Suffering Relationships in Unrequited Love.
Unrequited love makes lovers act like an emotional pendulum, swinging back and forth between joy and discouragement, depending on the responses they receive from the object of their desire. As discussed in my blog Distraction and Fantasies in Unrequited Love, unrequited lovers will experience periods of happiness, or even euphoria, at any indication of reciprocation. Even a neutral behavior such as a simple smile or casual greeting will be cause for elation. Unfortunately, they will quickly swing to the opposite extreme at any signs of disinterest or rejection. If the beloved neglects to acknowledge the lover’s greeting or respond to their presence, the lovers will fall into despair, even depressions or physical illness.
Another important sign of one way love in the border land of unrequited love obsession is displaying relentlessness. Although there are times when a perseverant attitude is beneficial, it becomes a problem when you refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer and will not accept the other person’s decisions. You cannot control the feelings of another and you most certainly cannot make or force someone to love you. It is the ‘mate’ part of soulmate where people often fall short. If you try to forcefully form a soulmate relationship with someone, you confuse yourself and the other person by adding sex to the equation. Things eventually fall apart. The simple truth is that a soulmate relationship is formed naturally and it takes time to build because it is based on trust and complete dedication to each other. The emotional availability of our beloved is absolutely fundamental to whether this love is going to cause pain or bring happiness to us. Unrequited love can be an extremely destructive force in your life, if you allow it to be. I have written about this in my blog More About Limerence. The more time one-way lovers get to themselves, the more their imagination soars. When their thoughts linger around “possible rejection”, they start focussing more on despair; these fabricated stories sometimes also have a tragic end and leave the limerent unhappy, low on self-confidence and sometimes even suicidal. In extreme cases, unrequited love can reduce a person to a shadow of his true self.
You will know this is a problem if you keep telling yourself that the object of your affection will surely change their mind if they just get to know you better, or if they would just give you one more chance to show how special a relationship with you could be. You might even go so far as to plan your day so you can run into this person ‘by chance’ or orchestrate ‘coincidental’ meetings. In other words, your previously mentioned blindness to reality has taken over your actions, too.
The next important sign to watch out for is – your other relationships suffering, deteriorating or getting destroyed. Unrequited love can become so consuming that you begin to believe that the object of your desire is the only person of any value. Other relationships in your life become pointless and useless. Not only will you neglect other friendships, but you may also become withdrawn, preferring to escape to your fantasies rather than interact with people in your reality. In other words, your one-way love has, to some degree, become socially destructive, or at least made you socially self-destructive. As I have written in my blog 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. Hence, it was found that if humans can restrain their selfish impulses so as to follow rules and cooperate, even after being rejected in unrequited love, they can gain the immense rewards of belonging and lead a normal life. Self-regulation of an unrequited lover helps solve the primary purpose of enabling them to restrain themselves, to gain social acceptance. Moving on in life requires both effort and sacrifice, but these are normally compensated by the benefits of belonging to your social group like you did before this entire episode. That is the essential social contract.
In my next blog, I am going to discuss why one-way love happens. Sending light for a happy relationship. Please share your experiences and I will add them to my future blogs.