2 days ago
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How can we accept that what feels like overwhelming love for someone is unrequited, and how can we get over it? HH, Suffolk, by email
Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to [email protected]. A selection will be published next Sunday.
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Readers reply
True love is not transactional. If we only “love” on the expectation of being loved back, then it is not love, it is bartering.
Love is unconditional. I love you, and that is all and everything. You do not need to do anything. You do not need to reciprocate. You do not even need to know. Violet_Femme
I’d say the unrequited version is easier to deal with than the semi-requited version. If somebody makes it plain that they don’t find you appealing, it’s relatively easy to get over, especially if you avoid situations where they’re likely to be.
Much more difficult, going on my younger days, is when they do see something attractive about you, things go on for a month or whatever and then that attraction, as far as they’re concerned, dissipates. PeteTheBeat
I suffered as a teenager from unrequited love. I was able to move on by learning to love wisely a person who loved me back. When I did this, it was surprising to find that the objects of my unrequited love turned round and came after me. I was able to see them clearly then, and turn away. Teresa Rodrigues, by email
Somebody – I think it might have been a French surrealist – said “I love you. What has that to do with you?”
Who I love is my problem. Nobdy else, not even the object of my affections, is under any obligation to respond, or even care. You can’t always get what you want – I know who sang that – and it’s part of the general proposition that you will have learned from childhood to deal with disappointment, whether it’s a Labubu or world peace that you didn’t get. jno50
You can grow attached to an unrequited love object as a response to psychological trauma. It could take many years of therapy and life experience to be able to “see” the deeper patterns that can shape the intense feelings of unrequited love. Debra from Massachusetts, by email
To get over it, I reduce contact with the person and get on with my life through hobbies, travel or exercise. Eventually time gets me through it all, and I’ll have improved myself for the next individual that actually is interested in me. Neutra
How can we learn from unrequited love? By understanding that its very unrequitedness is an empty space on which our brilliant minds paint ideals and desires that seem to be lustrous and real. PingPonger
It is a terrible feeling, unrequited love. I think we can learn a lot from it about what we idealise and project on to other people, and what we are missing in ourselves. Usually the object of our love represents things to us that we wish we had, or wish we were, or feel could somehow make us better people.
Sometimes people also develop love objects paradoxically to avoid having to actually love someone. If you are yearning for a distant perfect someone, that stops you having messy, real relationships with other people now. It can be a protective mechanism. I think it works well in a way, but it is also ultimately maladaptive. It’s better to get into bed with someone else and have fun with a person you actually can build something with, rather than dreaming of the unobtainable as a way of avoiding stuff.
I would also always ask someone in this situation: why do you want to have a relationship with someone who doesn’t want one with you? By definition, that can’t be a good relationship. MiffledKitty
Avoidant coping mechanism that has always worked for me: if someone doesn’t love me, I don’t love them, either. It’s like a switch gets turned off. Super handy. VeeLine
We love, and we often hope to be loved in return, but if we need love in return, then we do not love. AliceUnderground
The way I see it, Britain has an endless supply of Rodneys, but they always end up with Del Boy. You can always wait for the next one – it’s basically an assembly line. Backsideflip
Remember it’s just between you and them, not a universal rejection. Someone I had unrequited feelings for was completely focused on someone else and while painful it helped to think of it as them pursuing that person rather than rejecting me. Taizy85
Hope isn’t helpful, hope that somehow, some day your love will be returned. And you can’t try to be friends as despite yourself you’ll probably still love and look for signs it’s returned by the object of your love. Cut them out of your life but with a kindly goodbye, and accept you will grieve the loss. Little by little it will get better as you take determined, conscious steps to forge a life away from them. Include self-care, new activities. A cliche, but be kind to yourself. Don’t look back! Seuteurs
Get a dog! Preferably a rescue one. Cherish it, engage with it, share your life with it. In return it will love you unconditionally and, when the two of you go for walks, you will almost inevitably find yourself encountering and talking with other dog owners. And, perhaps, if your dog bonds with theirs, you may find yourself in a human-human relationship without realising it is happening. XerxesCork
I’ve been trying for a few years to get over a friend I fell hard for! It went from a budding friendship to me realising I was starting to have feelings, thinking it was mutual and then confessing them to her, only to be rejected in a very painful way.
