Hopeless Unrequited Love.
While it is always easier to give advice than take it, it is equally difficult to see the red flags in unrequited love while we are really quick at locating them in other people’s lives and telling them “I told you so”.
This is why we often find ourselves in unrequited love or sinking relationships, with no understanding of how we reached there. It usually starts with a nice romantic relationship, gradually losing the sheen and turning to something you never wanted it to be. By the time you realise something is wrong, it gets so bad, you find it difficult to handle it right and you cannot afford to lose it either, because you are hopelessly in love. There certainly must be some warning signs? What do we miss that could’ve warned us?
Isolation
When the relationship begins, all you want to do is to be with that one person. There are times when you don’t even want to meet family and friends and are often found lost in each other. With time, all of this changes and that’s how it should be. However, if one of you wants or expects this to continue perpetually, this is a red flag.
Your family and friends play an important role in maintaining emotional balance. In my blog “Benefits of Unrequited Love” I have written about how the ‘bad phase’ of your life gives your friends and family a chance to show you how much they care. While they’re trying everything to get you out of the mess, your relationships with each of them are growing stronger. All of us (your partner included), at some point need to meet people, go out, socialize, in order to feel alive. If you find yourself constantly trying to keep your partner tied up, with no or little contact with the world outside, it should ring the alarm. Even if it doesn’t feel strange in the beginning, remember, this is the start of obsessive behaviour. You are trying to control the relationship. You want to strip your partner of their support system to make them easily controllable. If you are in a healthy relationship you should let your partner have a fulfilling and happy social circle!
Financial Dependence
One mistake that unrequited lovers often do is to make their partners totally dependent on them financially. This makes them feel that the partner will not be able to go away for the lack of finances. They also sometimes gain confidence from becoming the decision maker. By restricting your partner from pursuing a career or making financial decisions, you are not only making them unhappier in the relationship, you are increasing your chances of having your love reciprocated. You are making them feel less confident about themselves and this is only going to further destroy the equilibrium that a relationship should have.
A good relationship is where both partners feel the support of being pushed to achieve their best, yet being loved for what they are. Let your partner make decisions about career and expenses. Let them feel important in the relationship. Praise and encouragement can work better than power and controlling.
Hurtful Jokes
A lot of us resort to sarcasm when we are hurt. While this is natural human behaviour, if you find your partner complaining about your hurtful teasing, consider this an alarm. Unrequited lovers often feel hurt for things that the partner doesn’t even intend to do. They derive (mostly unreasonable) inferences from actions of their partner. When they are not able to handle the rejection, they start emotional abuse, by being sarcastic or through hurtful teasing. We all know that sometimes what we are trying to say as a joke doesn’t come out that way, but if you have often had to tell you partner “it wasn’t meant to be personal”, you are certainly using a poor excuse. You are only (maybe subconsciously) trying to control the partner by showing them down; first for misunderstanding you and for the wrong reaction.
All of the above examples have one goal in common: establishing control. Such relationships are not worth staying in. Two individuals must have a say in how things turn out rather than one partner holdings all the power. If there is any chance for your relationship to last, it is going to be through constantly maintained equilibrium.
Feel a connection between yourself and the blog? Please write your experiences in the comments section and I will add them in my future blogs.