

I'm struggling with an Eloquent dummy issue. I have a model User which has a many to many relation with a model Like.

I'm getting my user model by its id with:

$likedUser = User::findorfail($user_id);

At some point in the code, I'm doing:

if ($likedUser->likes->where(...)->count()) {
...
}

Then, I want to return my $likedUser WITHOUT the likes (added in the IF condition above by Laravel). How can I do that? If I do that, it does not work:

 return response()->json([
      'is_matched' => $isMatched,
      'liked_user' => $likedUser,
 ], 200);

I would love to have a $likedUser->without('likes') to remove the relation added by Laravel. I tried to $outputUser = $likedUser->replicate() but the unique field of my models disappears..

1) What's the elegant way of only returning my User model without its relationship?

2) Why is Laravel adding the relation even if I never set my variable but only use it in a IF?

Thanks a lot for your time guys!