I’ve brought it up with my therapist many times, as well as talking it out with friends. A few things that stuck with me and have really helped me make progress were: I deserve someone who is enthusiastic about me and chooses me, because that’s the only relationship worth having. You shouldn’t have to convince someone.
Another thing, I started to think practically about what they’d actually be like as a partner. I realised they’d be a terrible partner – for me, at least. I loved them as a friend but I knew in my gut that they’d break my heart if we ever did end up together.
Sometimes you just fall for someone for a multitude of reasons which can’t be easily explained. And there’s a certain type of grief there in letting go of the idea of you two together, accepting the end of a fantasy you build in your head and the reality that it will never happen Sara633
Unrequited love teaches us that love is a force that is unnameable, uncontrollable, and fundamentally selfless. When we love another, even when that person doesn’t love us back, it reveals our limitless capacity to love another. Even when unrequited love is painful, it is a blessing that shows us the depths of our hearts. We can accept that love is unrequited by loving someone fully, in all of their faults and foibles, and finding a way to understand that person just isn’t meant for you. Yale Coopersmith, New York, by email
As a queer person with an unlucky track record of falling in love with straight friends, I’ve had to face and overcome this feeling many times. But, what I have learned the most over the years is that though you may not be able to be as close with that person as your heart desires, this predicament can teach you about the qualities and characteristics that you admire in someone, leading you towards more (available) people to date or to explore in yourself. Katy B, by email
You need to remember that there are other people out there who will recognise you, and your immense worth, fully and completely. You deserve nothing less. Syndathim
Like drugs and alcohol unrequited love is similar to addiction. The imaginary conversations with the object of your desire and the analysis over every interaction, no matter how small, helps the addiction grow. Eventually it consumes our every waking moment and we can think of nothing else.
It is essential to see it for what it is and cut yourself off from the source. Expect it to be painful. Eventually you’ll find someone who reciprocates your feelings. Jenny Parry, by email
Be pleased that you acknowledge it “feels like” overwhelming love, not that it is overwhelming love. It’s not clear how easy it is for you to remove this person from your orbit; if they are a work colleague, unless you really love your job, it is worth moving. It may be that the unrequited love is boredom in your current role, which you distract yourself from by fantasising about a colleague. If you have them on any social media and can reasonably do so, block them.
If you can’t remove them from your orbit, start new hobbies or nurture new social groups. Make sure that you are not doing so in order to meet a new person that you can feel unrequited love for, but so that you can follow your own interests and the object of your affection decreases in importance. Bob500
It takes time. A lot of time – over 15 years in my case. Probably not the answer you want to read – sometimes life can be very unkind. EnglishroG
If possible, move away from the subject of your desire. And as others have pointed out get busy in a life of your own making that brings joys of other kind. Most of us have been there and got out the other side. You will too. SMeerZad
Try reading I Need Your Love – Is That True? by Byron Katie. It could help you.
I once had someone I felt a deep love and connection to, almost telepathic. It never became anything. For a long time I did not have a relationship, because I used him as the bar people had to cross. I decided to let it go.
He moved to the US and got married. I heard he was happy. And you know, in the end that is all you really want for someone you love, that they are happy and fulfilled. Even when you yourself are not the cause or reason for that happiness. Simother
Sometimes a charming manner to all can be misconstrued as flirting to a lonely or needy person, the love not requited at all. That fantasy of requited loved can become more dangerous for the accused flirt, who may be called a tease or worse, and lead from melancholy to anger to attack due to rejection, when the attention becomes so abnormal or burdensome that a direct approach becomes necessary.
What feels like “overwhelming love” for one person may feel like stalking to another. When someone experiences overwhelming “love” for another, who cannot love them back in the manner sought, that person should leave the “object” of their desire alone and move on. How they cope with frustration depends upon the person.
To immensely enjoy the company of another, without feeling the need for possession is a healthy love, supporting the dreams and goals of each other. LupaVieja
Rip that plaster right off. Quick as you can. No contact until you’re not bothered either way. Socialise, exercise, eat well. MediumSam
“You lose your love / When you say the word ‘mine’” [From Love Is a Rose by Neil Young]. Wise words, seldom heeded (at least not by me).
