Rediscover Yourself in Unrequited Love.
In spite of being hurt and lonely in unrequited love, try to remain positive. Unrequited love can often lead to rage, bitterness and anger. These will most certainly make you a very unhappy person and not very nice to be with, either. As I have mentioned in my blog Take Time in Unrequited Love, while the person that your heart longs for day and night continues to live his or her life uninterrupted and happy, you are mired in misery and robbing yourself of joy. Not a good idea. Start consciously maintaining a positive attitude instead. Understand that you cannot control the circumstances that you face, but you can choose how you react to them. Positive experiences from a seemingly negative situation come only form a positive approach.
In this series, I am writing about ways to get over unrequited love and my next advice is to not demean yourself. It does not mean that that there is something wrong with you or you do not have good qualities, just because one person does not love you. Make a list of things that you like about yourself. Yes, I mean it! Make a list of your good qualities, any compliments that you get from people in your day-to-day life and read through the list daily. If you don’t know where to start, ask your family and friends. As I always say, the best relationship you can have is your relationship with yourself. Nurture it. Remember, you will be unable to completely love and appreciate another until you can truly appreciate and love yourself.
Stop the blame game
Do not blame yourself or another. Try to view unrequited love from a positive perspective. If you are starting a new relationship after a break-up, it should be fun. As discussed in my blog Unrequited Love and Choices, dating someone new should be fun, exciting, and enjoyable. If you can monitor and influence your own behaviour during this ‘getting to know’ phase, you have more hope of getting to know whether you and they really will work together without needing to blame anyone if it doesn’t work out. Surely, nobody marries or forms a relationship with a plan to separate or divorce. But, if things don’t go the way you had planned, don’t accuse the other and don’t look at it as a type of betrayal. It is unfair of you to project on them the inabilities and shortcomings of your parents or previous lovers. They cannot return feelings that do not exist. No matter what, don’t forget to remind yourself that there is nothing wrong with you either!
Rediscover yourself
It is easy to idealize or create an unreal fantasy about your object of desire, or become obsessed with them when you are in unrequited love. These fantasies will often take over and cause you to try to escape real life. You may also believe that that your needs and future happiness is dependent on this person alone and this person is the answer to all your dreams. If you reach this point, it is time to rediscover your own identity.
When you are madly in love, you want to change yourself to be everything that you think your beloved wants to see in a partner. But with time and conscious effort to rediscover yourself, you get into a habit of doing it for yourself. You become aware of your shortcomings and start improving to become a much better version of yourself. Once you have rediscovered yourself, you emerge as a more confident individual. You start going out with friends and having a good time, initially just to take your mind off what has happened, and later, because you discover that it makes you happy. So, it is not just stalking your love on Facebook or eating ice cream to overcome depression anymore. You realize that small things in life can often make a lot of difference.
Enjoy singlehood
Going through a breakup and getting over a relationship are the same as recovering from unrequited love. For the unrequited lover, it was a relationship throughout. If you are reading this, you are on the path to getting over the feeling. Now you need to relearn how to be happy on your own. This certainly does not mean that you do not desire relationships. As humans, we enjoy connectedness with other people, but we should also make sure that these relationships do not define you.
Be independent; be happy on your own. This will help you experience relationships with others on a much deeper level!