Do you ever have a crush on a person who has no feelings for you or you have felt deep love for your close friend but are struggling to keep your feelings secret? Is there any phase of your life when you linger feelings for an ex after breaking up? If yes, you’re surely experiencing an Unrequited Love.
The Unrequited Love isn’t just for movies or books, but it’s a reality experienced by many people. Such experiences are described as a love that isn’t mutual. This is painful when you develop romantic feelings for someone and they don’t feel them back. This one-sided love causes severe grief and sadness. So, whether you have told your crush how you feel or longing for them to make a move and are rejected, this kind of love is always one-sided. When you think that the other person doesn’t have romantic feelings for you, you should look forward to adopting the ways to move forward. Similar;y, if someone has feelings of love for you that you can’t return, there are ways to address these feelings.
Types of Unrequited Love
Most people like you have probably had at least one romantic crush who didn’t feel the same for you. Unfortunately. Such feelings affect almost every person in the world, sometimes for a celebrity or times for your close friend. There are more ways through which unrequited love can be shown up, including:
- An unequal love relationship.
- Pursuing a love object.
- Longing for a past love.
- A fixation on someone close to you.
- Lingering feelings for an ex after a breakup.
- Desiring for someone unavailable.
- Mutual feelings between people involved in other relationships.
- Pinning for someone who doesn’t have the same feelings.
Sometimes unrequited love can also affect you in casual dating if your feelings become true but the other person’s interest never deepens.
However, studies reveal that all these kinds of unrequited love are less emotionally intense than real reciprocated love. That is the reason that unrequited love is found approximately five times more common than the love shared by two people.
Signs of Unrequited Love
Different scenarios present unrequited love differently. But intense longing that spans a significant time frame and involves little to no reciprocation from your love interest, is the key sign of one-sided love.
Let’s take a look at more specific things that might suggest that your love isn’t mutual!
Denying Signs Showing their Careless Behavior
Unrequited love always hurts. Often people go through a phase of denial to deal with the pain. Sometimes you try to ignore the more subtle signals you’re getting and choose to focus on how often they:
- Ask your opinion or confine you.
- Compliment you.
- Touch or hug you.
However, if the other person is just open or affectionate, that may confuse you when you try to gauge their interest in you.
Experience a lot of Unpleasant Emotions.
A cycle of emotions is involved in unrequited love. The cycle starts with hopefulness as you work on strategies geared toward igniting a romantic relationship. But in case of failure, you might feel the pain of rejection and accompanying emotions, such as shame, anger, resentment, anxiety, and sadness.
Your Loved One Doesn’t Have Interest in Progressing the Relationship
To develop a deeper connection, you start inviting them to spend more quality time together. But they spoil all your efforts by keeping their distance as you try to get close. Sometimes, they take it as a hangout and invite other friends to join that intimate date evening you planned.
Their lack of interest is also shown by their reluctant race during a deep conversation. For example, they don’t reply to you properly when you ask about their values or beliefs and never ask you similar questions. This behavior shows that you are a victim of a one-sided love connection.
Struggling to get your Crush Off Your Mind
Unrequited love usually accompanies the feelings of longing that can begin to take over your emotions and taint reality. Your love feelings for your crush might come up throughout your day, in different aspects of your life, including:
- Talking about them often.
- Shopping in their neighborhood in hopes of seeing them.
- Check Facebook or Instagram to see if they’ve liked your posts.
- Imagine scenarios where you tell them about your feelings.
- Writing texts or letters to confess your love.
Their Slow Reply to Your Calls or Invitations
Slow replies to your calls, texts, or invitations are a major sign of one-sided emotions. For example, when you invite them for a hangout, they will say, “ I’ll let you know soon,” but they don’t confirm it until the last minute. Persistence of such patterns without any reason or explanation pants out their lack of interest in you.
Adopting Things What They Like to Get Closer
Unrequited love compels you to make yourself more attractive to the other person. You always think of ways to attract their attention. During this struggle, you may think about their hobbies.
Causes of Unrequited Love
Unrequited love often starts in similar ways to equal love, but sometimes the other person doesn’t have the same feelings of love for you. Some common causes of one-sided love are:
Insecure Attachment Style: Attachment styles affect your love relationship. You may have different styles of attachment such as, avoidant, secure, or anxious. These styles of attachments need different methods to handle daily social situations. For example, studies explained that avoidant or anxious people do not show proper care for others and are less close to the people than secure lovers.
Mixed Signals between Friends: You may see your friend as a romantic interest if you both have physical affection and share flirty jokes. Mixed signals usually don’t make you fall in love with someone but if you already have an attraction for someone, it would make you more likely to be attracted towards them romantically. Especially if they also show interest in you.
