Future Relationships and Unrequited Love.

You’ve met someone new or suddenly the feeling is different for an age-old friend. You click instantly or the friendships feels like it’s growing to a different feeling. You start spending a lot of time together and quickly your friendship leaves you wondering how you could you not have romantic interest in this person until now. It’s a different bond and relationship than the one with your significant other. You’re not planning your lives together, dealing with finances, or figuring out living arrangements. It’s all about supporting each other while navigating these issues.

Call it a kindred spirit, a friend crush, but if you’re experiencing any of the following, you might be in a friend love:

You text each other ferociously and constantly. Your previous message has not even been replied to yet, and another message pops up and you are lost in picturing your friend’s reaction. When something funny happens, you tell your significant other first, then have a reflex reaction to grab your phone and share it with your friend. Your texting continues even when you are at work or late in the night. You should be sleeping or spending time with your significant other, but your friend just sent you a funny message and you are lost in enjoying the moment.

Some experts claim that your first love sets the foundation for future relationships. If that first love was a parent who was unable to meet your emotional or physical needs, or was absent and disconnected, then you will continue to be attracted to unavailable people, even in adulthood. Having experienced unavailable parents may lead to a pattern of pursuing unavailable lovers. Knowing what may be wrong can help us all understand more how to find what is right. Most people have experienced unrequited love at some point in their lives. Those strong feelings that you feel for someone, you want them, you need them, you cannot live without them, but unfortunately, they do not feel the same way. Understand that you are in unrequited love. Whether it is a high school crush, admiration for a coworker, or new feelings for a close friend, unrequited love often dies because most of us realize that we will likely not get the results we want, so we move on. Only, sometimes we don’t.

When you have a new friend, or you suddenly find your feelings for an old friend change in an inexplicable way, the new partner is happy to listen to you vent. You find yourself calling them for every small and big matter. To complain to them about everything; from your inability to fit into your favourite pair of jeans, to the annoying thing your significant other did and the rude, hygienically-challenged person who sat next to you on the subway and clipped their toenails during the morning commute.

You find yourself participating in your friend’s spontaneous plans to do nothing. Your friend is so enthusiastic about a trip to nowhere, you can’t help but feel enthused as well. This kind of connection is referred to as Philia. Unlike the desiring and passionate yearning of Eros, philia entails a fondness and appreciation of the other. This is found mostly in a mature, interdependent relationship. According to the Greeks, the term philia incorporates not just friendship, but also loyalties to family and one’s job, discipline or political community. Philia is motivated for the sake of both the people in love and for the sake of each other’s benefit. The friendship is wholly useful and the motivational distinctions are derived from love for another as in the case of business contacts, or because their character and values are pleasing. It is noteworthy that philia will change if those attractive habits change, causing a loss of friendship. Regardless of the other person’ s feelings in the relationship, if the basic character changes, love changes in philia.

You become invested in your friend’s family and know their parents, siblings and friends by name and personality. If one of these people does something to upset your friend, you find yourself becoming upset as well.

While this kind of feelings are completely normal to have, if you are emotionally capable of handling them without ignoring your more important relationships, if they get out of hand, they can become a major cause of unrequited love. In my next post, I am going to discuss more about this ‘friend love’ feeling. Keep checking back!