Pedigree of Unrequited Love.
Unrequited love – sounds kind of old-fashioned, doesn’t it? It conjures up scenes of 18th-century folk wandering around misty moors, composing poetry, passionately yearning for the merest glimpse of their beloved. Infatuation, longing, and love can be agonizing when they remain unreciprocated; when the focus of your love sees you as ‘just a friend’ or not even that. Unrequited love can hurt like hell. As discussed in my blog Ways to Handle Unrequited Love, as romantic as it may sound to love someone with your heart and soul, knowing that it is never going to be reciprocated, the truth is: it hurts. It hurts so much that is becomes unbearable. When your heart is breaking inside with the feeling of rejection, or to see your beloved fall in love with someone else, the pain is almost physical. It is not that your heart is actually breaking inside your chest but it feels like it is crushed and bleeding. Every bit of your body aches with an inexplicable real pain.
Unrequited love’s pedigree
The concept of unrequited love may sound out of date. But, as evidenced by the huge number of people searching the term online, human concerns haven’t really changed all that much since good old Will Shakespeare purportedly wrote “Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares.”
Most of us experience the pangs of unreturned affection at some point in our lives. But for some folks, unrequited love becomes obsessive; they come to feel that they can become complete and fulfilled only through union with the object of their longings. The danger is that they come to feel so without that union, their life loses all meaning. And when meaning drains from life, they become depressed. Here are some of the common symptoms:
Unrequited love is seriously distracting! A lover’s thoughts continually turn to the beloved; every song reminds them of just one person. They fantasize about togetherness. Sometimes waking up dreaming about the object of love. It’s an ache that literally hurts. In the hours and days after seeing their beloved, the unrequited lovers can’t eat, sleep, or concentrate on work! Most of the times it’s not just infatuation; it’s real love!
Unrequited love can lead to listlessness, anxiety, disturbed sleep and depression. Lovers start believing that there is something that is missing in them, which, if changed, can cause the beloved to fall in love with them. they start finding ways to carve out of the marble of their being, someone that the beloved will find irresistible. I have discussed this in detail in my blog Learn from Unrequited Love. The more you change yourself, the more you will turn into a shadow of your own. In all honesty, unrequited love actually has nothing to do with the other person at all. It is your mind that makes them special, like no one else. It turns them to an idol, an object of worship. Because of the very nature of unrequited love, the object of your love never becomes a part of your real life, hence you never bring them down from the pedestal and know who they truly are. The great philosopher Charlie Brown had very beautifully said “Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” And that’s very germane. Unrequited love can feel overwhelming and spoil many of life’s enjoyments; making all contact, other than with the beloved, seem pointless.
As with all emotional distress, there are things you can do to lessen and even stop the pain. Accept that they are just not into you. This might help you in moving on quicker than you’d thought possible. There’s a massive amount to be said for resilience and determination, but as with anything, context is vital. There is also much to commend flexibility and the capacity to exercise the knowledge of when to ‘cut your losses’. Love is romantic; those moments of utter connection and transcendental sympathy with another person, almost as if nature wants us to experience a merging of two into one as a kind of universal blueprint and preparation for a more spiritual fulfilment.
Everything has to have practical basis. We are brainwashed by romantic fiction to believe that enough determination will awaken within others what they don’t know themselves. And if we only try hard enough, we’ll get our guy or girl – it works in romantic fiction, right?
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