How To Deal With Unrequited Love
A mighty pain to love it is,
And ’tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.Abraham Cowley
When I’m talking with my friends about love, the conversation will almost always revert to our first love; the exhilarating, addictive, all consuming wonder that comes when your heart first splits in two and starts beating for another person. Sometimes we will discuss the love that we have for our children, and how you we never imagined that we could love this much. From the moment they are born, you will give your life for them without hesitation. And more commonly as we have grown older, the slow simmering love that we have with our long term partner, comfortable and yet still capable of an occasional burst of passion.
The topic that rarely gets addressed is the subject of unrequited love. That is, loving another without the feelings being returned. Loving and not being loved in return is embarrassing, and not something you generally share, unless you choose to confide in your best friend.
If you sit and think about it now, I’m sure you can think of a few instances of unrequited love in your lifetime, be it school age crushes, your boss at work, the barista at the coffee shop. At some point you will have felt a love so intense and strong that you can think of little else. From then, every moment you get to spend in the company of your love takes on new meaning, when they hold your gaze for a split second too long, if they sympathise with you, or compliment you, it is easy to take this as a sign of their returned affections.
Consequently, spurred on by your conviction that your love is returning your passions, the love grows deeper still, even though it is at this point completely one sided. This unrequited love can end up being an exhausting way of life. To try and stop this one sided love seems impossible, regardless of what your common sense or mind will tell you, your heart keeps marching on to the beat of total utopia; where you and your love will finally be together, and live happily ever after.
The one major drawback to your life plan is that the object of your affections has absolutely no idea how you feel. So what do you do when you fall in love with someone with whom you are not in a relationship, and who has no idea about your feelings?
I believe it is best to gently seek the opinion of the person who has captured your heart. Yes, openly telling people about your feelings can be excruciating, especially as we Brits have such a hard time with raw emotion, we seem to see it as something that isn’t something that is done outside of the movies. I’m not saying you need to profess your undying love, but certainly you need to suggest a date, or even be really brave and say you like them.
My first love declaration was an absolute disaster, and I can still feel the sting of rejection like it was yesterday: When I was eight years old I remember writing a letter (that’s what we did back in the 90’s) to a boy at school who I was in love with. We had always sat next to each other in registration and shared a good camaraderie in lessons, my friend and I dared each other to write a letter to the boy we liked, and so I wrote to him, dutifully looking up their addresses in the Thompson Directory (again 90’s) and giggling excitedly as we put our letters in the post box. I remember lining up to go to assembly a few days after this. We stood, in the same order as always, me before him. I sat down and tried to catch his eye, but he stared resolutely ahead. I tried to talk to him, but the look he gave me was that of utter disgust, and I will never forget it. This was the first time my young heart was bruised, but it certainly wasn’t the last.
Despite this crippling knock back I continued to have feelings for this boy until long after we went our separate ways in secondary school. The same way that I have held others safely in my heart over the years, nestled and nurtured, ready and waiting, for the time where they can fulfil its’ desire.
As with my experience, there is a chance it could leave you upset and slightly embarrassed if you are turned down, but the alternative of continuing life with a constant desire that is not met is the most devastating feeling. I have an unrequited love walking around, living his life, still unaware of my feelings for him.
It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
This instance of unrequited love occurred quite by accident, and with a very unlikely subject. I was twenty one, and I was working at a bank in a lovely upmarket town. One day I returned to the back office to see the head cashier, my friend, a year younger than me, scrutinising a passport, she said to me that she thought something didn’t look right.
I hadn’t even looked at it for more than ten seconds when I realised the surname in the passport, and the surname on the bank card were spelled differently. Our cosy home counties town was being targeted by a fraudster. I called the police, and luckily our local police officer was already on the High Street getting his lunch. Less than a minute later he entered the bank and I gave a not-so-subtle nod in the right direction, and the policeman addressed this man. This fraudster did not want to be caught,and tried to run. He was then unceremoniously drop-kicked to the floor, and a further four officers entered into the fray pinning down this flailing fraudster. It was all very exciting, but over in seconds.
A customer who had seen the whole incident occur asked what happened and I replied with a quip, “he went overdrawn”. This incited a bit of panic with the customers waiting to be served: think of the scene in Mary Poppins where there is a run on the bank, I was instantly assured by all those present that their accounts were in good standing; it was hilarious.
Anyway, I digress. My manager throughout all this, had been sitting in the back room pressing her personal alarm, she left that day and did not return. Suddenly I was acting branch manager, and as such began to speak with the area manager over conference call, email and telephone conversations daily. His name was Jeremy, he was so clever and witty, and although I was usually being reprimanded, I really enjoyed our phone calls, and slightly flirtatious email exchanges. He even began signing off his emails with Jem, or J. Everybody knew that he was Jeremy, the few people that had attempted to shorten his name had regretted it immediately. Looking back now, I think this was the first lightbulb that flicked on in my head, this was when I felt we had a connection.
