Absolute Unrequited Love.

Unrequited love is often mentioned in the discussion of loneliness. It is a perfectly good reason for loneliness. Love is the deepest, strongest bond we can have with another person, and it is the basis of all relationships that matter.

The question arises – is love a solution to loneliness? There is no clear answer. While unrequited lovers are most definitely lonely, even individuals in a relationship can be lonely at times, or, in some cases, all the time. Love absolutely brings people together. It can be hard to tell where you end and they begin, and you both like it that way. When someone who was a stranger becomes a lover, in our eyes he or she becomes infused with an almost surreal importance.

You could fall in love with someone who’s not available. You could love someone passionately for a short period of time and then watch the relationship fizzle for reasons you don’t fully understand. You could fall in love with someone who’s completely inappropriate for you. You could love someone who doesn’t love you back. So, the majestic, heightened state of love also has a flip side, and we are all familiar with it: Love is volatile.

Not just romantic love or unrequited love, but most forms and kinds of love are largely outside of our understanding. We can love people after they die. We can love someone before he’s even born, expectant parents will attest to this fact. Whom we love, when, where, how, and why we love, is largely outside our control. Love is a feeling that cannot be clearly defined or understood, so the notion that love is a reliable solution to loneliness is a myth.

While we cannot completely understand love, but we can always find ways to create closeness. What can generate closeness between people and what cannot, is a matter of common understanding, but the same cannot be said about love or about unrequited love. Given the right circumstances, love certainly reduces loneliness. But in unfavourable conditions like unrequited or one-way love, it also increases loneliness.

Unlike love, closeness does wonders in reducing loneliness. If you do certain tangible things with a receptive partner, you will see tangible results. Closeness is useful in a way that love is not. The more effort you put into creating closeness, the more you will get out of loneliness. But remember to not make it look or feel desperate. You don’t have to be lonely just because you are not in love.

In our culture, marriage is seen as the ultimate expression of committed love, and most who commit to marriage expect that the love that brought them together will last a lifetime. If you are in love, closeness makes that love that much more stable and reliable. An overwhelming majority of people who get married, at least in Western developed countries, say that they do it for love. Even the relationships that are most filled with love will fall apart without closeness. While marriage is all about love, divorce is all about distance. Love really needs closeness in a way that closeness doesn’t need love. Closeness is the foundation for all satisfying and long-lasting relationships.

That said, marriages are still a great opportunity to create closeness because they are an explicit commitment. In this way, marriage has a great advantage over other kinds of romantic relationships. In a marriage, you expressly choose a partner and they choose you back. This creates a perfect environment for conscious choosing and deliberateness, which is very conducive of creating closeness.

Relationships take time to mature. The taste of a mature relationship is like fine wine; pure bliss and gratitude. You become one, merge with each other. If the other person is not in love with you anymore, or never was, you are actually wasting your time in trying to form a bond. In this situation, you need to accept the fact and move on. As I have written in my article Equilibrium, you don’t want to be an unrequited lover and hang on for no reason! This is not a soulmate in who’s eyes you will find yourself. A romantic relationship is a mirror, body and soul. When experiencing the other, we experience ourselves.

Let yourself be loved and let yourself find closeness in someone who is willing to reciprocate.