Unrequited Love Leaves Some with an Unrequited Life at DailyStrength

Unrequited Love Leaves Some with an Unrequited Life

By Julie July 3, 2008 1:01pm

Sometimes when love hits, it can hit hard! You weren't expecting it and you weren't waiting for it but as Emeril says "Bam!" And suddenly the axis that your life once revolved around suddenly starts revolving around the axis attached to this new found love interest. Everything you do, say and think about is clouded by your feelings for him or her. This is a normal part of infatuation; the unknown, the excitement, the giddiness and of course the obsession!

But what if the object of your affection does not feel the same way about you? They might be in another relationship, not attracted to you or just hot and cold in their feelings towards you. Even though you know in your head that you need to move on, your heart may be telling a very different story. Or worse, you have put your life on hold and believe that if you focus all your energy on this person eventually they will see how much you love them and they will come around.

The heart can be a great storyteller and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the greatest fairy tales began as a way to heal from unrequited love. Your heart may be saying "Wait, they will come around. If I leave now I will miss my opportunity for true love. One day they will wake up and see that they were meant to be with me." If this sounds familiar, you may be in trouble.

Infatuation can be a powerful feeling and like a magnet, it can be a strong force that is difficult to detach from. For those who are "waiting for love," life can become divided between spending time with their love interest and waiting to spend time with them. Every other part of their life may feel like filler. This is dangerous "emotional" territory as putting your life second to someone who is not available can put you at risk for depression and anxiety.

Infatuation can be complicated. Even if you want to move on from someone who is not available, it's nearly impossible to turn your feelings off like you would a light switch. It is more realistic to set small goals around detaching your energy from them and putting it back in your life. Proactive self-statements can be helpful such as, "today I am going to focus my energy towards people that are paying positive attention to me." Also, catch yourself when you drift into thoughts of them and tell yourself to "STOP."

I know it may feel unnatural or silly but stepping out of your comfort zone may be necessary to move on. If you feel that you can't do it alone, seek out help from friends, family or a therapist. Unrequited love is ultimately a painful distraction from life and better left in fairy tales.

Comments

I am in that situation right now except that my love is not unrequited...he's just not completely available to me. We've been together for a year now and my feelings for him are as strong as ever, and I believe he feels the same way. I don't know how much longer I can go being 2nd (or perhaps even third or fourth) in his life, the pain I experience when he leaves me because he can't spend the night is heartbreaking. The times that I don't hear from him for a few days...all my time is consumed with waiting and wanting to be with him. I have found that total NC does help immensely but I haven't reached that point yet.

By bluntgrl August 29, 2008 11:14am

this is so wonderful! i am also struggling with this now with a man i used to date. it was going so well and just stopped. he constantly fed me the sweet nothings "you are marriage material" "one day we'll move in together" "there arent many girls like you." and then we stopped hanging out, he stopped calling. we would reandomly hang out when i was drunk vice versa it all stopped. i then became booty call material and i cant get him out of my mind. i think i feel i need to be obsessed with him but i am moving on. he is right there arent many girls out in the world like me and its your loss buddy. your loss. why obsess over someone who doesnt want to me with me. i should be in awe over somenoe who does want to be with me

By gigley August 22, 2008 9:53pm

I can relate directly with what you have said in this message! It is something that I'm coping with at the present,knowing that I should move on but unable to do so! Thank-you for expressing what it's like in such an eloquent manner!

By Lee9 August 17, 2008 4:00am

You're assuming that unrequited love is one-sided or a fantasy. But what if it is truly real? What if both parties truly loved each other but, for various key reasons, they couldn't act upon this love or take it any further? Two Hollywood stories that illustrate this (though it is played out everyday in "real life") are Bridges of Madison County and Cast Away. Both parties stayed within marriages though their loves lived. How does one get over that? How does one stay in a marriage when their heart is with another? In Cast Away, she thought he was dead. Her love. The man she was to marry. Then he came back, but she was married with a child. Are you saying that this love she has felt for him is a fantasy? And if it were a true love, how does one simply distract themselves away from that feeling by saying STOP?

By hope62 August 8, 2008 12:09pm

Thanks, great, real answers.

By cdempsey July 18, 2008 6:53pm

thanks for the great info.