One day he walked into my branch. I knew it was him. His presence was exactly the same as it was over the phone; confident, intelligent, and powerful. He was older than I had thought, a lot older. Jeremy had white hair, not silver, not grey, pure white. His eyes, they were a greyish blue, speckled with greens and browns, they lit up when he spoke, and would always hold the clue as to whether he was being serious or fooling around. A while later I found out that he was in his 50’s, but my heart didn’t care for such trivial matters. We got on well, and Jeremy soon started setting up his base in the office above my branch. Light bulb #2 of the confirmation of interest that my heart was looking for. He was choosing to work from my branch, therefore he must be feeling the same way.
We became pretty much inseparable, we fell into a routine of bringing each other coffee in the morning, and I was invited to area and regional conferences as his guest, in other words I became his work wife. Cue light bulb moment #3. One day he confided in me that his wife and he were having issues, and that he just wanted to run away to a desert island. This was the time that the last morsel of rationality left my head. I was in love with him, I loved him so much. He was kind, and funny, and frankly, damn sexy when he was striding up and down the office barking orders down the phone, the small matter of him being married was only a small obstacle, in my mind.
This continued for over a year, my days and weeks being made by seeing him, feeling horribly grumpy when he chose another branch to visit. Finally one night Igot the courage to try and test his feelings towards me. We had just finished being audited and I invited him to have a drink at the local pub to celebrate. He declined. a few weeks later I volunteered to drive him home from a work event, an hour in the car together, surely here he would tell me how he felt? Again nothing, he thanked me and went into his house, to his wife. I think it was at that point that I realised this love was probably one sided, and I tried to suppress my feelings, as I knew it was unlikely that anything would ever happen between us.
We still worked together for the next three years, and gradually due to branch changes we rarely saw each other, months after that I heard that he had been moved to a different region. I never told him how I felt, and I have no idea whether he may have had feelings for me or not. I had been waiting for him to make a move, to confess his feelings, and he never did. I wish I had been more confident back then, so I could have told him how I felt. I still imagine now what I would do if I were to see him walking down the street, the truth is, he probably won’t remember me, it has been ten years now since I last saw him but I will never forget him. I think if he had told me that there was nothing between us other than friendship, or a work relationship it would have meant I laid this love to rest a lot more quickly.
As is usually the case with an unrequited love, like me with my boss, your life moves on without closure. You never vocalise your feelings, and you, or they, move on to other relationships, other jobs, other lives.
If you are still protecting this love whilst dating, it usually results in you ending up in relationships where someone has made this love business easy. They have declared themselves to you, thus you can safely allow yourself to return these feelings with a confidence that you will not be rebuffed, your heart will be safe from hurt. This person may not be right for you in many ways, but your bruised heart will push you forward out of its’ wanton need to be repaired.
I spent a good few years dating anyone that showed an interest in me, whether I found them attractive or not, whether I particularly liked them or not, as well to be honest. I seemed unable to turn down these men, perhaps because of my personal experience of how much a rejection hurts or more selfishly, with a reluctance to having my heart broken again, I engaged in relationships where this would never be the case.
These relationships that follow an unrequited love come at a price. When your heart still, in part, belongs to another, throughout your relationship your heart is making a silent comparison to your unrequited love. How can a partner even begin to match up to standards that can be held in the highest esteem? There is no love so perfect and pure as love unrequited: because that love affair never began it hasn’t been subject to the doldrums of everyday life. This tends to impact negatively on your relationship, as your partner has no idea why you are withdrawn, or moody, or why they never seem to be good enough.
You are not fully committed in your relationship. How many times have you been with someone but known you would drop them like a cup of cold sick if the opportunity to be with your unrequited love arose? If I had seen Jeremy at any point in the last decade, I am pretty sure I would have run towards him without a backward glance to whomever was my current partner. My lack of commitment to the relationship usually caused it to fail once my partner sensed I wasn’t “all in”. My avoidance of making long term plans, and always wanting to keep my options open never remained unnoticed for long.
I often wonder whether the heart has a knowledge that our brain does not. Can it sense that we are in the presence of someone who would make us deliriously happy? If not why does it protest so loudly? Too many people dismiss matters of the heart as things that can be rationalised away however, these feelings cannot be suppressed by common sense and they cannot be explained away.
Regardless of why these unrequited loves affected me, and other “UL” sufferers I’ve spoken to, so deeply, I think that they teach us valuable lessons, about love, about ourselves — even if the lessons are unpleasant, we are emotionally richer for the experience.
We only get one chance at life, and for many of us it is spent unhappily, wishing and wanting for things we don’t have. Please don’t allow someone you love to slip through your fingers, take the chance, tell them you love them, and maybe, just maybe they will feel the same way too.
