Unrequited Love Rediscovered.
I have heard people discuss – can unrequited, unreturned love work? Does it have the capacity to last for a lifetime? You will be surprised to know how many lovers have spent a lifetime loving and only loving one person, alone! Although love is a matter of the heart, a lot of it is controlled by the activities of the brain. The brain decides if that one person is worth it, the heart just follows. I personally do not understand how a person could happily just keep giving love and never complain about not being loved back. I do not understand how this feeling keeps growing without a response from the love object! For me, love is love only when it is mutual. When we are loved back, when there is oneness, desire, respect and fulfilment.
However, there is no denying the fact that there are many one way relationships. Where the lovers continue to believe that the object of love will one day come to see the good in them. Their love will be understood and returned. This belief keeps them going, and that hope, somehow, keeps working as the source of energy for the unrequited lover.
It is also true that some unrequited lovers are quite satisfactorily alone! When I talked to some of them, I found that their content lay in selfless giving. One of them even told me that he grew up loving one girl, but with time he understood that she is never going to love him back. Even after having understood this, his heart did not desire another love, because his eyes could not see anyone else worth loving. He continues to love her even today. It brings him joy to see her happy.
Have you ever seen couples who appear to be so in love with each other that you can’t tell they are two individuals? Do you often also see couples who appear to be distant to the point that you wonder why they are together?
All humans identify with each other in various ways. Some individuals are extremely independent even when in a relationship, others are needy, and some are interdependent.
The most beneficial way for two people to connect with each other is to be genuinely interdependent. This is when two strong, independent individuals depend upon each other, yet sustain their individuality. They share a well-balanced relationship of togetherness and healthy dependence, without sacrificing or compromising on their own values. Unfortunately, this kind of relationships are rare to find, but, with some understanding and awareness, it is not impossible to achieve.
Unrequited love is that horrible feeling of loving someone, without being loved back by them. As teenagers, all of us have fallen in love with someone who we knew for a fact was never going to love us back. Remember those butterflies in the stomach at the sight of you love object? Good old days, eh? I know you are thinking about that one special person right now and smiling. So am i!
If you are reading this blog, you are likely an unrequited lover, wondering what is it that you’re doing wrong in the relationship. First I want you to understand that it’s not just you! In my blog Ways to Handle Unrequited Love, I have written about how it is going to help you to sit and think about how it happened. Everything. How did you start falling for a person who you (probably) knew will not reciprocate your feeling? And if you did not know that you will be rejected, how did you misjudge the situation. What did you miss? See if you can find a pattern in your behaviour. Any kind of pattern – do you tend to fall in love with someone who doesn’t love you back? Do you like to be seen as a selfless lover, always giving and never demanding? Do you subconsciously set unachievable targets in matters of the heart?
Love cannot be demanded. It can only be willingly committed. In my future blogs I am going to write about some famous and some not-so-famous unrequited love stories. Do keep coming back for the stories, and don’t forget to leave your comments and I will add them in my future blogs.