By staceyc July 17, 2008 11:02pm

Thank you so much for this information. This confirms my my feelings that I am fortunate to have escaped such a person that could not see my beauty. "Rejection is gods protection! "

By cestlavm77 July 8, 2008 11:20pm

This is me, wow. I never knew this was so common?! Shockingly so, and yes you are supposed to be 2 who become one, committed to each other and this family we created. How do you walk away and never look back? I never imagined this could happen, not to me, my husband loved me, never doubted that and then my life is blown up, and he won't even see me or take my calls? Suddenly I am a single parent and the kids and I are standing here in the fall out. But no he doesn't care, he's not coming back and I am starting to see, no it isn't even about me, beyond convenint scapegoat, it isn't about anyone but him. I just now realizing a whole frame of reference, it isn't anything to do with being unworthy or failure or not being able to understand him. It's inside him, and he could just walk away because I'm just small penalty or someone who got caught in the crossfire, but nothing matters except his wants, his needs, his money. I am inconsequential to him, but that doesn't make me so. I will never use the word heartbroken casually again, because it means exactly what it states. Thanks, kellyeme

By kellyeme July 8, 2008 1:59am

I LIVE WITH JUST SUCH A PERSON ... HE IS AN ALCOHOLIC, WHOSE MIND AND HEART, BODY, AND SOUL HAVE BEEN ALTERED, BY BOOZE .... HE CLAIMS TO LOVE ME INFATICALLY, BUT HIS ACTIONS, TO COIN A PHRASE, SPEAKS LOUDER, THEN WORDS .... HE HAS NO EMOTIONS ... SHOWS NO AFFECTION ... DOSEN'T TOUCH, CONNECT, OR BOND WITH ME, OR OTHERS ..... HE LIVES TO DRINK, AND DRINKS TO EXIST ..... I, ON THE OTHER HAND, ARE LEFT HOLDING THE BAG, AND MY LIFE BECAUSE OF IT, IS NON-EXISTANT ... I TRULY LOVE THIS MAN, HE IS MY SOULMATE, AND THE WORDS OUT OF HIS MOUTH, I WOULD DIE WITHOUT YOU ........... RINGS TRUE .... NO KIDDING ... BUT I'M ALREADY DEAD ... LIKE A FLOWER THAT NEEDS WATER TO NURTURE ... I AM WILTED, AND FRAYED ..... THRISTY FOR THE LOVE I NEED TO FLOURISH ..... PLEASE DON'T TELL ME THE OBVIOUS, MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE, I TOOK THE VOWS FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE, IN SICKNESS, AND IN HEALTH .......... NEED SOME INPUT FROM A PROFESIONAL TO PUT THINGS IN PROSPECTIVE FOR MY SIUTATION .... THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP !!! ALONE AGAIN IN UPSTATE NEW YORK .... MARIE

By Scorp55 July 7, 2008 1:20pm

yeah, and hard to see when you're doing it yourself. easy to suspect in others, easy to deny in oneself

By GeocacherNY July 7, 2008 2:12am

Trying to make sense out of physical and emotional chaos.

By alkayo July 7, 2008 12:45am

I am thankful to have stumbled onto your topic. I am now after almost 10 years starting to put the pieces of a very dangerous puzzle together. Trying to make out of physical and emotional chaos.

By alkayo July 7, 2008 12:06am

The feeling for more than woman at a time is a phenomenon I am experiencing. It just really blows my mind that I am capable of this. Most people frown upon it, but I have discovered new depths of myself b/c of this.

By onediva July 6, 2008 9:22pm

I have suffered from unrequited love for about a year and a half. I still care so much for my ex, but she moved on while we were still married and is living with the guy now. I tell myself to stop thinking about her all the time, but it doesn't always work. Especially when I start to get an erection thinking about her.

Thankfully, like all things that either get better or worse, this has gotten better. It has been a long hard road, but I don't think about her as much anymore. And the more I get out to meet more people the less I think about her and the more I realize that she is not such a great person to cheat on me with a guy who was cheating on his wife, who just gave him two children.

I know I'll be better off, but it is just taking too much time.

By TrevorJames July 6, 2008 4:40pm

love is a strange thing but everyone just wants it all the time. i can keep giving excuses why i'm not going to school and not thinking of my future, but its only one reason and that's the person who is my number one priority. i saw him today with a happy conversation, but then it went downhill, like it always does. why? because he has his girlfriend and he shouldn't be hanging out with me because I am his ex. maybe its because i'm in love with him but I keep making the conversation negative because I don't like the fact I have to be secretive of our friendship status. As far as she knows and his own family, we don't hang out or rarely or if we see each other we'll wave a hi there and here. But, secrets don't usually keep up for long and I feel he shouldn't be doing this. I even suggest just letting all of us hang out together, but he just doesn't want that because that would mean it would be okay for her to invite her own exe's to hang outs. I don't have that many friends and I was very close to him even after we broke up. So, for him to just, almost as if to completely not acknowledge I am his friend, it really hurts.

