Separation, Rejection and Unrequited Love
Rejection has a grievous impact on behaviour, sure enough. But the emotion rarely shows! Often rejection fails to bring out immediate emotional reaction. Why is that so? Social exclusion does affect us, but these effects do not depend on emotional distress. This has been rather shocking and has led us to question the purpose of emotion and its relationship to behaviour. However, in case of unrequited love, despite the fact that it is connected with tension and anxiety, this state, mixed with hope of reciprocity leads the unrequited lover to feel extreme happiness to the level of euphoria. As I have written in my article Unrequited Love and Cocaine, this reaction is similar to the effect of cocaine. Like cocaine, love increases the levels of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine in the body. Because dopamine is associated with pleasure and causes the brain to think about pleasurable moments, narcotic drugs like cocaine increase the brain’s levels of dopamine and cause addiction. This scientifically explains why unrequited lovers are addicted to the object of love.
Paranormal interference in relationships sometimes comes in the form of a definite entity, like an extra-marital affair, where the third person sweeps your partner off his/her feet and compels them to cheat. I have written about this in detail in my article Paranormal Interference in Unrequited Love. The presence of this form is witnessed by one or both partners and leads the relationship to the point of no return, forming a base for unrequited love. You find yourself doing things you have never done before with other partners. You start taking risks that is not normal for your character. In all of this, you keep pushing away the inner red-flag voice, because all you want to do is to follow your heart. 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”. Separation is a painful experience. Whether it is the separation of two lovers, or a separation between a husband and a wife. A permanent separation often leaves one of the partners in unrequited love. A separation from dearly held belief of love and togetherness is difficult to handle.
When the roller coaster drama begins, your life turns upside down. Initially, your beloved makes you feel on top of the world, cherished, desired, important. As though a divine script were being written, events seem to unfold magically, piercing through the walls of your lonely heart. Some blissful high envelopes you. Yet, unfortunately, it doesn’t last. At some point, something happens, you wonder why you begin to feel a little drained where you once felt excitement and passion. As I have written in my blog Why Unrequited Love, at the point when your feelings in a relationship are not shared, the outcome can be excruciating for both of you, particularly for the person who is more dedicated to the relationship. Unrequited love — the most common topic for novels and movies, is one of the worst situations to be in. Simply knowing that your relationship falls under this category is all that is needed to make you take some difficult decisions in life. Mostly, it is the decision to stay in the relationship that is important only to the unrequited lover, but at times, it is the decision to walk out.
While studying the large behavioural effects of rejection, psychologists found that rejected people became more aggressive toward others. Child psychologists have observed that violent, aggressive, kids are often outcasts. However, it is also true that aggressiveness leads to rejection. As I have written in my article Psychology of Rejection in Unrequited Love, we are fundamentally social to the extent that other animals cannot imagine. Animals generally learn about their world with the use of their five senses. Humans learn about the world from each other. Social connection is the blood and breath of human life, and rejection strikes at its very core. Therefore, being aggressive after rejection sounds like a natural reaction, based on the study that aggression in rejected unrequited lovers was limited to attacking the people who rejected them.
In my future posts, I am going to write more about rejection in unrequited love. Please share your opinion in the comments section. This is a research blog and your experiences will add value to it.