Unrequited Love Will Change.
All of us have been in love at least once in a lifetime. Remember how great it felt when you first fell in love? The bliss with which you processed every new discovery in your relationship, how happy you were to have found your special someone! You just knew you’d found the right person and began dreaming of having fun and growing old together, getting married. You were certain that the feelings would last forever. But they didn’t.
With time, all of us realise that the “happily ever after” exists only in movies. In many ways, it can be disappointing to see the wonderful, euphoric feeling of first love wear off. At that point you may even begin questioning the choice you made or the choice you did not make. Scholars explain that an average couple takes two years to come down off the high of new love and reach to a point where one of them turns to an unrequited lover or starts feeling like his love is unreturned. Now, the funny thing is, although the reality may be disappointing, we have to be thankful to have come down off the high, because if we didn’t, we’d have to close down business, church, education or anything else that’s important, because you can’t concentrate on anything else when you’re in love!
It is the law of nature, everyone eventually comes down off the romantic high of love. The euphoric feelings dissipate. When this happens, couples find reality of their differences emerging. Now this is when lovers often decide to hunker down and work on their marriage/relationship. Unfortunately, a decade or two down the road, we start feeling that we’ve had enough, if the real work isn’t being done over time. Couples end up just enduring their relationship rather than working on it, and eventually, it just crumbles down.
My advice to all the unrequited lovers is to anticipate the end of euphoric feelings. It doesn’t mean that you’ll lose all emotional feeling for each other, but you’ll need to work toward a deeper sense of emotional love in your relationship. Realize that it’s inevitably going to happen. Society’s message that happiness trumps everything else trips up many young couples who come to realize they won’t necessarily feel happy forever. We see countless couples drift apart around us, without understanding that love is more of a choice than a feeling. It’s a choice to look out for the interest of the other person. It’s the choice to be willing to sacrifice for their benefit; to recognize that while there is an emotional aspect of love, love is basically a promise to stand by each other, no matter what!
Also important to understand is that a one-way love lacks interdependence, and hence lacks the understanding of the aforementioned feeling. Therefore, it is most likely to succumb to loneliness and rejection. Even drifting into extramarital relationships that promise the thrill of new love does not bring respite. If you’re considering getting out of your marriage or if you’re already involved in another relationship, know that eventually, you will be stuck between two relationships, emotionally and psychologically. Someone will be left alone; someone will be hurt and lonely.
Because it’s a choice and not simply an emotion, it is possible to love a person we don’t even like. And when you do, and particularly if you show that love in the language that really communicates to them, you’re touching them at the deepest point because you’re speaking love and you’re speaking in a language that they understand. When you are willing to take steps to change your current situation, change typically takes place — there is hope.
A person needs to grow in life. Constant growth is the way to live. If a situation or a relationship is binding you so strongly that it is not letting you grow, even emotionally, it is time to move on! Use this experience as an opportunity for change and self-growth. As discussed in my blog Timeless Unrequited Love, it may hurt now, but nothing is a waste of time if you can use what you have learned, to create a better future! Like the author James Matthew Barrie had said- Let no one who loves be called unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.