Reminiscing Unrequited Love.
In my previous post Unrequited Lovers Falling Upward, I have discussed that while rejecters of unrequited love don’t necessarily have uniformly unpleasant experiences during the entire episode with an unsolicited lover, even if romantic attention from a lover was seen as unattractive or undesirable, most declared themselves flattered by such confessions, at least initially. As a result, rejecters have been reported to get more positive boosts to self-esteem than the rejected lovers.
Not surprisingly, unrequited lovers made more specific references than rejecters to the loss of a (possible) relationship. As discussed in my previous post, unrequited lovers remember their beloved even long after everything is over, and imagine ways in which the situation could have been different. On the other hand, out of the few rejecters who made references to the loss of a relationship, spoke about a ruined friendship. Some even felt that they were attempting a delicate balancing act in hope of discouraging the romantic affection of their lover, as well as trying to retain the friendly affection. They confess that they were well aware of the fact that they could not hold on to it indefinitely, and the persistence at romantic efforts by the lover was rather upsetting because of the friendship that was being ruined because of the change in one person’s feelings. However, even the loss of friendship for them was not nearly as tragic as the broken dreams of togetherness of the unrequited lovers.
Most unrequited lovers think about the painful experience from the past as part and parcel of early life experience. They generally tend to look back on their experiences relatively positively and even with fond memories, warmth and some residual love. A few of them, however, find it impossible to cope with the loneliness, grief and desolation which are invariable components of unrequited love. As I have written in my blog Addicted to Grief, although emotional pain is different from physical pain, a break-up or rejection literally crushes your heart in a way that you feel it breaking inside your chest like it was physically happening. Then again you are angry at yourself for being in that situation and resort to destructive means, like smoking, drinking and in extreme cases, even attempt to commit suicide. Some unrequited lovers see just one, tragically final way of escaping the ordeal – suicide.
Researchers say that suicide happens when we lose what we need the most. While we all need to love and to be loved in return, an unrequited lover feels that he has lost everything that made his life worthwhile. Sometimes, when one person is gone, the whole world seems depopulated. Love that is offered but not reciprocated, sometimes ends in a tidal wave of frustration, when sheer intensity of love is not enough to conquer their beloved’s heart. A lover’s life suddenly becomes so barren that its emptiness becomes unbearable and leads the lover to end his life. Some lovers bear such love for another person that they feel like nothing is left in life after having faced rejection too painful to be endured. They reach a pitch of despair exemplified by Narcissus in Metamorphoses “I have no quarrel with death, for in death I shall forget my pain.”
It has been said that problematic relationships are the cause of most suicides and suicide attempts in both adolescents and adults. Adolescents and young adults often attempt to commit suicide over unrequited love. A nineteen-year-old girl once said that she’d jump off Beachy Head if her boyfriend ever left her—he did and she did!
Samaritans claim that unrequited love is the cause of 74 percent of adult and adolescent suicide attempts. Surprisingly, an increasing number of them are made by men. Looks like loving hard carries the risk of falling hard for the gender. They say that a sobering link between love sickness and depression is suicide. Rejected lovers with a diagnosis of depression are at high risk; however, those individuals who are already depressed and then face a break up seem to be particularly vulnerable.
Suicide statistics for young men and women suggest that those ancient physicians who considered love sickness a potentially fatal illness were right. In my next blog I am going to write in detail about young men and women attempting to commit suicide in unrequited love. Please share your opinion in the comments section and I will try to add it in my future blogs.