Romantic Feelings for A Friend: Intimate feelings often develop between the persons having strong friendships that last for the years. Sometimes, good friendships prove prime opportunities for the foundation of a romantic relationship. In this situation, you may start to look at your friend more than a friend over time.
An Unbalanced Attraction Level: If there is a perceived imbalance in attraction level, the person with a more attractive personality usually doesn’t feel intimate attraction with a person who seems to be less attractive.
Your Proximity to A Person: Sometimes you may develop love feelings for someone when you get to know them. This may happen at your school or workplace.
Love Feelings due to Common Hobbies: You often develop feelings of love for people who like the same things as you. You may see a perfect romantic partner in them.
Effects of Unrequited Love
Both types of feelings are associated with one-sided love, such as:
- Low-self esteem.
- Anxiety.
- Infatuation.
- Depression.
- Passion
- Excitement.
However, studies suggest that this form of love is not emotionally beneficial for your mental health. So you should protect your mental health while going through such feelings.
Ways to Deal with Unrequited Love
It’s painful to experience rejection. It also hurts when your true feelings aren’t reciprocated. Studies show that rejection causes adverse activity in the brain associated with physical pain. Follow the tips jotted below to cope with the pain until it lessens.
Feelings always communicate with your brain. Your feelings can help you to go in the right direction in any situation but you have to pay attention to the truth of your experience. Because your experience can teach you more about the kind of person you’re attracted to. You can understand with an example like, if you feel an unrequited love, it may help you consider whether this pattern says something about your needs. Feeling attraction for the person who doesn’t return your feelings coil suggests you feel like you should not be in love with someone who doesn’t care about you. Then you may not want to develop a relationship and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Distract Your Attention
Experiencing true and valid feelings for someone may attract you towards them but here you need to maintain a balance. Because spending more time with them can end up making you miserable. You can set the feelings aside until you have time and space to address them.
Talk about Your Feelings
Trying to explain your feelings for a person seems to be frightening. However, it’s the most effective way to check if you are in mutual love or unrequited love. In the case of one-sided love, it is better to talk with that person. You can ask them about the reason for affectionate gestures and flirty behavior from the person you’re interested in. You can tell them that such gestures are creating some confusing signals. This conversation may help you know exactly how they feel about you.
If you feel too overwhelmed while talking to your crush, it’s fine to discuss with a trusted friend about your feelings. Sometimes, just telling about such feelings to someone else can help your chest relief.
Find the Meaning in the Experience
Situations are affected by your response. Thus it’s not important what happens in your life but the matter of concern is how you respond to the situation at hand. It is a natural feeling that when you love someone, you want to be loved in the same way in return. However, sometimes you don’t get the same response. This doesn’t mean that your love gestures are meaningless. You may take a start for yourself by developing a stronger friendship with someone else who also shows interest in you. This is called moving forward. Try to grow in some other way.
Avoid Lingering
When your friend rejects your love after your confession, it hurts you. Here the important thing is to maintain your friendship relationship. Don’t spoil your past relationship. So try to focus on your friendship and forget about love feelings. However, if you find it difficult to remain friends, take some time and space to heal yourself. It’s normal to get some space until you feel normal.
Feel Your Feelings
Unrequited love is not about negative feelings. It urges a feeling of excitement when you see the person you love. You feel yourself on top of the world when you spend time with them. But the thought of being with them for a longer time can make you deeply sad. So try to practice mindful acceptance of such feelings. Accept them as they come to you without judging their response.
Change Your Interests
Shifting gears may help you in this regard. Try these tips:
- Treat yourself to something small. Whether it’s a new movie, a new book, fresh flowers, or an ice meal.
- Try to make extra time where you can enjoy your hobbies and enjoyable activities.
- Consider dating casually to find a partner who cares about your feelings.
- Pay attention to your grooming.
- Stay active and eat regular meals to maintain your good health.
Conclusion
Unrequited love affects your life adversely but there are ways to get things better with time. When you are going through a tough time, therapy through different strategies may offer a safe space to heal yourself.
Seeking help from a professional therapist is an absolute way to deal with one-sided love. Therapeutic strategies may help if:
- You overthink for so much time and this thinking interferes with your quality of life.
- You fail to stop pursuing the other person after they have rejected you.
- Your loved ones and friends express their concern about your behavior.
Talking to a trained qualified professional may help you get rid of depression and hopelessness. If you ever have thoughts of suicide, it’s wise to seek professional help immediately. Such drastic feelings can lead to potentially problematic behaviors, like waiting around their workplace or house, stalking rhythm, and following them. Finding a person having a mutual connection with you is also an effective way to address this.
