Recently, antenna selection diversity has been widely used for hand-held phones to overcome a fading problem. A monopole antenna (MPA) and an inverted-F antenna (IFA) are the typical antennas used for this purpose. However, strong mutual coupling generally appears between these two antennas and often makes the diversity antenna design difficult. In particular, in the case that the MPA is unselected antenna the mutual coupling can be minimized using the open terminating impedance. On the other hand, in the case that the IFA is unselected antenna the terminating impedance, which can minimize the mutual coupling, has not been clarified. This paper presents a novel analytical method for optimizing the terminating impedance of the IFA. The method exploits the Z-matrix, and the final expression of the terminating impedance is expressed by self- and mutual-impedance. The numerical and experimental results confirm that the proposed optimization method is effective for minimizing the mutual coupling.