Unrequited Love and Unseen Possibilities.
It is natural to be envious of people who are emotionally and physically closer to your beloved than you are, in unrequited love. However, feeling jealous of the people who are more important to your spouse/partner is against the wish of the agent and refers to a most sensitive personal aspect-the loss of a very intimate lover. Hence, being jealous is more painful than being envious, where the potential loss is less personal because it does not involve losing something/someone that was yours. With reference to unrequited love, as I have discussed in my previous article, the unfortunate part is that unrequited lovers live the pain of both envy and jealousy all the time. They envy people who are dear to their beloved and they are jealous of those who are worthier of their beloved’s attention. In this respect, unrequited lovers are constant sufferers, because the situation in the compromise-sacrifice pair is the opposite: the potential loss has greater negative significance than the actual loss. While in the envy-jealousy pair, the situation is forced upon the lover through circumstances that are beyond their control and are mostly external, in the compromise-sacrifice pair, the unrequited lover chooses the circumstances.
This was about jealousy and envy. Talking about sacrifice and compromise, the actual loss sacrifice is chosen by the individual, when they believe that they can cope with the loss. Because the individual willingly makes a decision, with no further doubt about its necessity and value in case of a sacrifice, it becomes less emotionally traumatic to live with. Some lovers claim that sacrifice comes so naturally to them that sometimes they are not even aware of it. The typical emotion associated with compromise, however, is frustration. While sacrifice is often associated with sympathy and compassion, compromise is mostly a forced situation, where the person might not accept the compromise and might be constantly aware of its negative aspects. Hence, the potential loss is more emotionally painful because it involves unfinished business. The regret about missing a valuable opportunity is present typically in compromise and not in sacrifice.
It has been found that acceptance of friends and family helps unrequited lovers in handling the situation. As I have written in my article Benefits of Unrequited Love, the ‘bad phase’ of your life also 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. If neglected by friends and family, a rejected individual loses the willingness to make the efforts and sacrifices to change their behaviour according to the prescriptions of others.
An unrequited lover’s decision to make a sacrifice is taken in light of the great benefit that they see for the other person or for the relationship. Most times this sacrifice is made in vain because their love is never returned and the sacrifice is seldom appreciated or even noticed by the object of love. The greatest strength that is expressed through an individual is ‘Connection’. What you spontaneously and effortlessly connect with is what really matters in life. Connecting with an idea, with possibilities, connecting with people, and above all, connecting to the beauty that lies within you. When you start making a connection with yourself, you realise that there is much more to you than this relationship that is holding you back from discovering the actual you.
Spending day after day alone, in doubt and despair is not going to do you any good. Find reasons to be happy. Start a gratitude journal. Smell the rain. Read a good book. Know this is your choice and you are happy with it! Love is one of the greatest teachers and mysteries of life, but we become almost obsessed with cracking the code of love when the object of our love doesn’t love us back. Lovers start believing that there is something that is missing in them, which, if changed, can cause the beloved to fall in love with them. They start finding ways to carve out of the marble of their being, someone that the beloved will find irresistible. The more you change yourself, the more you will turn into a shadow of your own.