By KawaiiTenshi86 July 6, 2008 12:58am

there are more fish in the sea, than have ever been caught. i was
born just off skid row, hope st. in los angeles, in 1950. we played
musical chairs a lot in the public schools. i was mostly in the
san pornando valley. love in los angeles, is a strange phenomenon.
i married 39 times, and all their black pimps went to prison, oddly
enuff. i still love my favorite girlfriend, i was in studs lonigan 1960
with, she 7, playing lucy as a kid, and me 9 as studs as a kid. its
a very vile, pornogrphic book, an american classic by james farrell.
she and i have been 'together' for almost 50 years now. its a rather
merry go round love, as the scenes we were in back at griffith park
then. there were easter egg hunts, at the homes of the wealthy in
san marino, ca. one gal, from there, and i kissed on the ferry going
to northern ireland in 1967, it was heartbreaking to leave her, and
then down to the ring of kerry, and mrs. clifford's and then off to
ms. coyne in county cork. falling in love with her, was so easy, just
for one night, and away we went again, ma and pa and i, in the vw
squareback. is there a 'one' and 'only'? a prince charming who
arrives pays all your bills as if by magic, and then leaves and still
pays you huge alimony payments and child support? very rarely.
some of us have such great potential, but so many of us, only have
8 dollar an hour jobs. and as dion sang, without any money, there
goes our romance. sad really, pity. and so as lawrence welk is
playing in the background, take a disabled vet out tonight. there
are disabled vets, both female and male. this is why you are still
alive and kicking. otherwise we'd be, the People who never were.

By jeanlafitte July 5, 2008 9:48pm

What do you do when after a 3 year relationship and an engagement is just over because the women is not sure of where her life would be in 10 years. We have been moving forward by leaps and bounds since we met. There was a car accident that happened and I was without money for 2 months. The insurance had not started and the tension was so high that we were not getting along. My friend convinced me to go away to Mexico for a couple of weeks and this is what killed the relationship. She went to mexico 1 week later with a girlfriend and had a non sexual relationship with her girlfriend and 2 brothers. 1 of the brothers who was married had great feelings for her and persisted in emails sending gifts, pictures. I was sick. I still believed her and just wanted to get back to work and our loving relationship. Turns out I got a great job and then she left me. I'm in shock. I've called her way too many times trying to profess my love, the benefits, but she totally rejects me. I truly love this woman, but I can't take the rejection anymore. Now compounding things my Mother is in hospital fighting for her life and in grave danger. I'm flying 7,000 miles to be with her and I fear the worst from what my family is saying. I need to somehow build strength. If you have any advice for me I would greatly appreciate your wisdom.

By gepassit July 4, 2008 8:38pm

Thank you for acknowledging that its not easy to just "turn it off". When I journal about my latest interest and then I find out it is not mutual and I experience the pangs of rejection, I get harshly critized for not being able to shrug it off. My first one happened immediately after my divorce and it was a quick divorce (like 4 months). I was caught off guard and totally confused when he also dumped me without any explanation. Took months to completely get over it. Just almost got hit a 2nd time. Thank god I realized it before anything physical happened, but still the pain of rejection hit me pretty hard. I was so swept off my feet. Still forcing myself forward and onward but your comment about "fillers" also struck me. Sometimes that is exactly how I feel about these "love interests" that have come and go the past 15 months. As if they are just fillers for what I lost due to my divorce. So now what? Guess I am not healed from my divorce then and now have no idea how except the old fashioned; time heals.

By srambled July 4, 2008 1:47pm

I am taking baby steps, but what next. We had a 2 and half year relationship, he ended it bc the "honeymoon" phase died out. I still am infatuated with him. I go out everyday. I resist making ANY contact. He flirts with me AND rejects me when I do, so I avoid it more. Now what?

By PinkDarci July 4, 2008 2:42am

This is just what I needed to hear, I suffered from this with someone I fell hard for during my divorce process. It has taken me 6 months and I'm still realing from denial. It's hard to accept that the other person doesn't reciprocate what you feel and it feels very alone. I started to feel a little crazy at times and contacted him too much to find out why. The affirmations are the way to go for sure as well as the daily goals to move ahead. That is what has helped me as well.

By tosoontotell July 4, 2008 1:35am

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Musings of a Therapeutic Mind

By Julie Cohen

Unrequited Love Leaves Some with an Unrequited Life

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