And Buzzcocks’ You Say You Don’t Love Me is a beautifully pragmatic take on the subject (and the figurative flipside to their best-known hit). EddieChorepost
Or Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me. AberdeenSTE
You need to give yourself time to grieve and you need to realise that the lack of interest from your object of desire doesn’t make you a lesser person. If possible put some physical distance between you – both which will make you not see them. andya2015
Of course it’s still love if never reciprocated! We both had brilliant lives and I think she knew I also loved her. We stayed friends while happily married to other people. She only clung to me at the end because she knew I did love her and she was terrified of dying. She died too young the next day, leaving behind many people who loved her and miss her. Elfinspector
Take yourself out of that person’s orbit, if you can- or at least spend time with lots of other people. Make other things and other people more important in your life, rather than trying to forget about them or change your feelings towards them. Bob500
I find love is a verb that I attempt to fail better at. Someone wrote “turn that ship around”, which helped me, a slow process but the intent was there. Now I am older I feel compassion for the younger me who lost the love of the one everyone wanted. silversea
I liked what [author] Jillian Turecki said: “Rejection is redirection … toward growth.” Hence, first, identify the story you’re telling yourself about the rejection and rewrite it in a more positive light. Perhaps that person wasn’t meant for you? Then, take the time to process your feelings, but also – if previously in a relationship with that person – ask yourself what was good and bad in the relationship, draw the lessons from it, and credit yourself for the instances when you were a great partner.
Whether or not you were in a relationship,ask yourself what excitement that person brought (if healthy, rather than toxic) and how you can import those elements into your life?
Last but not least, cultivate faith that something better is on the way, even though your brain cannot fathom that now. Repeat it like a mantra, until it sinks in.
As I’m now in the grips of heartbreak, I find myself I’m living more intensely than ever. Against the backdrop of absence and grief, life has taken on an eery new meaning. hiroshimamonamour123
Remove your armour, get off your horse and leave the 14th century. Goldgreen
Research “limerence”. The best options are 1) no contact 2) Finding purpose in life. Don’t settle for a one sided relationship. “Learning to love yourself”. Great song, great advice. Golgo13pro
Maybe it’s not love but attraction? Lust and attraction can be quick to arrive and not easy to shake off. Love takes time and develops as you get to know and understand someone. KTteacher
You don’t learn to get over unrequited love. Rather, you learn to live with the knowledge that you cannot have everything or everyone just because there’s a little switch in your head that flicked to “on”. This is important for personal resilience and for peaceable coexistence in a society full of people who also can’t get their own way all the time. Time heals, sometimes.
I can think of several heads of state who have shown themselves to be great big man-babies. One wonders whether they’d have caused the rest of us quite so much trouble if they’d learned to handle being hurt and take “no” for an answer in their youth. Dorkalicious
Unrequited love can also lead to elements of control and hence abuse. Someone who thinks along the lines of “if I can’t have you, no one can,” when their partner leaves / tries to leave or break/s off a relationship.
Maybe be thankful you avoided that sort of scenario, perhaps? Otherwise, put it down to experience and try to find someone who looks at you in a more positive light. WordChazer
Zero expectations is the key thing. Just love and let go. Anonymous, by email
The subject of our “smitten” desire for a specific person very often is just kind of a symbol, a representation of what is missing from our own life: Be that more excitement, adventure, a far more unconventional lifestyle, the capacity and freedom to spend much more time with more interesting people of our own choice, for instance. I first fell in love with a girl at school, in 1966. I was hopeless, genuinely bad at it. And the love went on, unfulfilled and unrequited, for 20 years. Now we are both 74 and I have not seen her for 20 years and I have found myself thinking, I am still not wondering, “what if?” so much as why didn’t we? But now I have peace. It was what it was. IMSpardagus
Remind yourself that S/He’s Just Not That Into You. Sagarmatha1953
Partly by not continuing to call it “love”. Love calls for some shared reality. sianowen321
To be fair, there may be an existing personal relationship (eg. a friendship where one party has a romantic attraction towards the other but the other sees it as a platonic love). Bob500
Love doesn’t have to be reciprocal. You don’t stop loving someone when, for instance, age and health stop them from loving you back. jno50
You need to like yourself enough to move on. Get friends to help. And don’t do what I did. Become so preoccupied that I fouled some exams and nearly went into an inappropriate marriage – mainly for self confirmation. m909
For the last 15 years there has been a succession of men I’ve loved who haven’t felt the same.
Each time I had to transform the pain of rejection so it didn’t engulf me whole. I
I have been in regular therapy nearly a year, and I’ve been working on my self-esteem. I want the next time I love someone to be someone who loves me back. KiwiCrush, by email
