Aspects of Unrequited Love.
People who believe the world to be entirely physical and that every event has a prior physical cause, also called ‘physical determinists’ consider unrequited love to be an explicable extension of the chemical-biological constituents of the human race in general. In this perspective, it may be said that geneticists invoke the theory of genes forming the determining criteria in an individual’s sexual or romantic choices, especially in choosing a mate.
Those who consider love to be an aesthetic response would hold that love is knowable through the emotional and conscious feeling it provokes yet which cannot perhaps be captured in rational or descriptive language. As discussed in my post Unrequited Love and Sex in Perspective, products of the reproductive system are the seventh dhatu or bodily tissue. The reproductive tissue is the cream of all the body’s metabolic efforts and hence, the sperm and ovum are considered the end result of the metabolism of the preceding six tissues. If the quality of the reproductive tissue is pure, then the greatest miracle of the body can be performed. The miracle of creating a child. A strong desire to intimate with another person physically and emotionally, when unreturned, becomes unrequited love.
Some may hold that unrequited love is nothing but a physical response to another whom the agent feels physically attracted. However, in general, unrequited love has been seen to encompass a broad range of behavior including caring, listening, attending to, preferring to others, and so on. So, basically, physical determinists reduce all examinations of love to the simple sexual instinct that is shared with all complex living entities, the physical motivation of the sexual impulse, which may, in humans, be directed consciously, subconsciously or pre-rationally toward a potential mate or object of sexual gratification.
Behaviorism is a term that comes from the theory of the mind, entails that unrequited love is observable to oneself and others as a series of actions and preferences. The behaviorist theory that love is observable through the behaviour of an unrequited lover, in spite of constraints corresponding to a lover’s acts. This goes to suggest that it is theoretically quantifiable, for example, by noticing how an individual acts in front of the object of love as compared with how s/he behaves in the absence of the object of love or with other people.
There is however, one problem with the behaviorist vision of love. A person’s actions need not always express their inner state or emotions. Hence, this vision is susceptible to poignant. An unrequited lover may be good at hiding his emotions. Some radical behaviourists claim that observable and unobservable behavior such as mental states can be examined from the behaviorist framework, in terms of the laws of conditioning. On this view, that one falls in love may go unrecognised by the casual observer, but the act of being in love can be examined by what events or conditions led to the agent’s believing she was in love: this may include the theory that being in love is an overtly strong reaction to a set of highly positive conditions in the behavior or presence of another.
The spiritualist vision of love incorporates mystical as well as traditional romantic notions of love, but rejects the behaviorist or physicalist explanations.
Expressionist love is similar to behaviorism in that love is considered an expression of a state of affairs towards a beloved, which may be communicated through language (words, poetry, music) or behavior (bringing flowers, giving up a kidney, diving into the proverbial burning building), but which is a reflection of an internal, emotional state, rather than an exhibition of physical responses to stimuli. Others in this vein may claim love to be a spiritual response, the recognition of a soul that completes one’s own soul, or complements or augments it.
As romantic as it may sound to love someone with your heart and soul, even if they don’t love you back, it is not easy. It is really painful to long for someone who does not feel the same way about you. While there is not much we can do about how the other person feels, there certainly are a few things we can do to save ourselves the unbearable pain.