Unrequited love is one of the most gut-wrenching experiences of the human journey. Sometime or the other, humans fall in love with those who are least able to give any love back. Love that doesn’t return love is far more prevalent than love that does. Way more intense than a fleeting crush, this love can last a lifetime, and can make or break the one in love.
The rejection one must live with, make peace with, and accept when one’s love is not reciprocated, is a rejection most unbearable. The rejection-induced agony many experience can be as debilitating as physical pain. Even knowing the baggage of emotional distress and trauma that unrequited love carries doesn’t ease the suffering.
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Everyone wants and deserves to be loved. Many a time, it takes letting go of the objects of our affection who don’t echo the feeling. Kicking away unrequited love isn’t easy, to be able to do that one first needs to awaken to the possibilities of love that’s mutual and fulfilling.
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The feelings aren’t always unreciprocated because of the absence of love from one party. Many a time, both people are consumed by love and/or are bound by obligations making it impossible for them to act upon their feelings, which can’t be acknowledged lest another bond is broken.
I see many signals of unrequited love on social media. It is easy to be crushing on someone who doesn’t feel the same way about us or is unaware of our feelings towards them, or worse, is in a committed relationship. It could be someone we work with or report to, share a professional relationship with that makes falling in love inappropriate. Or, sometimes, we choose to remain in love with an ex long after the relationship is over. Of course, there are those instances when people take our love for granted because they do understand how we feel about them. One is often caught in that dangerous place where we are heartbroken and deep in despair. Anguished by thoughts of a relationship with someone who doesn’t even acknowledge our presence, let alone our love, we dream about them night and day, unable to move away from them, on to living and loving in a healthier fashion.
I remember my anxiety as a young 21-year-old in Manhattan when I was deeply in love with a person in Paris. Separated by seven seas, united by a huge dose of unhealthy attachment, suffocating each other. My lover lived to love, but lived more happily still avoiding being in love. What sheer madness love can throw us into, vexing conundrums we appreciate and are torn apart by. Between my youthful hunger for love with the first person I felt such a feeling for and their reluctance to accept it, I found myself in a vicious cycle of mutually hurtful avoidance. A non-existent relationship that was deeply detrimental at the same time.
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Does the need for constant connection to another human makes us chase a loveless lover? Does any real sense of fulfillment come from finding the one claiming they fear not your love but being suffocated by a smothering feeling? Are they really rejecting you or pretending lest they be dumped, stuck with rejection pangs? In avoiding the affection and adoration showered on them, they are trying to stave off the rejection they fear might come their way. These are people who convince themselves that they are beyond another human’s ability to fulfill their carnal and emotional needs, and, so, any close relationship is best not sought.
One would think we’d learn not to love those who can’t love us back. But think again! Being human, it isn’t stability and fulfillment, closure, and connection that we always chase. There are people who chase the feeling of thrill and joy, albeit short-lived. Ironical and as self-hating as this behaviour is, these people who claim to be anxious to find love, desperate to settle with a loved one, don’t want to be loved back. It is the unrequited love they desire; it is rejection they seek as a high for living life.
It took me to ask myself why I was chasing a lover who was rejecting me again and again to finally hear myself out. That got me to a place where I learnt I was sabotaging my love life, my emotional grounding, and my overall happiness as a human being. It was the moment when I finally realised I was owned by the chase of unhappy outcomes that I stopped chasing those who broke me apart emotionally.
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Getting to that point when I wasn’t chasing the wrong lover was nothing easy, and a long tedious journey. I found social media giving me cues better suited at playing and winning a zero-sum game many play over the course of their lives. I saw friends blocking those they felt were rejecting their love. It wasn’t a behaviour I could accept, as I feel it better to have an earnest dialogue instead of muting the badly behaved or who think or act differently than me. In cutting off all contact with these strange lovers, my friends had rid themselves of a daily roller-coaster ride of emotional trauma. In removing them from their social media profiles, they literally and figuratively detached themselves from these heart-breaking players.
We all deserve to be celebrated and loved. We all ought to understand that healthy relationships and significant others are waiting for us to find them and pick them as our lovers. To be loved by another, we must first start loving ourselves and believing that we are genuinely worthy of being cherished romantically. It may take us a lifetime to find a partner who can give us the love and pleasure we seek and deserve, but once we get to that point, life becomes a blissful journey of heartwarming discoveries and deep, guttural pleasures. In choosing ourselves and our happiness over our misery and a miserable date, we start choosing those who want us as much as we want them. When our love for another is returned with wholesome and unfettered love, it is then that we find security in loving and living with another.
https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/loving-those-who-dont-love-us-back-rejection-self-love-8114621/
2022-08-28 00:30:12Z
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