Being Friends in Unrequited Love.

Secretly hoping that he will love you back is a recipe for disaster.

What is Unrequited Love? Unrequited love is that horrible feeling of loving someone, without being loved back by them. Everyone knows what love is. How it feels and how important it is to maintain balance in life. But do we really know what unrequited love is? Some dictionaries describe unrequited love as something that allows only one-way movement of a lot of emotions, a feeling of being in love alone. As teenagers, all of us have fallen in love with someone who we knew for a fact was never going to love us back. Remember those butterflies in the stomach at the sight of you love object? Good old days, eh? I know you are thinking about that one special person right now and smiling. So am i!

You risk alienating the other person by acting too demanding and find yourself constantly looking for signs that the relationship is deeper than it appears, when in unrequited love. Loving someone who doesn’t return your feelings is a painful and lonely experience. Being “just friends” with an unrequited love difficult. Just to avoid heartbreak and possible humiliation down the road is a challenge and requires you to be honest with yourself.

Here are a few quick tips that I have put together for unrequited lovers to understand how to handle being in love with a friend who doesn’t reciprocate your feeling, or worse, doesn’t even know about your feeling.

Time to Call It Quits

You would be surprised to know that there are only 2% people in the world who have never experienced unrequited love. Now we know what makes it the subject of countless songs and works of literature. As all of us react to situations in a different way, some people move on rather quickly after a hopeless crush while others become obsessive. Such people start believing that they need the other person’s love to survive. I would suggest such unrequited lovers to examine their feelings honestly. Your friendship is most likely to be unhealthy for both of you if you are spending too much time thinking about your friend as a potential romantic partner even after s/he has told you they don’t feel the same way. It is time to distance yourself and move on.

Evaluation and Introspection

No matter how sure you are of your friendship with someone of the opposite gender, Love can strike at any stage of a friendship. Someone who was just a platonic friend until yesterday may become a crush tomorrow. If love strikes in such a situation, take a step back and give yourself time to think. This is probably the best thing to do if your feelings suddenly change. Hang out with other friends. If you have a close friend, share your feelings with them if you can trust them to be objective. If that friend knows both of you, even better.

Maintaining Journal

I have often talked about maintaining a journal of your feelings and what happens in your day-to day life. It helps you in reading what you have gone through, to realise what a fool you have been, when you are ready to move on. It also helps you arrive at a better idea of how you came to feel this way.

Focussing on Today

Learn to take things at face value. If you are rejected in love, so be it. If the friend wants to remain just friends, accept it and gracefully move on. The best way to stay friends with someone who doesn’t return your feelings is to prevent yourself from dwelling on future scenarios by taking things at face value. Resist the temptation to read between the lines. It will help bring yourself back to reality, so you can start enjoying the friendship on its own terms once again.

Risking Friendship

If you must, tell your friend about the new feeling. While it means risking your friendship, it will probably make you feel better. I know it sounds frightening; facing the pain of knowing your love is unreturned can be tough, but silent, secret loving could result into an unequal balance of power in the relationship and lead to resentment.

Confession is your best hope of keeping the equilibrium. Break the news in person so that you get a response and are ready for the next step.